The big concern among wonks in Washington these days is that Congress is going to drive us off the “fiscal cliff” — they’ll fail to extend current policies, trigger a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, and wreck the economic recovery: 

What impact might that have on the economy?  Their best guess is that it means declining real GDP in the first half of next year to the tune of 1.3% (annualized; or around $100 billion through the first half), followed by growth of 2.3% in the second half of 2013, or 0.5% for the full year.  Unemployment would reverse course and start rising it that fiscal scenario remained in place…

This sort of policy is absolute insanity, and some of the best proof yet that Congress is broken. Think about it this for a moment — as current policy stands, we will knowingly dip back into a recession in a matter of months. Everyone knows it, and it’s perfectly possible that nothing will be done about it. What I want to know is, given that everyone in Congress knows that Congress is dysfunctional, why in the world would we pass a set of policies that will just dump us right back into a recession?

The technical reason we’re scheduled for a double-dip recession is that a huge chunk of current policy is scheduled to expire at the end of the year. These are policies that keep being extended temporarily, without any change to the permanent laws on the books, which are constantly threatening to kick back in. We essentially have two sets of government policies — the permanent ones, which we don’t want, and the temporary ones, which Congress refuses to make permanent. What kind of a way is that to run a government?

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This jubilant post from ThinkProgress yesterday just made me sad:

BREAKING: SENATE DEMS WIN BIG JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION FIGHT | A senior Democratic senate source tells ThinkProgress that the Senate agreed to have a confirmation vote on the nomination of Paul Watford to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at 5:30 today….

Breaking news: The Senate will do its jobs and vote on the President’s nominations, as required by the Constitution.

The fact that this is big news is a sign that the Senate is horribly broken. It’s time to end the filibuster.

Over the last two years, Republicans have voted for tax cut after tax cut for the rich, while insisting on sharp cuts to programs for the poor and middle class. Without a trace of self-consciousness, they have insisted that this is all in the name of fiscal responsibility, all the while ignoring that their giveaways to the rich far outweigh their petty and vindictive cuts for the rest of us. Surely, sooner or later someone had to call them out on this hypocrisy, right?

That’s why, as a preemptive measure, Speaker John Boehner has invented a brand-new metric by which Republicans will now measure the deficit. Boehner’s new metric is “spending-driven debt,” as reported by Ezra Klein:

I got a weird e-mail from John Boehner’s office yesterday. “No Reason to Wait,” it said. “Let’s Address Spending-Driven Debt Now.”

So what’s “spending-driven debt”? I’m not exactly sure. But there are a whole lot of references to it in my inbox. Later that same day, I got another e-mail from Boehner’s office about “the spending-driven debt that threatens job creation and economic growth.” And on May 4, I got an e-mail from Boehner’s office saying “those looking for work can’t find it because ObamaCare, our spending-driven debt, and the threat of tax hikes are making it harder for small businesses to hire.”

What is “spending-driven debt?” That’s easy. It’s a way for Republicans to measure success only by how much they can cut from programs that benefit the poor and middle-class, while absolving the super-rich of any responsibility to make sacrifices themselves.

The GOP will approve hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the super-rich without batting an eye, but they’ll fight tooth and nail to make sure programs like affordable student loans are “paid for.” They view programs for the 99 Percent as a zero-sum game, in which help for some must be offset by pain for others. When it comes to the 1 Percent, though, there are apparently unlimited funds.

This has been the standard Republican policy since George W. Bush took office. After more than 10 years, though, people are starting to ask why the 1 Percent never need to sacrifice. Boehner’s “spending-driven debt” is an effort to re-frame the debate to get us to stop asking that question.

Throughout Barack Obama’s tenure as President, Congress has been held hostage by a minority party that has used unprecedented abuse of the filibuster to turn the Senate into a mockery of itself. Americans are sick and tired of Congress’s ineptitude, and GOP’s perversion of the filibuster is more than a little responsible.

So it’s great news that Common Cause and a handful of other plaintiffs — including our own Keith Ellison — are suing the Senate, claiming that the filibuster is unconstitutional:

At the core of [Plaintiffs’ lawyer Emmet] Bondurant’s argument is a very simple claim: This isn’t what the Founders intended. The historical record is clear on that fact. The framers debated requiring a supermajority in Congress to pass anything. But they rejected that idea….

In the end, the Constitution prescribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties and amending the Constitution. And as Bondurant writes, “The Framers were aware of the established rule of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and that by adopting these six exceptions to the principle of majority rule, they were excluding other exceptions.”

That should be a particularly persuasive argument for conservative justices, who base their small-government interpretation of the Constitution on a very similar argument — the enumeration of certain government powers means that those not mentioned must be unconstitutional by default. It’s hard for me to see how they would defend a sudden flip-flop from their laser-like focus on that particular rule of construction.

The beauty of this lawsuit, though, is that in many ways it’s a win-win proposition. If the courts rule against the plaintiffs, it’s likely to be on the basis of language in the Constitution that gives both houses of Congress the power to set their own rules. In other words, even if the courts uphold that the filibuster is constitutional, they’ll also be upholding the very rule that would give the Senate the power to eliminate the filibuster.

It’s high time for the filibuster to go. Elections have consequences — we need a return to majority rule.

Republicans in the Senate yesterday filibustered a bill to keep borrowing costs down for college students. They’ll only agree to help students if they can eliminate programs that help others, so they filibustered the Democrats’ bill that would have paid for keeping student loan rates low by ending a payroll that lets the wealthy avoid paying payroll taxes. 

But this is a ridiculous debate in the first place. Have you noticed that we only have battles over paying to help the lowly 99 Percent? Republicans don’t believe we need to pay for hundreds of billions in tax breaks for the super-rich, but they insist that any help for students must be paid for by sacrifices from others who are struggling to get by.

