Yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint appeared on Bryan Fischer’s “Focal Point” radio program and I just wanted to highlight it to a) point out once again that GOP leaders have no problem associating with a bigot like Fischer and b) note that DeMint hopes to see gridlock if Republicans gain control of Congress, saying that “the idea that government has to do something is not a good idea”:
Fischer: Looking ahead, let’s just assume – you never want to count your chickens – but just kind of hypothetically let’s assume that Republicans – conservatives more importantly than Republicans – have electoral success on November 2. And that fiscal conservatives and social conservatives take control of the House and perhaps fiscal conservatives and social conservatives take control of the Senate.
Now what they sets up, there’s not going to be a veto-proof majority in either house of Congress. What that sets up is that a Republican-led Congress for instance, a House of Representatives, could generate fiscally conservative bills that deal with government spending. These could be vetoed by the President and we could get back to the 1995 scenario where you’ve got gridlock, you essentially have government shutdown.
Now frankly Senator, I know many people that are grassroots conservatives that would just love to see the government gridlocked because we are just fed-up to here with the fact that when Congress is in session, like Mark Twain said, there is no Constitutional right and liberty that is safe for the American people when Congress is in session.
And the Republicans seem to me, they lost the PR battle in 1995 over the shutdown. It got blamed on them when President Clinton was just as much to blame as they were; they gave him legislation, he vetoed it. But somehow they allowed the ball to roll back on them. Do you think some kind of gridlock is possible and what do you think will happen if that ensues?
DeMint: Well I had a group of businessmen tell me the other day “if you can just stop the tax increases on us and then have two years of gridlock, that would be the best thing that could happen for business because at least we would know what to expect.” Right now they don’t know what the government is going to do to them next. So this idea that government has to do something is not a good idea. So I think the less we do, the better except maybe to dismantle some of the federal programs that are making it harder for America to be competitive. But we do need to stop these massive tax increases in January and I don’t know if we can do it in lame-duck, I don’t think the Democrats are going to help us. So hopefully as soon as we swear in a new Congress we can pass some legislation that will keep us from raising taxes during a recession.
