It’s their debt and they refuse to pay for it.

Missouri republicans, on being responsible for the debt they ran up:

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 315
H RES 716 YEA-AND-NAY 12-Oct-2021 7:23 PM
QUESTION: On Agreeing to the Resolution
BILL TITLE: Providing for consideration of H.R. 2119, the Family Violence and Services Improvement Act; H.R. 3110, PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act; H.R. 3992, POJA Act of 2021; relating to consideration of the Senate amendment to the House amendment to S. 1301, Promoting Physical Activity for Americans Act, and for other purposes
[….]
—- YEAS 219 —
Bush
Cleaver
—- NAYS 206 —
Graves (MO)
Hartzler
Luetkemeyer
Smith (MO)
Wagner
Long
—- NOT VOTING 7 —
[….]

When a Missouri republican promises you that they’ll pay their tab…

Vicky Hartzler (r) [2021 file photo]

Billy Long (r) [2021 file photo]

Blaine Luetkemeyer (r)[2021 file photo]

Jason Smith (r) [2021 file photo]

…Nah, they won’t.

Republicans like to tell stores about being “fiscal conservatives” who oppose irresponsible spending. They’ve managed in the process to impede economic growth while successfully fighting off efforts to cut that large segment of our irresponsible spending which takes the form of subsidies to highly profitable industries like Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and big what-have-you – which big entities often happen, in turn, to be very generous when it comes time to fund political campaigns.  

Nowhere, though does GOP hypocrisy show through more than in the recent budget and debt level negotiations. The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog today identifies the members of the exclusively Republican “default caucus,” made up of the 135 representatives and 17 senators who voted first for the omnibus spending bill, and then against raising the debt limit that would pay for it. They essentially decided that the United States should not pay the bills that they themselves had voted to run up. Try doing that at home, Mr. and Mrs. Average American. As Wonkblog’s Christopher Ingraham puts it, “the fact a significant faction in Congress can vote to run up debt, refuse to pay for it, and bill themselves as “fiscal conservatives” shows just how much that term has lost its meaning.”

I would suggest that a better label than “default caucus” for these lawmakers would be “deadbeat caucus.” That, after all, is what we call folks who don’t want to pay their bills. There are several members of the deadbeat caucus from Missouri:

Senator Roy Blunt (R)

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2)

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3)

Rep. Vickky Hartzler (R-4)

Rep. Sam Graves (R-6)

You can click on the names of Representatives listed above that have links to go to their press releases designed to tell us why voting for the spending bill they later refused to fund was such a good idea – not that they mention anything about the relationship between the two votes. I think that they hope we won’t figure that one out. Sam Graves simply ignores his yea vote on the omnibus funding bill, but did issue a statement patting himself on the back for voting against the extension of the debt limit. His reason for the nay note? He somehow seems to think that the debt limit extension vote is the place to cut the spending he approved in the earlier vote. So what do  you think? Are they all dumb as posts? Or cynical panderers? Whatever else they are, they’re certainly willing to play fast and loose with the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government – along with our welfare.

Ingraham allows as how those folks who voted against both the spending bill and the debt limit hike necessary to accommodate it should at least be admired for their consistency. And they are consistent, but you might temper your admiration when you remember that it stems from a totally nutty and discredited conception of economics, to wit, austerian theories that these folks probably don’t even understand apart from platitudes abut the “free market” and the evils of “big government.” Nothing but extreme economic ignorance coupled with total irresponsibility could explain their willingness to risk the disastrous consequences of default on the debt. Consequently, in recognition of the harm they do to us all, I’d like to label these folks the “nutjob caucus.” (You’re probably all aware that many members of the deadbeat caucus are, on other occasions, only too happy to claim membership in the nutjob caucus.) In Missouri, the members of the budgetary nutjob caucus includes:

Rep. Billy Long (R-7)

Re. Jason Smith (R-8)

So what do we call congresspeople who swallowed some of the bitter pills in the omnibus bill (cuts to food stamps, anyone?) in the interest of breaking gridlock and staving off another expensive government shutdown, and then, like responsible adults, voted to extend the debt limit to pay for the spending they had just authorized? Real legislators – you know, the people who are doing the hard job of governing without temper  tantrums. And it also looks like this time around we call them Democrats – including Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who didn’t vote on the omnibus spending bill for whatever reason – maybe a few of those bitter pills were just too bitter – but came through when it was time to raise the debt limit and honor the spending decisions that his colleagues, including many in the GOP delegation, had already made.  

Today Rep. Ann Wagner (R-2), chair of the GOP “freshman class,” will accompany House Speaker Boehner’s leadership team to meet with the President to talk about the shutdown impasse. Dscussing the upcoming meeting on last night’s Larry Kudlow show, she was all sugary platutudes about how she expects that the meeting will result in “solving big problems.” Interestng how a tantrum over Obamacare has morphed in Wagner’s rhetoric into a high-minded crusade to fix everything from “balancing a budget, deficit reduction, welfare reform.”  

Interesting but also frightening since her riff on the “big problems” she and her Republican colleagues are inviting Harry Reid and President Obama to assist with solving also gives us a clue about the pound of flesh the GOP may try to exact in lieu of killing Obamacare outright. The words “entitlement reform,” aka undermining Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, Obamacare, were tossed around in this context.

