Republicans Acting Like Terrorists

by Mary

Tonight NPR's All Things Considered interviewed Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) about the reason the Republicans blocked the two month payroll tax relief and unemployment extension. After a whole bunch of hooey about the Republicans only wanted to negotiate the differences between the Senate and House bills, he finally said that the Senate's bill didn't go far enough with regards to the Keystone XL Pipeline. The House had explicitly required that the President would proceed with the Pipeline project within 60 days whereas the Senate bill only required him to make a decision about it in that time. In other words, the GOP House demanded that their Petro-barons be allowed to destroy the global climate before they would pass the tax relief and unemployment extensions.

As Joelle Novey, executive director of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, said about the Pipeline project:

The damage to our climate that would be caused by continuing to put greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is irreparable. We don’t know exactly when we’ll hit that point of no return. But the idea that a few thousand jobs is worth permanently destroying the climate on the only earth we’ve ever lived on doesn’t make any sense. Of course people need good, honest, living work. But all of us are human beings who live on earth and in the face of catastrophic, unprecedented, irreparable damage to the climate, any short-term considerations pale in comparison.

I said to the State Department in my testimony, “Every single one of you is also a human being who lives on earth, and based on that, this should be our common ground in this conversation.” I know that people need jobs. We have to figure out a way to employ people in an honorable way that doesn’t insist they also permanently destroy the planet that their grandchildren have to live on. It seems like a real poverty of imagination to say they have to choose that.

In my book, to demand the world give up a liveable climate so the Republicans can get their way makes them terrorists. And as Ronald Reagan said, you don't negotiate with terrorists.