Are Republicans worthless?

Who has veto power over ANY federal debt increase? The last time I checked, it was the U.S. House of Representatives. And who controls the House? The last time I checked, it was the Republicans. The so-called loyal “opposition.”

How is that working for us? Not so well.

Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, has committed fraud by concealing the fact that the U.S. government has far exceeded the debt limit approved by Congress.

Supposedly, the debt limit currently stands at $16.7 trillion. To be more precise, on May 17th, the debt stood at $16,699,396 trillion, according to the Treasury’s books. However, by July 12th, the Obama administration had borrowed another $51 billion.

How can it be? How can the debt limit be exceeded without so much as a whimper from Congress? Not a peep out of the House Republicans, the ones that have the power, the authority, to keep such things from happening.

Maybe this will explain why the loyal opposition didn’t oppose and expose this tomfoolery. It seems Mr. Lew penned a letter and sent it to House Speaker John Boehner on May 17th. In this epistle, Lew told Boehner he would be implementing a “standard set of extraordinary measures,” so the government could continue to borrow and spend like a bunch of drunken sailors. My apologies to the U.S. Navy.

In other words, this “standard set of extraordinary measures” (only a bureaucrat could come up with such imbecilic, oxymoronic gobbledygook) allowed the Obama administration to borrow an additional $51 billion since May 17th and declare it as something other than borrowed money. The Republicans? Quiet as church mice.

You’ve got to be kidding, you say. Nope. Lew added $16,699,396 and $51 billion and came up with $16.75 trillion, but a simple accounting gimmick by the Treasury makes it look as if the debt has not risen at all since May 12th. That’s right. The cooked books say the debt has not moved up one cent in a little over a month, even though the government has borrowed another half-trillion bucks. Don’t you wish you could manipulate your debt like that?

Of course, this should come as no surprise to those who have watched the Obama administration closely since it came to power in 2008. The President of the United States and his minions like to borrow and spend, as long as it is done by them. In March, 2006, as a U.S. Senator, Obama opposed increasing the spending limit under President George W. Bush, saying, “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

But what about the Republican “opposition”? Why haven’t we heard members of the Grand Old Party in the House screaming to high heaven about this fakery? This is a breach of the public trust and makes a travesty of the rule of law. Christopher Monckton, a distinguished former advisor to the late Margaret Thatcher, the late Prime Minister of England, explains it very clearly.

“In the commercial sector, false accounting is a felony,” wrote Monckton in a column. “Armies of overpaid, under-skilled regulators are waiting to pounce on every cent that goes astray. In the State (federal government) sector, false accounting is also supposed to be a felony. Yet, armies of overpaid, under-skilled Republicans are waiting to draw their next fat check out of the treasury. As long as their checks keep coming, they will not—will not—ask the right questions and demand honest answers and straight accounting.”

Monckton, for many, many years a keen observer of U.S. politics and history, says this is fraud, straight up, and is an impeachable offense.

“What should Republicans do?” he asks. “Just for once, they should act honorably, determinedly, decisively. They should demand that the U.S. Treasury publishes honest figures showing how much the debt has continued to rise, notwithstanding the strict limit set upon it by the people’s elected representatives in Congress. Then, they should impeach the law-breakers.”

You can add this to an ever-growing list of potential articles of impeachment. It is as plain as the nose on your face. If it weren’t so sad, it would be funny. Laughable.

The suits in the White House and the U.S. House continue to play games. The president proposes and the Republicans in the House fail to oppose. The fix is in. The line in the sand keeps moving. Meanwhile, the waves of debt are getting higher and the tide is getting stronger. The line is not only moving, it is being erased.

Don’t expect the Republicans to do anything about it. They have had control of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2010 and they have pretty much given Barack Obama a blank check. Shall we shoot for $20 trillion?

What to do? What to do? Somehow, shame or pressure the Republicans into living up to their title as The Loyal Opposition. Are you listening, House tea partiers? Quit blaming Obama. We know he’s a law breaker. We know he is bankrupting the country. We know he’s defying the will of the people. We know he is behaving like a tyrant. None of that should be a surprise. He is simply doing what he told us he would do.

Instead, lean hard on the House Republicans to freeze the debt limit and return to constitutionally limited government. Tea Party Republicans must pitch a “hissy fit.” They must demand and get massive federal cuts in spending. About $1.2 trillion a year would be nice.

Potentially, that would nail shut the Obamacare coffin. It might put an end to the redistribution schemes. Perhaps it would snuff out taxpayer subsidies to state-run sources of disinformation like N.P.R. and P.B.S. It might even bring down unconstitutional federal bureaucracies like the Department of Education (the department of indoctrination) and the abusive Environmental Protection Agency.

All it would take is one negative vote by House Republicans. If that does not happen, the G.O.P. will continue to be as worthless as a comb at a convention for bald people.

Ed Baswell pastors The Clarion Church and is the host of Crossfire Radio, weekdays from 7-9 am, on The Promise, 90.7 FM. The show is streamed live worldwide at promisetalkradio.org and at ktbs.com. It can be seen each day on the KTBS 24-hour, digital news channel.