Stupidity didn’t leave the building

The 113th Congress in general and the US House in particular has just shown how unserious it is about reducing expenses which contribute to the deficit. The House’s Republican majority has just written its rules for the upcoming session, and

the rules package says the House won’t comply with fast-track procedures for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — a controversial cost-cutting board Republicans have long resisted.

The rules package signals that Republicans might not bring up Medicare cuts recommended by the IPAB — blocking part of a politically controversial law, and resisting Medicare spending cuts.

In other words, the board tasked with finding methods of cutting Medicare expenses will be ignored. Its work is something you’d think, if you believed their rhetoric, the House Republicans would be cheering with loud huzzahs, but no. Here’s part of their “reasoning”:

House Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to repeal the IPAB, the central cost-cutting feature in the Affordable Care Act. The IPAB was designed to take Medicare payments largely out of Congress’s hands, similar to the independent panel that recommends closing military bases, because lawmakers would rarely sign off on such politically risky moves.

Now, it seems to me that these clowns should welcome anything that takes the responsibility for cutting Medicare out of their hands since they could shrug when the complaints come and say “It wasn’t us, it was the Board!” But ever since La Palin used the phrase “death panels” during the drafting of the health care legislation the Republicans have latched onto it and hated this Board (which isn’t a death panel at all, of course; it’s a panel of 15 healthcare experts which is meant to find and recommend targeted savings if and when Medicare costs rise faster than anticipated).

So now these idiots are codifying their hatred and blocking one of the paths to a reduced deficit, one of the things they claim is the sole purpose for their running for office in the first place.

Republicans. I hates them, preciousss.