Congressional Republicans continue to doubt President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s urgings that Treasury will exhaust its ability to keep the country beneath its statutory debt limit on Aug. 2. While Treasury was able to find ways to push back earlier deadlines, the Aug. 2 date is the “drop dead date,” according to Geithner and other Treasury officials.

So far, however, the questioning has come mainly from talk radio hosts and backbench Republicans who lack any real influence in the party. Their attacks, that deadline is Aug. 2 so Obama can celebrate Ramadan or have celebrities perceive him as a hero at his birthday party, have been easily dismissed. But Monday, the first attack came from a member of House leadership when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, claimed on Southern California Public Radio that Aug. 2 was an “artificial deadline” Obama was using to “extort a deal” out of Congress:

“We should not be having a discussion with a artificial deadline of August 2nd, set by the President so the President can extort a deal through his reelection period. That’s not right, it’s not what the American people expect us to do.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) piled on Tuesday, saying, “The president needs a crisis to blame us for the economy that he’s made worse.”

Issa and DeMint are, of course, wrong that the date was determined artificially. The extended deadline was determined by projected government revenues and expenditures since the government officially hit its credit limit in May. Among the House GOP’s leadership, Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) agree that a deal must be done by August 2.

In April, Issa called the raising of the debt ceiling an “inevitability” that “we must do” to “authorize the government to borrow money rather than simply default on its loans,” hinting that failing to do so would prevent senior citizens from receiving Social Security and Medicare payments. Now, with that exact scenario set to unfold in two weeks, Issa would rather join the fringes of his party by playing politics with the American economy than take the necessary steps to avoid crisis.

Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) unveiled his dead-on-arrival plan to reduce the nation’s debt by $9 trillion over the next 10 years. Coburn, who stormed out of debt talks a few weeks ago in a tempter tantrum, hailed his own 614-page report as taking on both sides’ sacred cows. “Nobody is going to like what we’ve done because everybody gets a pinch,” he said at a press conference. Coburn proposes major cuts to veteran’s benefits, student aid, and Medicare. He also includes an assortment of off-the-wall ideas, like completely eliminating the $1 dollar bill.

That’s right — the curiously titled “Back in Black” plan proposes completely eliminating the $1 bill and replacing it with $1 coins. Coburn estimates this will save taxpayers $2.04 billion over 10 years:

The Treasury Department should phase out use of the $1 bill and replace it with the $1 coin. Paper-based currencies wear out faster than coins, and so cost taxpayers more in the long run. According to GAO, starting in the 1980s, “Over the last 47 years, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Spain, and the UK, among others, have replaced lower-denomination notes with coins.” GAO also estimates that over a 30-year period, the average annual savings would be approximately $184 million.

Coburn cites numbers by the well-respected GAO, but misrepresents the savings to be had. The GAO estimates savings of $184 million a year could come over a 30-year period — Coburn makes it seem like Americans would see over $2 billion in savings in the next 10 years.

However, eliminating the dollar bill is a proposal endorsed by respected voices on the left and right. As GAO notes, there is one problem with the plan: When given a choice between dollar coins and dollar bills, Americans always choose bills. Americans would much rather carry light bills around than heavy coins. The GAO has made similar proposals four times during the past two decades, and nothing has ever come of it. Although now that a new zeal to cut the debt and deficit has descended on DC, the time may be right for a change.

House Republicans are planning to hold a vote tomorrow on the radical “cut, cap, and balance” plan, which stipulates that the federal debt ceiling only be raised if a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is sent to the states for ratification. As we’ve noted time and again, such an amendment is a phony solution to the nation’s budget challenges, and would force the government into actively making economic downturns worse.

But the current version of the amendment that the GOP is pushing is even worse than all that. In addition to preventing the government from taking steps to ameliorate an economic downturn, the plan would also cap federal spending at 18 percent of GDP. To get a sense for how radical this is, the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — which eviscerated Medicare and Medicaid — still has spending above that level in 2040.

As the Center for American Progress’ Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden noted today, actually getting spending down to that level would require 25 percent cuts in every government program, including the Pentagon and Social Security (or, of course, deeper cuts for every program that gets left untouched):

In 2016, for example, we estimate that total federal spending is likely to be around $4.4 trillion, or 22.9 percent of GDP. [...] Of that $4.4 trillion in 2016, about $520 billion will be interest payments on the debt — an area Congress can’t directly cut. That leaves about $3.9 trillion in noninterest spending, from which Congress would have to slash about $1 trillion in order to bring total spending down to 18 percent of GDP. This would require a 25 percent cut to everything in the federal budget — from Social Security to veterans’ benefits to the Pentagon to education. Congress could try to protect some programs from such severe reductions but then, of course, other areas would have to be slashed even more.