The other special Wagner theme was the way that the righteous Republican House members have worked to fix all the problems caused by that nasty shutdown that the Democrats caused by not ceding the government to the Republicans who lost the last election:

We want to make sure vital services are funded, that the government is open, and we don’t want to deal with this nonnegotiating mentality that’s out there. nor should we be scaring the american people with threats of recession and ransom and retreat. These things are wrong.

Vital services funded? Cherry-picking popular programs to fund amounts to cheap PR-stunts.

Democrats and the President demonstrate a non-negotiating mentality? Rich coming from a member of the Party of No, folks whose refusal to negotiate has been the major theme of the past three years. Now that they have escalated their terrorist tactics they expect negotiations?

And what’s that about scaring Americans with “threats of recession and ransom and retreat”? Does Wagner really think Americans are such idiots that we don’t know that what she and her GOP colleagues are doing is demanding a ransom for performing their basic duties? Doesn’t she realize that many of us, at least those of us who aren’t Tea Party congressmen, know that shutting the government down hurts the economy, and that flirting with not paying the country’s bills by refusing to raise the debt limit is a recipe for economic disaster.

Believe me, as a citizen who expects to be able to cash in on my hard-earned 401(K), a retirement resource that could be wiped out if the government defaults, I’m very frightened by the rash actions of folks like Wagner – who has been cheering this idiocy on from the beginning.  Remember when this enthusiastic negotiator proclaimed that the “the American people are ready for a fight” to defund Obamacare. Well, she got her fight, but now wants to pretend that all she and her pals ever wanted was a little parlay.

UPDATE:  Steve Benen noticed all the “negotiation” talk as well and points out the fatuousness:

Boehner will instead dispatch 18 House Republicans — whom the Speaker has designated “negotiators,” despite the fact that the meeting is not a negotiation — chosen to represent the caucus. […]  why would Obama spend time with a feckless House Speaker and his hand-picked allies? One of the key lessons of 2013 is that Boehner is Speaker In Name Only and has very little control and/or influence over what actually happens in the chamber he ostensibly runs.

Take that Ann Wagner.

We’re just not quite sure what it is. Then again, neither are they.

“…I sat in a room with a member of Congress who stood up in front of a, a group of rural, uh, of residents from Missouri and said, you know, uh, I’m against, uh, the food stamp program because they’re giving food stamps to, uh, prisoners, people who are in prison. Look, I’m a dumb Methodist preacher [laughter] and even I [laughter] can come to conclude that if you give food stamps to somebody in prison do you, do you  then drive them to Safeway? [laughter, applause] Hmmm. [laughter] Uh, and yet, and when you go home, just talk to somebody, some of the people. They’ll, yeah, their, their giving them to prisoners. I mean, it makes no sense, but they spread that kind of thing. I mean, it, it makes no sense…” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, St. Louis, August 13, 2013.

Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D), in Washington:

….Mr. Speaker, I probably don’t need five minutes to say what I would like to say.

Uh, this is a very sad moment for the most powerful nation in the history of this planet. We are on the verge of a government shutdown over ideology.

I can remember nineteen ninety-five, I was the mayor of Kansas City when the government shut down. And the impact was Hurculean, not just here in Washington, but around the country and around the world.

And if we are proud to be Americans it means we pay our bills. We are the only nation that still allows a vote by a legislature on paying our bills. Most countries won’t do that because they don’t need any disruption, uh, in paying their debts. We’re close to declaring to the whole world that we don’t pay our bills.

The other part that’s troublesome is this whole issue of SNAP, or food stamps. And there are so many myths that roll around that it just turns my stomach.

I didn’t live in a house with running water or electricity until I was seven years old. We moved in public housing, my father worked three jobs. He eventually was able to buy a home. I know what it’s like to be poor. I know what it’s like to struggle. My father was able to send my mother to school, when I was in the eighth grade, to college. And then all four of his children graduated college, two with post graduate degrees.

And so, I am always insulted when I hear all of these irreverent and nasty comments about poor people. And we spread this stuff around the country to the point of absurdity. We spread lies, where people go into stores and they buy alcohol with food stamps. Well, we don’t food stamps anymore. We have cards, economic benefit transfer cards. And in spite of the lies that people tell, you can’t buy alcohol with cards. You cannot buy lottery tickets. I’ve heard members of Congress, this Congress, tell people that they know that people in prison are getting food stamps. And they’ve seen people buy alcohol with food stamp cards. It doesn’t work. And it divides and damages this nation.

The other lie. Over seventy percent of the people receiving SNAP benefits are the elderly, the disabled, and children. And we are against helping them? Another twenty-five percent are people who work every day, just, they can’t make enough to survive.

I remember growing up and my mother would say, you know, eat everything in your plate, there’s starving kids in Africa. Well, I’m not sure how eating everything in my plate helped them, I’m still struggling with that. Uh, but, uh, there’s starving people, uh, not far from here. And the government of the United States is saying, we’re going, we’d rather shut down, we’d rather shut down than to have a program that deals with the people who are in trouble. I just heard, a few moments ago, about a hundred and one year old person who’s, uh, daily meals, meal on wheels, have been reduced. A hundred and one years old. And people are celebrating that?

Mr. Speaker, this is a sad, sad day. And by the end of next week when we are shut down it’s going to be much sadder….

One needs to actually possess empathy to be sad for others. Don’t hold your breath.