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 $100 billion to the deficit over 10 years. Just like with the deficit-busting tax cuts for the rich, Republicans conveniently ignore soaring deficits for their own priorities.

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 Washington Post, in the second 10 years of heath reform -- with 10 years of taxes and 10 years of benefits -- the CBO says that vastly more money is saved. "In the neighborhood of a trillion dollars," Klein reports.

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 Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds and other biggies, and has already met with several large industry trade groups to see how he can serve their interests.

And Boehner's business-friendly agenda will get plenty of help from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who recently sent letters to 150 businesses, trade associations and think tanks, asking which current and proposed regulations should be targeted. As Politico.com reported, Issa solicited input from the American Petroleum Institute, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as drug makers and others.

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 Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (which has since changed its name) that made an oil spill like the BP disaster something of an inevitability. But the tea party-right doesn't mind its politicians bending over backward for big business -- even those that spoil American shores -- as long as it's not a bailout of the auto industry and its unions.

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 U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist as a senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

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.

 

Read the latest political news.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution

Decision Points

Winner-Take-All Politics, How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

Jimmy Carter: The American Presidents Series: The 39th President, 1977-81

White House Diary

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House

Renegade: The Making of a President

Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War

 

 

Receive our political analysis by email by subscribing here



Incoming Republican Leadership Reeks of Corporate Control | Politics

© Tribune Media Services