It’s war. Forget the bland Republican rhetoric about working with the president, and watch what they do and the stormtrooper leaders they select. The 42 Republican members of the existing Senate have sent a letter to Democrat majority leader Harry Reid saying they will co-operate in nothing “until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers.” It sounds reasonable, but it’s designed mainly to ensure that they avoid blame if there is a government shutdown: Bill Clinton managed to make them take the rap for the last one in 1995.
The Republicans have already won the key battle. The White House has signalled surrender on the Bush-era tax cuts. Barack Obama had vowed to repeal the cuts for those making over $250,000 a year; now the Republicans have been told that even multimillionaires can keep their cuts for two more years, so long as they are not made permanent. But the cocky Republicans might not settle for that.The new Congress begins in January and the one to watch is California Republican Darrell Issa, a former army bomb-disposal expert who made a fortune from car alarms. He will chair the new Oversight and Government Reform Committee which will hamstring top Administration officials with the non-stop political theatre of inquiries, hearings and interrogations.
The Republicans aim to strangle health reform in its cradle. One target is Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, for the cost estimates that went into Obamacare. Another is Donald Berwick, who runs the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His offence is to have called Britain’s NHS “one of the greatest healthcare institutions in human history,” which in Republican eyes makes him a socialist.
Another big target is Lisa Jackson, who runs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She has used her powers to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act when Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Along with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Jackson can expect to spend weeks at a time before Congressional committees. Jackson’s hometown is New Orleans and when she ran the equivalent of EPA in New Jersey, she charmed many opponents with invitations to her annual Mardi Gras party, for which she cooked gumbo. But she stopped the parties after Hurricane Katrina—a pity, since the gumbo was sensational.
The EPA has already been the victim of a hostile Congressional committee, which has ways to block a federal agency even when it is trying to enforce a law passed by Congress. By withholding funding from one small internal bureau, Congress has blocked the EPA from including the costs of land use when calculating greenhouse- gas emissions for ethanol. Now that the EPA cannot do those sums, it cannot prove ethanol is “dirtier” in carbon terms than petrol, and therefore cannot regulate it.