I have a better idea — how about we stop helping those who don’t need help, and start helping those who do?

House Republicans will let student loan interest rates double unless we cut other spending that benefits the middle class. After all, that’s $6 billion we’re talking about — it has to be paid for, right? Well, only if it’s $6 billion for poor and middle-class students. Handouts for the rich are a different story:

House Republicans say they have no plans to pay for the extension of the Bush-era tax rates, a move that could erase the deficit reduction they have achieved since winning their majority in the chamber in 2010.

So we can give hundreds of billions to the rich, but a few billion for the middle class is a non-starter? That’s particularly ironic in light of the Republicans’ frequent claims that Democrats are engaging in “class warfare.” The real class war is the system devised by the richest 1 percent and the Congressmen they own, in which we nickel-and-dime the middle class to death while blithely emptying the treasury into the pockets of the rich.

And don’t think this is just a question of spending versus tax cuts. Remember, Republicans bitterly opposed a middle-class tax cut last year. The real issue is who reaps the benefits. Unless the benefits accrue overwhelmingly to the super-rich, the Republicans couldn’t care less.

John Kline says we can’t afford to help ordinary Americans. Sure, he voted for the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich; he’s absolutely fine giving billions to the 1 percent. But when it comes to students, the unemployed, or the elderly, Kline just can’t be bothered to lift a finger.

Sometimes, though, he’s left with little choice. For example, the battle over student loans is shaping up to be a major loser for the Republicans. So while Kline and his fellow Republicans don’t want to keep interest rates low for students, they’re finding it necessary to concede the issue. However, Kline will only agree to help students if he can screw some other Americans to make up for it.

Kline will only vote to keep student loan rates low if Congress votes to make cuts to Obamacare in exchange. Kline and other members of his party want to cut funding for preventative health care — the one health care reform practically everyone supports.

It really makes you wonder — how can Kline be against the 99 Percent on every single issue? What rationale could he have for wanting student loan interest rates to increase? Or for making it harder for Americans to get preventive health care? He supported a $700 billion tax cut for the rich, but he can’t spend $6 billion for student overburdened with loans?

It seems that Kline views the well-being of the 99 Percent as a zero-sum game. We’ve already given everything away to the super-rich. Now, as far as he’s concerned, the rest of us can fight over the scraps. If he’s going to vote to help one group, he’s going to make sure to cause an equivalent amount of harm to others.

It never ceases to amaze me. Time after time, on issue after issue, today’s Republicans stand against the 99 Percent. It seems they always have some reason to vote against helping the American middle class and revitalizing our economy. This time, the GOP wants to raise student loan interest rates, despite the harmful effect that could have on the recovery:

Unless Congress acts, the interest rate on federal student loans will double this summer from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. The Obama administration has called for Congress to prevent the increase and Senate Democrats are looking to move a bill doing just that through the upper chamber.

However, House Republicans are refusing to come along, claiming that spending $6 billion to prevent the interest rate increase would require cuts to other higher education programs…

As ThinkProgress notes, that’s a false choice. Instead of attacking education, we could end tax breaks for Big Oil, for example. The oil companies have never been more profitable — why in the world do they need billions in tax breaks? Or we could just simply add that $6 billion to the deficit. While we’re still combatting the recession, short-term deficits aren’t such a bad thing — certainly not as bad as increasing the debt load for American consumers.

Once again, it looks like the GOP is working against the middle class to try to slow down economic growth and win an election. What other possible explanation is there for their letting student loan rates double?

The Republican budget written by Paul Ryan is an attempt to enact some of their deepest-held beliefs into law. The law would destroy our social safety net, ending Medicare and slashing Medicaid to a fraction of its former size. All of the money saved from slashing programs for the poor, sick, and elderly would be given to the richest 1 percent and massive multinational corporations. In fact, it would give so much to the rich and powerful that it wouldn’t even solve our deficit problem — Ryan’s inaccurate made-up numbers notwithstanding.

Yesterday, in an act of political suicide, Republicans passed Paul Ryan’s budget, even though it has no chance of ever becoming law. Apparently, they’re eager to show Americans that they’re serious about undoing our social safety net and transferring that money to the super-rich, because in an impressive act of self-delusion, they’ve convinced themselves that the American people will reward them for that plan.

All the Republicans have actually done is provide incontrovertible evidence that they’re on the side of the richest 1 percent. After all, they just voted to take away your health care in old age, and buy a yacht for a rich person instead.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most political observers, but it turns out that any agreement made with the Tea Party Republicans is worthless.

Back in 2011, Republicans in Congress nearly forced the United States to default on our debts. After weeks of battles — which hurt the Republicans more than the Democrats — the two parties agreed on a package of spending cuts and procedural gimmicks, in exchange for the Republicans not sinking the American economy.

As it turns out, the agreement was meaningless, and the Republicans want to do it all over again:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats as they try to quell a revolt by conservatives who are insisting on deeper spending cuts ahead of the November elections….

The August 2011 deal to end a summer debt limit drama - which nearly prompted a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury debt - called for a $1.047 trillion cap on discretionary spending for fiscal 2013. Conservative House Republicans last week launched an effort to reduce that amount by as much as $116 billion, presenting Boehner a new leadership challenge. [Reuters, via Think Progress]

It’s hard to say what’s most ridiculous about this. Is it the Tea Party Republicans’ constant efforts to force us to default on our debts? Their limitless appetite for picking fights, even on issues that were supposedly settled? Or their delusions that these battles will somehow make political sense for them?

This is what happens when Washington is overtaken by poorly-informed ideologues. They’ve had their chance to show that they can govern, and they’ve failed miserably. In 2012, it’s time to throw them out again.