Why Do Republicans Hate America?

While the Washington Beltway Punditocracy is busy admonishing the Democrats to be bipartisan in their approach to governing, Congressional Republicans are busy sabotaging the government. Some House Republicans are spending their final days in the majority on vengence and petty politics. Republican's true-colors are really showing; they're willing to saddle tax-payers with mountains of debt and disrupt the business of the Nation in the hope that later they can blame the Democrats.

From the Wall Street Journal (of all places):

Some Republicans Take a Scorched-Hill Tack
Leaving Budget Decisions
To Democrats Could Disrupt
New Leadership's Agenda
By DAVID ROGERS
December 6, 2006; Page A8

WASHINGTON -- Like a retreating army, Republicans are tearing up railroad track and planting legislative land mines to make it harder for Democrats to govern when they take power in Congress next month.

Already, the Republican leadership has moved to saddle the new Democratic majority with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. And the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), has been demanding that the Democrat-crafted 2008 budget absorb most of the $13 billion in costs incurred from a decision now to protect physician reimbursements under Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly and disabled.

The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute "pay-as-you-go" budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing. ...

... There are individuals who want to blow up the tracks, and there are more of those individuals in the House," said one Senate leadership aide.

The collapse of the appropriations process will be felt soon in the Justice and Commerce departments, food-safety agencies and veterans' health care. "It's not just a mess. It's a mountainous mess," complained Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the next House Appropriations Committee chairman.

In the Medicare dispute, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) has aligned himself with Democrats against Mr. Thomas and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R., Texas). Talks continued last night in hopes of reaching agreement this morning on the physician issue and a larger $38 billion tax-and-trade package important to business. ...

... With Congress turning off the lights this week, there seems no chance of saving the appropriations process. Instead, most of the government will remain on a stopgap bill through Feb. 15, and in kicking this can down the road, the Republican leadership has no idea where it will stop rolling.

"It's a demonstration of the irresponsibility of Republicans that they would leave this country with this mess," said the next House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). "But we won, we will deal with it." ...(full article)