GOP abandons all reason

Thirty-six Republican senators voted for an amendment to strip all spending from the stimulus bill in favor of tax cuts.

This amendment to the economic stimulus bill passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate, submitted by conservative icon-in-the-making Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was breathtakingly bold. The gist, from Sen. DeMint’s Website:

• Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
  
• Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
  
• Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
  
• Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
  
• Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
  
• Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
  
• Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
  
• Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
  
• Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

This got the support of all but five Senate Republicans.

It is just pointless to try to negotiate with such unserious people.

The GOP is playing political games as the American economy teeters on the edge of a depression. President Obama and the Democratic majority in congress have the responsibility now to abandon this effort seeking bipartisan compromise with these lunatics.

These crazy Republican ideologues simply have no idea how to repair the economy that they nearly destroyed over the last eight years. All they have to offer are the same ideas that created the problem in the first place. It is as though they are actively mocking the millions of Americans who are suffering in this rotting economy.

Maybe they are too stupid to realize how serious this problem is.

Or worse, maybe they actually no desire to fix it. A successful Obama stimulus package would, once and for all, drive a stake through the undead heart of the Reaganesque belief that government is always the problem and never the solution.

And on a practical level, the failure of Obama's plan represents the GOP's only real chance at regaining political power in this century.

So, congressional Republicans are willing to keep millions of people out of work in order to:

• Defend a failed ideology;
  
• Restore their political prospects;
  
• Or, likely, both

They are deranged.

There is too much at stake to indulge these sociopaths in their nonsense.

The president and his allies in congress must simply ignore them and pass a stimulus bill that they believe will work.