Does The GOP Strike You As Being Competent?

Competent enough pull off being for SS cuts while pretending they are protecting SS?

Does this seem like an organization that has really gamed things out and is thinking strategically and long term?

Why Republicans Suddenly Became Afraid Of Their Own Budget Shadow

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But now that they’ve gotten their way, and the Senate has passed a budget, suddenly they’re the ones squeamish about “regular order.” Instead of promptly appointing negotiators to convene a so-called conference committee and iron out the differences between the wildly different House and Senate budgets, House Republicans are eager to either return to the smoke-filled back rooms of legend, or kill the budget process altogether.

Outside of the formal conference negotiations, the budget process creates other problems for the GOP.

If they can’t put a unified budget together easily and quickly, they are subject to “motions to instruct” in both the House and the Senate.

That would put House Republicans in effectively the same position Senate Democrats faced during their budget “votearama”— forced to vote, for the first time in quite a while, on politically charged measures open to members of both parties.

Not only would House Democrats enjoy a rare opportunity to force Republicans to vote on controversial issues — from Chained CPI to Medicare privatization — Republicans would face intramural fights if right-leaning members forced votes on wildly out-of-the-mainstream measures of their own.

Republicans could avoid that headache by pulling the plug on the budget debate altogether. But that will reinforce a growing sense among elite opinion makers that Republicans are the obstacle to a budget deal that puts the era of fiscal brinksmanship behind us.