No need to guess the GOP agenda

What will the GOP do if it captures the Senate and the presidency? Lou Dubose of the Washington Spectator (alas, links only for subscribers) says take a look at the over 6,000 bills the GOP had introduced in the House over the last two years (and Dubose reminds us these are public documents, not something secret). Even ignore those with just a handful cosponsors and those intended for political theater (the 33 attempts to repeal Obama's health care law). And then just consider 2,500 of those remaining. What is left?

The largest number of bills are those that try to weaken or eliminate environmental protection laws or go as far as dismantling the EPA. Ya see, keeping the environment livable is just so expensive for corporations.

Right behind that is the number of bills that propose various tax cuts for the rich and shift the burden to the middle class and poor. They don't have enough money yet.

Then come the bills that weaken or eliminate the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or otherwise get rid of banking regulations. Can't have anything keeping them away from financial shenanigans.

In fourth place are the bills to prevent abortion, including defunding Planned Parenthood and declaring personhood begins at conception.

At the bottom of the heap are bills to expand gun rights, gut union power, cut funding for the United Nations (somebody is in a snit over some policy concerning Israel), and cut funding for the agencies studying climate change.

Dubose asks:

At what point does a political party become not just an existential threat to the democratic process, but an existential threat to the health and well being of the citizens it is elected to represent?

He concludes by saying:

[Rep. Blaine] Leutkemeyer's simple bill [to defund spending on climate change studies] embodies what the Republican Party has come to represent: hostility to government, aversion to scientific fact, and an unabashed prostitution that services corporate oligarchs whose value system is defined by profit and loss statements.