Looming Government Shutdown: GOP Plays Blame Game While Raising Defense Spending

David Dayen of FDL:

Today is essentially a deadline for reaching agreement on a plan to fund the government without a shutdown. ...

This is why the House has put together a one-week continuing resolution. It includes a huge $12 billion in spending cuts, and would fund the Department of Defense for the rest of the fiscal year. This is pretty devious. As we saw yesterday, House Republicans started increasing defense spending to force more cuts to come from social spending. ...

Boehner said he needed the bill for “leverage”:

“He said he needs this [the as-of-yet-introduced bill] and the support of the conference going into that meeting at the White House, because he feels it gives him more leverage,” the source explained to The Hill.

Actually, it’s more like an offer they can’t accept. This is about the blame game. Boehner can go to the media and say that he offered a short-term stopgap to allow time to finish negotiations, and the darn Democrats just didn’t agree to it. ...

...

(Emphasis mine.) The depth of Republan dishonesty in this process continues to offend me, even as it does not surprise me. They don't want to govern. They don't want government to work. They are willing to see the American people suffer anything and everything to obtain and keep power for their party. Nothing else... nothing else... is important to them. I can only hope Americans see this encounter for what it is: baldfaced fraud passing itself off as partisan interaction.

AFTERTHOUGHT: There is a word for this behavior in the retail business: bait-and-switch. If they were selling mattresses instead of budgets, they would be in clear violation of the law.