Afternoon Laughs at the Last Manatee

It didn't take long before the House turned into amateur hour.

Remember the New Republican Party won the House last November and they ran on their Pledge to America so they've had enough time to get their acts together. Budget mogul Congressman Ryan, considered the GOP's fiscal wunderkind, appeared on Fox and could not name a single program the Republicans were going to cut. Congressman Pence appeared today on Fox News and was asked about the pledge to cut $100 billion from the budget and he said he didn't know whether that was going to be possible. The Fox anchor said that the American people would realize that it might take a year, can you promise in a year you would cut $100 billion. Pence couldn't even make that commitment.

As a personal note, when I ran the International Republican Institute, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee was Bob Livingston, who later had to resign as speaker because of a sexual affair. But in terms of budgetary matters, Livingston and his staff were dynamos. I always enjoyed sitting around the table talking to his staff, which had years of experience. They could recite the entire budget backwards and forwards. They were real pros. They also could have cut the budget with a scapel and you wouldn't know the difference.

Asked who would help him cut programs, Ryan said he was proud to have hired someone from the National Review. If you think the Bush administration was run by ideological know-nothings, you ain't seen nothing yet.

If I were Tom Donoghue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,I would be on the phone every minute asking the House leadership to find some professional help. After all, this was the Congress the corporations bought. Maybe that was the real thinking of having real corporate lobbyists and not political operative take up staff positions. Did you notice that Donoghue said he would not fund a campaign against President Obama? Maybe even he understands there has to be one sane person in town.

The reading of the U.S. Constitution only cost taxpayers about a $1 million. And it was censored at that. They abridged it to exclude those slightly embarrassing passages on slavery. I'm sure the teabaggers would have cheered. There was some discussions whether the teabaggers would boo the parts of the Constitution they didn't agree with. A Birther had to be removed after she cried out on the natural born citizen requirement for President,"That's not Obama, Jesus Help us."

John Boehner says that he will hold the Debt Ceiling law hostage to budget cuts. It's clear the Obama Administration is already preparing budget cuts. Today Bob Gates announced cuts that will save billions over ten years. Two more reports like that and Boehner will have his deal--and Ryan won't have to work.

Matt Tiabbi has written a new piece on John Boehner in the new Rolling Stone. Tiabbi is a bit harsh on Boehner saying he is a corporate shill. But the good news is that he's lazy. His ideal is to drive to the White House and make a deal and the Obama Administration officials will have to fgure out how to implement it. That saves him heavy lifting and doesn't embarrass the House Republicans.

For all his campaigning about "Where are the Jobs?", he did not mention one job creation idea in his opening speech. It was Nancy Pelosi who said that if the Republicans came up with job-creating ideas Democrats would be willing partners. Crickets, so far.

Boehner did the first diss of the CBO today. The CBO announced that the repeal of "The Job-Killing Healthcare Bill" will add $300 billion to the national debt over 10 years. The healthcare reform actually will create an estimated 400,000 jobs. But Boehner said the CBO was entitled to their own estimate but had to observe the Budget Act. Sounds clever, heh? Well,the Budget Act doesn't break Boehner's way. It actually mandates that CBO estimates have to be in every bill. This is just the first shot in this war.

What's amazing is that the once well-run Republican machine is in tatters. They have even forgotten how to spin. Yesterday, Boehner was introduced by a freshman who talked about Boehner struggle to get a college education and his having to sweep floors to earn his tuition. News commentators remarked how it took 7 years for Boehner to earn his degree. Then another broke into ask who was more powerful-- Boehner or Issa? This started a lengthy discussion of how many times Issa had been arrested for car jacking and how he burned down his own business for an insurance payoff. This would never had happened if Karl Rove was still alive. This discussion then went off to Rick Scott assuming the governorship of Florida. Then we had a whole discussion of how many times Rick Scott invoked the fifth amendment during his grand jury testimony. One time, he said he had to invoke the Fifth or else the jury would have to indict him. This led to a discussion of Tom DeLay convicted of money laundering but how aides to DeLay had been re-hired by the House.

The theme throughout the day was on criminal behavior and how much could corporations really expect from the House. If you remember Nancy Pelosi had vowed to "drain the swamp" of corruption. Now we have 12 sitting GOP member with serious ethical issues and at least four incoming freshman already have their hands full with allegations over their campaign funding.

Then we have the Koch Brothers hosting a cocktail party for the freshman. This was preceded by a fund-raising dinner for freshman that featured that country-western darling and champion of family values Ms. Rimes, who only the week before talked about how she was cheating on her husband with another married man. Welcome to Tea Bag America!

A little war has broken out among conservatives as groups have come to defend CPAC from the accusations by Frank Gaffney that it had been infiltrated by the Moslem Brotherhood. On the other hand, Heritage pulled out of the CPAC conference because they had invited GOProud, the Republican gay group. As the Family Research Council said, "Homosexuality is not a conservative value." Actually, from my experience during the Reagan Revolution, I thought it was. Leading conservative groups were all led by gays. But I digress.

Michelle Bachmann has slipped the leash. Despite being assigned to the intelligence committee where mum's the word, she has hinted at running for President. This allows her to opine on everything under the Sun. Which really raises the question about how much control can Boehner and his bad copy Ricky Cantor exert on the teabaggers. Even if Boehner reaches a deal with the White House as he did on tax cuts, could he enforce any other deals as Speaker?

A colleague commented on my State of the Union remarks saying that this year it will be raucous with teabaggers shouting down the President. With Boehner up behind the President,how's that going to look? Maybe they will be able to step on the President's message. If true, then he should address the nation from the White House anyway.

Progressives are up in arms about the appointment of William Daley as Obama's chief of staff. While Daley opposed Obama's reforms of healthcare and the consumer protection agency, he's not in the post to liason with Washington insiders but to outside of the Beltway constituents. I expect you will see some other surprises before the State of the Union. Most of Obama's circle are being moved out to start the preparations for the 2012 election.

Bruce Bartlett, the renegade supply sider and deputy secretary of the Treasury, wrote a piece in Salon how absolutely insane the teabaggers and Rand Paul are on the debt ceiling vote. I'll write a blog in the next two days about the Congressional Research Service's analysis from last year about what would happen if Congress didn't pass the debt ceiling law. And it's not good stuff.

The Manatees are fleeing the cold waters around Florida and swimming into iinlets around power plants in the state to keep warm.

And Rafael Palmeiro did not make the Hall of Fame. He still claims the steroids discovered in his testing were from a contaminated dose of vitamin B Manuel Tejada gave him. I think Rafael could run for Congress.