Accountability August and the Teapoisoned GOP

Now that the circus that is the tea-poisoned Republican Party trying to govern in Washington is over for awhile, I want to strongly suggest that we progressive Democrats do something else besides wring our hands over what we didn’t get in the debt ceiling and deficit reduction bill that passed the Senate today. Instead, why not do something a lot more productive?

If we didn’t like the deal that is now done, what can we do? How about taking a page from the playbook of that so-called “Tea Party” and attend one of those August town hall meetings that the GOPers will be holding around the state. But, don’t go alone. Take as many friends with you as you can. Make signs and display them. Take on the Republicans who have sold their soul to Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers.

Point out that Republicans have been in charge of the House of Representatives for more than 200 days. In that time, not one proposal was voted on that would create a single job. However, the GOPers in the House found time to pass the Ryan plan that would have destroyed Medicare.  

While these extremists were prepared to throw the nation into default if they didn’t get their way, they adjourned without compromising with the Senate on a FAA bill, resulting in the country losing $300 million (so far) and jeopardizing 4,000 FAA jobs and over 7,000 construction jobs. Now, the Senate can only preserve those jobs by passing a House bill that leaves out any money for smaller airports.

GOPers need to be confronted with the serious issues that have not been dealt with by this “do-nothing-but-threaten” Republican majority in the House. They have refused to consider an infrastructure bank that would leverage public funds with private capital to rebuild the nation and create jobs. They have ignored, indeed fought against, creating jobs by encouraging clean energy and energy efficiency. The question is: Why people who so obviously hate the federal government  bother to run for an office in it?

As Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said today, this August recess should be Accountability August for the Republicans. If the main concern of Americans, no matter what their political viewpoint, is the creation of jobs, then we need to ask the Republicans who have taken off until early September why they have spent over 200 days without passing a single bill that would create a single job and instead have done everything they could to destroy jobs.