The political dramas that are playing out in Washington, D.C., these days are so far removed from reality back here in Mississippi that it's shameful. In particular, the Tea Party's ability to get the Republican Party to (at least pretend to) swing even farther to the right has raised the level of gamesmanship to what is perhaps an all-time high.
The really tragic part is how many jobs, and perhaps lives, would be lost back here in Mississippi should the strategy to shrink government at any cost whatsoever play out. We actually don't think many Republicans actually want government shrunk to the point that it can be flushed down the toilet—as neocon Grover Norquist famously said—but we are dismayed to see them going along with supposed attempts to do just that, to be able to later run "against" the president and Democrats in Congress with some juicy rhetoric.
This kind of trickery, of course, is not limited to the GOP, but much more is at stake than it usually is when Democrats try similar kinds of chicanery (such as saying they support clearly unconstitutional Internet censorship, knowing full well that the courts would overturn it; looking at y'all, Clinton administration).
These days, the stakes are extremely high for Mississippians. So many of the programs on the line would leave the state decimated financially should they be cut—from job loss alone. Our state happens to be the one most reliant on the federal government for mere survival (the reason our supposedly fiscally conservative U.S. senators are both earmark kings in Washington).
Last week, though, Democrats called House conservatives' bluff, deciding to vote "present" on a radical-right budget proposal by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that would bring $9.5 trillion in cuts over the next decade (as opposed to Paul Ryan budget that would cut $6.2 trillion; see page 15 for the lies rolled up into that one). Because Democrats voted "present" instead of "no," Republicans were left scrambling to change their votes so that the clearly political budget proposal would not pass—and hurt their chance for re-election.
Of course, that kind of political trickery isn't the only kind infecting the halls of Congress. The Tea Party influence is causing outright untruths and scare tactics about the budget, such as the kind we have long seen radical-right extremists use here in the state of Mississippi. Not the least of those is the plain truth about taxes and how they work in the United States; see our cover story by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston this issue to learn the truth about many of those myths.
Meantime, every citizen should tell our lawmakers to stop lying to us in the name of politics. If some of them get their way, purposefully or not, Mississippi will pay a severe price.
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