When Republicans become Anarchists

Certainly many of my friends who identify as anarchists will bristle at Senate Speaker Harry Reed’s depiction of Tea Party House Republicans as “anarchists”.  Despite our upset , we should not be so quick to dismiss the accusations.  Consider these facts.

House Republicans have effectively shut down the legislative process in the House (for example not passing the Farm Bill or the new Energy Efficiency legislation) because they are all being held hostage in their effort to try to kill ObamaCare (aka the Affordable Care Act).  Which the Republican controlled House has now voted 41 times to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act.  These votes are completely symbolic, for without Senate and Presidential approval, they mean nothing.  Instead of doing the real work, they are focusing on symbols.

Political Spectrum DiagramTo make matters more difficult there are  3 opportunities in the next 4 months to shut down the government: The pending Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep funding the government likely needed by mid Oct, another vote to increase the debt ceiling (probably late Oct) and the January 2014 vote on ending the sequestration.  If they can, like good anarchists, they will use all these opportunity to shut down the government if their demands are not met.  Their demands wont be met.

The more mainstream Republicans recently came up with a compromise which would force the Senate to vote of shutting down ObamaCare in exchange for the CR going thru.  The most radical of the Republicans, the Tea Party Faction, rejected this compromise and seem willing (if not happy) to shut down the government over their demands.

Calmer heads are pointing out that these economic choke holds, if deployed,  could unnecessarily further damage the US’s credit rating and weaken the fragile economic recovery.  Republicans counter that the government itself needs to be protected from Obama Care costs.  Blocking any of these three pieces of legislation would result in he federal government being shut down – the life long dream of many a US anarchist.

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