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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Robyn Blumner
Apparently, former Vice President Dick Cheney has no pulse, a quirk of his new mechanical heart pump. If only that were also true of the man's policies and worldview. But alas, with the resurgent Republicans retaking the House, the people who brought you the Great Recession, massive deficits, the deregulation of Wall Street and torture lite, are back in control of one of the key levers of Washington power. Like the man himself, the Cheney-esque conservative ideas that nearly wrecked the economy and our nation's moral authority, have been given a new lease on life.
One of the first orders of business for newly anointed House Speaker John Boehner and his legion of Republican colleagues is to do battle with the thing they think most evil: health care reform. Republicans are apoplectic over legislation that guarantees tens of millions of uninsured Americans access to health coverage, and gives those of us with insurance the peace of mind that a job loss won't leave us exposed.
And never mind that repealing the Affordable Care Act would add more than
House Republicans are trying to sidle past this blatant hypocrisy by claiming that the analysis of health care reform's savings by the Congressional Budget Office is faulty, since it compares six years of benefits with 10 years of tax hikes. But, as Ezra Klein pointed out in The
After trying to unravel our new health care safety net, House Republicans have a heavy agenda of helping big business get the government it paid for. Boehner, who likes to portray himself as an everyman who swept floors and waited tables at his father's bar, had his real warm up act for the job of speaker in passing out checks from a tobacco lobbyist on the House floor. He retains a well-documented alliance with top corporate lobbyists, including people who represent
And Boehner's business-friendly agenda will get plenty of help from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the new chairman of the
One would think that even Republicans would flinch at the optics of soliciting the oil industry for suggestions on slashing regulations. Remember, it was the abject failure of offshore drilling regulation and oversight by the
New Republican staffing choices also reveal a lot about their intentions. For instance, Boehner's policy director is the former chief lobbyist of the medical device industry. However, the most offensive pick by far is one by Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., the new Agriculture Committee chairman, who chose a
Ryan McKee lobbied for a division of the Chamber fighting against regulation of complex derivatives. "We're fundamentally trying to kill this," she said about the entire Dodd-Frank financial reform measure. She failed there, of course. But now McKee will have power over the very regulators charged with implementing derivatives rules.
Welcome to an America back under corporate, err, Republican control. Dick Cheney's artificial heart would be beating wildly -- if only it could.
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