Mike Nellis at the Kansas Democrat's blog has more idiocy from this fast rising star of the House Republicans. When asked by a single mother who cannot afford health care and doesn't qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP what her alternatives were:

Jenkins' response? A hardy laugh and the words "go be a grown up."

This compassionless, bureaucratic exchange between Smith and Lynn Jenkins' was luckily caught on tape. The footage is incredible in it's detachment from the dire situation that is our health insurance crisis.

Transcript:

Elizabeth Smith: I’m a 27 year-old single mother. I work full-time. I do not have health insurance. My employer does not provide health insurance to me and I cannot afford it privately. Why shouldn’t my government guarantee all of its citizens health care?

Jenkins: Thank you. I’m sorry, maybe you missed my opening remarks, but absolutely. That’s why we have Medicaid in the current system and that’s why under the alternative proposal we have an option for low-to-modest-income people to be able to afford health care and then we’ve got the SCHIP program for children. I think we’ve got all of the bases covered.

Audience member: She’s not covered under SCHIP!

Jenkins: OK, if you’re not then you’re the perfect example for why we need reform and why we need it now but we have to do it right and if we can do an alternative proposal, as I’m suggesting, give you the money to go buy it in a reformed marketplace where it is affordable, that’s my preference rather than to saddle the nation with yet another government program when they can’t afford the government run programs we have.

Elizabeth Smith: I want an option that I can pay for. I work. I pay my bills. I’m not a burden on the state. I pay my taxes. So why can’t I get an affordable option. Why are you against that?

Jenkins: A government run program (laugh) is going to subsidize not only yours (laugh) but everybody in this room. So I’m not sure what we’re talking about here.

Jenkins: I think it comes down to the whole discussion of...

(The crowd erupts. At this point, it's safe to say even they aren't buying Jenkins position...)

Jenkins: OK folks. Let’s be respectful. UH-OH (talking over crowd). We’re gonna make time for everybody. We’re gonna all listen to each other respectfully, even if we disagree. I think we can agree we need reforms, again it’s just how we gonna do it. I believe people should be given the opportunity to take care of themselves with an advanceable tax credit to go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance.

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The House Republicans made a big deal about their new budget proposal today on the hill. They held a full press conference at the same time President Obama was answering questions during a live streaming web chat format. Rep, John Boehner was holding an 18 page pamphlet in his hands and calling it "The Recovery Road to Recovery. He was accompanied by "Britney" Cantor and pretty boy Paul Ryan to do the honors of getting down to the business of conservative ideas instead of being the "just say no to Obama" party. Well, their plan is not a plan. It has no information in it. The only person that made out today was the printer they used to copy this up. Contessa Brewer got a bit bothered by their ponzi press conference as much as I did. After their presser she ended the segment with this:

Brewer: But again, so far in this news conference, we're not hearing specifics on how the are planning to accomplish that. We'll keep listening. If we find out there are some new details out of this news conference we'll bring them to you.

Later on in the show, NBC's Mike Viqueira joined her to give us the low down on the Republican plan to save us all. It was hilarious.

Brewer: I am very frustrated Mike, because we were waiting for this, we cut away from the President to hear the big build-up. Republicans have a plan, they have ideas, they're not the party of no and all I heard in that news conference was what they don't like about the president's plan.

Viqueira: ...not Nora, Contessa, I'll pass that along. They did hold up this, John Boehner, they did hold up this budget book here and said now we have a plan now here's our budget. What it is, it is a plan and a proposal ... it outlines what the president wants to do ...
...it talks about what Republicans want to do in very broad terms, it does not have in the sense of a traditional budget, numbers with estimates an estimate for how much they can reduce the deficit, things of that nature. That they say will come next week when they take this up on the floor. For example, what would they do? They would undo what they would call the recent reckless and wastefull Democratic spending binge including the so called stimulus and omnibus bills ...

Brewer: But Mike, we've heard that before.

Yes

Brewer: We've heard them and today you get us all hyped up and you have our undivided attention and what happens when you get up and repeat the same criticism we've already heard. I didn't hear ideas. I heard the promise of ideas, and we're going to have more on x, y and z, but I didn't hear the ideas.

Viqueira: Right, so you're saying it's old wine in new bottles, that's what you're saying essentially.

Brewer: Well, that was a much pithier way of saying it.