Cutting spending so deeply would reduce the federal budget to the level at which it was in 1966, when the country’s needs and demographics were very different. No President in the last 50 years, including conservative icon Ronald Reagan, has even proposed a budget with spending so low. But the GOP is willing to have the country default on its obligations unless Congress adopts this radical path.

Rick Perry when he was a Democratic legislator

Since moving into the governor’s mansion, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has governed his state with extreme right-wing priorities. His latest budget shortchanges school children with $2 billion in education-spending accounting tricks, while creating a special tax loophole for yacht owners. His refusal to raise taxes has resulted in a ballooning of the Texas state debt, which rose to over $34 billion in 2009.

On Friday, the Texas Tribune published a fascinating look back into Perry’s years as a Democratic state legislator. Before switching to the GOP to run for Agriculture Commissioner in 1990, Perry was a conservative Democrat in a state still dominated by the Democratic Party. Journalist Jay Root notes that at the time, Perry was a true fiscal conservative and supported the largest tax hike in Texas history in order to balance the budget:

But Mr. Perry cast some votes and took a few stands that seem to be at odds with his fiscal conservatism today. The most vivid example is his support of the $5.7 billion tax hike in 1987, signed by Gov. Bill Clements, a Republican, opposed by most Republican members. The bill passed the House by a 78-70 vote.

Even without adjusting for inflation, the legislation triggered the largest tax increase ever passed in modern Texas, said Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. Today, taking inflation into account, it would be worth more than $11 billion.

The hike Perry supported under Gov. Clements raised the sales tax, taxed insurance premiums, and made permanent a five cents a gallon increase in the gas tax. In 2006, Perry also backed a substantial tax hike when he tripled the amount the Texas government collects for franchise taxes on business.

Perry’s prior support for such large tax hikes speaks to how far politics have changed in the Lone Star State. Not only was the tax passed by a Republican governor, but it was voted into place by someone like Perry, who now touts his soak-the-poor but protect-the-rich budgeting as one of his most cherished beliefs. Unfortunately, corporate lobbyists posing as principled conservatives, like Grover Norquist, have changed the dynamics within the Republican Party and have ensured that politicians like Perry must radicalize their positions on tax policy if they want to succeed.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) playing a Nintendo Wii in his office

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) gained infamy in May when he went on a childish tirade against Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is currently setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a special adviser to President Obama. McHenry, a former College Republican hack, repeatedly accused Warren of lying about the agreed-upon time for testimony she gave before Congress.

According to a ThinkProgress analysis of new campaign finance data released on Friday, McHenry received $63,800 from lobbyists and executives from banks, mortgage companies, payday lenders, pawn shop executives, and other predatory lenders in the last three months alone. Notably, much of the campaign donations from payday lenders came on a single day, April 20, 2011:

– Advance America PAC: $10,000 on 4/20/11
– Dennis Bassford, CEO of the Seattle-based payday lender MoneyTree: $4,600 on 4/20/11
– Sarah Bassford: $2,700 on 4/20/11
– Community Financial Services Association of America PAC (trade association for payday lenders): $5,000 on 4/20/11
– Checksmart Financial LLC PAC, an Ohio-based payday lender: $2,000 on 4/20/11
– A. David Davis, CEO of Ohio-based payday lender Check-n-go: $2,000 on 4/20/11
– Jared Davis, CEO of Ohio-based payday lender Axcess Financial: $2,000 on 4/20/11
– Roger Dean, CFO of Axcess Financial: $500 on 4/20/11
– EZCORP PAC, a Texas-based payday lender: $2,000 on 4/20/11
– Natl Pawnbrokers Assoc. PAC: $2,000 on 4/20/11

The surge of payday lender money to McHenry on a single day suggests the congressman had a campaign party with opponents of Warren. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is tasked with policing and regulating dozens of predatory lending practices. A few weeks after the predatory lending campaign money started flowing to McHenry, he used the hearing with Warren to berate a leading consumer advocate.

According to his latest financial disclosure, the McHenry household receives an income from the Brattle Group, an industry consulting firm that employs McHenry’s wife. The Brattle Group helps connect powerful industry groups with academics to produce reports that can be used during testimony or lobbying campaigns — the same type of firm highlighted by Charles Ferguson’s investigative documentary Inside Job. In conjunction with the Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade association for predatory lenders, the Brattle Group produced a study claiming that payday lending never results in cycles of debt for its customers. According to its website, the Brattle Group also represents banks, credit card companies, and other businesses in the financial industry.

Asked by ThinkProgress if the Brattle Group is working for any of its clients on Dodd-Frank implementation or any issues related to the new Consumer Financial Protection agency, a representative said they would not supply such information.

This week, House Republicans plan to engage in some political theater, voting on a plan that would only allow the debt ceiling to be raised if a balanced budget amendment (complete with a cap on federal spending) is approved by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has said that the so-called “cut, cap, and balance” plan is “a solid plan for moving forward.”

However, several Republicans who back the “cut, cap, and balance” plan only seem to care about those principles in the abstract. Bloomberg asked some who support the plan what government programs they would cut in order to balance the federal budget, and they either didn’t know or refused to answer:

Hatch, a Utah Republican facing re-election in 2012, wouldn’t offer specifics on entitlement cuts or say which federal departments he would close to reach a balanced budget.

“When the time comes, I’ll name them,” said Hatch. “I don’t want to do it right now, because we have to pass that amendment.” [...]

Representative Flores, a freshman Republican, said he couldn’t name specific cuts “off the top of my head.”

Identifying cuts isn’t necessary at this point, he said, because the voters aren’t “trying to get down in the weeds on where the cuts would come. They want the balanced- budget amendment.”

Asked what cuts he would make to comply with a constitutional amendment, Representative Allen West, a first-year Republican from Florida, didn’t cite specific programs yet pointed to a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year that identified “about $200 billion of duplicative and redundant government programs.”

This sounds a lot like the 2010 election campaign, where Republicans railed against government spending but then were chronically unable to name a single program that they were willing to cut.

As we’ve noted before, a balanced budget amendment would force the government to make economic downturns worse, by slashing spending when the economy needs support. Under a balanced budget amendment, the radical House Republican budget authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) would be unconstitutional, as it doesn’t cut spending fast enough.

Bill Hoagland, a budget adviser to Republican leaders from 1982 to 2007, called the amendment “a political cheap shot,” while Scott Galupo, a former staffer for Boeher, has called the idea “quite simply, insane.”

Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, noted that the amendment is a phony solution to the budget mess that allows Republicans to support a balanced budget while not having to “support anything politically unpopular.” Indeed, as the Republicans quoted above make clear, they really have no idea how they’d balance the budget; they just want it to magically balance itself.

GOP presidential primary candidate Herman Cain has often spoken of his economic bonafides, bragging that he will “jump start the economy” with a slew of drastic tax cuts on corporations and the richest Americans if he is elected in 2012 .

But during a radio appearance alongside fellow Atlanta radio hosts Neal Boortz and Clark Howard in May of 2008, Cain revealed exactly how little economic sense he has. Moderator Jeff Hullinger asked the three hosts if they thought the United States was in a recession. Howard said he thought it was, while Boortz and Cain disagreed.

Cain went on to explain that “liberal leaders have demagogued” the idea that the United States in a recession, but in reality there are only individuals in “personal recession”:

HULLINGER: Are we in a recession, or are we not in the midst of a recession?

BOORTZ: No.

HOWARD: Yes.

CAIN: No. [...]

CAIN: Let me elaborate on the no. [...] The reason that the administration does not use the R word is because there are three economies: the national, the local, and the personal. So what has happened is the liberal leaders have demagogued the idea of recession because some people are in personal recession, but the national economy is not in a recession. [...] I’m talking specifically about Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats in Congress, Harry Reid, that leadership, they are convincing some people that the whole nation is in shambles because of some individual personal recession.

BOORTZ: And usually because of their own individual personal decision making.

CAIN: Yes!

Watch it:

Cain was obviously wrong. The National Bureau of Economic Research found that the recession began in December 2007, five months before Cain told radio listeners that the recession was just in their heads. Cain’s comments seem to echo that of former top McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm, who said in July 2008 that the United States was simply in a “mental recession.”