That about sums up the conservatives. "Old wine in new bottles." has a nice ring, even if Boehner is hardly a new bottle any more.

Steve has more:

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Rick Sanchez mildly rebukes Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) for her continued wingnuttery. As the republicans get all self-righteous about a stimulus bill which is supposed to aid an economy decimated by eight years of foolishness by the Bush administration, House Republicans practice revisionist history to minimize their own collosal failure. These proud "fiscal conservatives" [sic] let the Bush mis-administration run wild for eight years, with ne'er a mention of deficits, debt, and not once mentioning something as arcane as balancing the budget. As Dick Cheney said "Deficits don't matter."

Let's go back a bit and examine what Bill Clinton left for the incoming Bush administration:

--A $230 billion surplus, with a projected elimination of the national debt by 2012. [Bush's tax cuts nixed that idea rather quickly.]

--A total national debt of $5.6 trillion.

Barack Obama inherits a deficit projected to be well over $1 trillion and growing for 2009. The national debt now stands at $10.7 trillion, or nearly double what is was in 2000. That is $37,703 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

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Republicans are having a tough time dealing with the realities of not having even a shred of remaining power. There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth the past few days as Democrats have proceeded to impose their political will in the form of Barack Obama's economic stimulus package.

My favorite came from my former dentist, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, yesterday on the House floor:

Simpson: I feel like I went to bed a couple nights ago, a couple weeks ago, amd woke up in Bizarro World. We're about to spend over a trillion dollars for a stimulus bill which will do little if anything to stimulate the economy.

... For the first time in my life, I am embarrassed to be a member of this body.

Really? It's hard to imagine anyone from Idaho -- whose delegation, after all, was until this year led by Sen. Larry Craig -- being embarrassed easily these days about anything. So I guess that must be saying something.

Meanwhile, what seems to have him most irate is that America is no longer a "center right" nation and we are moving forward to fix our problems with progressive solutions. All Mike Simpson and his fellow Republicans had to offer as an alternative was more of the same old garbage that wreaked this mess in the first place -- tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, and oh did we mention tax cuts?

Feh. The Idaho Republican idea of stimulus is a hand under the stall divider.

Let's just say that there are probably good reasons why a politician from Idaho might see reality as "Bizarro World." After all, we all remember how confused Bizarro became whenever he visited Earth.

Cluestick for Republicans: You lost. Your political philosophy, beyond being repudiated by the voters, has most of all been repudiated by reality. Deal with it.

David Gergen excoriates the GOP's "huge failure of leadership" for failing to get more than 1/3 of their caucus to vote for the bailout bill and calls them "poor babies" for using the Nancy-Pelosi-hurt-my-feelings excuse.

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It's really the house of Republicans whom I think bear it especially tonight. Two-thirds voted against it. You did have - to be fair to the Republicans, it was a Republican president, a republican Treasury Secretary who supported this, who pushed it, but it was House conservative Republican members who derailed it.

Now, they have strong reasons why they voted against it. But let there be no doubt that if we pay a huge price as we paid today, if we basically continue to pay a huge price in the next couple of days, lost a 1$.2 trillion as you said in equity value a day and it may get worse tomorrow and in the days following. Let there be no doubt it was the house Republicans who derailed this. They were against it from the beginning. They made that clear.

This business about Nancy Pelosi making a speech. Yes, she shouldn't have said that and yes that was inappropriate. But the fact that they changed their minds because of that, oh poor babies, she has a few words and the House Speaker, you know, made them run back to their partisan corners. You know, forget that nonsense.

  What a bunch of WATB. The House GOP "Leadership" addressed the media just now after the bailout bill failed and pointed their fingers at Nancy Pelosi for giving a speech that upset them. The speech hurt them so much that it forced them to sink the bill and now the market is down more than 600 points. Why are you so mean, Nancy? Don't you know Boehner is a really sensitive guy?

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"I believe we could have gotten there today if it weren't for Speaker Pelosi's partisan speech."

So you're willing to kill the bill and let the market plunge 600 points because Nancy gave a mean speech? Wow.

Eric Cantor is particularly hysterical. It looks like he wants to cry. Nancy is so mean!

Barney Frank sums it up best:

"In the sphere of numerology the number of Republicans who ignore what's best for the country because of a speech turns out to be exactly the number of Republicans we need to pass the vote. "