House Republicans last week insisted on passing their radical “cut, cap, and balance” plan, which would allow the federal debt ceiling to be raised only if a balanced budget amendment (complete with a federal spending cap and a supermajority requirement for tax increases) is approved by Congress and sent to the states. The Senate tabled the bill by a vote of 51-46.

Despite their plan failing to receive even a majority in the Senate — far less than the two-thirds required for a constitutional amendment — Republicans have continued to demand, as they have for months, that a balanced budget amendment be a part of any deal to raise the debt ceiling. And the GOP is framing its BBA push as some kind of favor for the next generation. For instance, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who chairs the House Republican Conference, said today that the balanced budget amendment is “not about the next election. It’s about the next generation.” Watch it:

However, when the Republicans held both chambers of Congress from 2003 to 2006, and had a Republican in the White House, they not only didn’t approve a balanced budget amendment, they never even held a vote on it. In fact, the last vote on a BBA was in 1997, when Bill Clinton was president; the Senate defeated it by a single vote.

As we’ve extensively discussed, a balanced budget amendment is one of the worst ideas in Washington. It would force the government to make economic downturns worse by actively slashing spending in the face of falling revenue. Republicans are now claiming, in the name of the next generation of Americans, that enacting a balanced budget amendment is the price of averting economic catastrophe, but their utter indifference to the idea when they actually had the power to advance it shows that it’s nothing more than a political ploy.

Before this year, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) was known best as a birther who once interrupted President Obama by screaming “baby killer.” After Republicans swept Congress, Neugebauer gained a top spot on the Financial Services Committee and is now working to dismantle foreclosure relief efforts, repeal Wall Street reforms passed last year, and empower the banks to ignore new rules governing consumer protection.

On an Internet radio program earlier this week, Neugebauer explained that his crusade to help Wall Street avoid complying with new regulations is actually a struggle for “democracy.” The congressman called new bank regulators charged with enforcing Dodd-Frank laws “little dictatorships” that are not the “type of thing a democracy ought to have”:

NEUGEBAUER: But the way it is right now, these agencies basically, the two bureaus I just mentioned [the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of Financial Research] are little dictatorships. You appoint this person, they dictate what they can do to you, what they can charge for it, and if you don’t like the answer there’s not much appeal process to it. We don’t think that’s the type of thing a democracy ought to have.

Listen here:

The bank regulators Neugebauer references are charged with developing transparency in financial markets and policing predatory loans (in the mortgage markets, credit card industry, and payday loans, among others). When he says “they dictate what they can do to you,” the “you” in that sentence is a bank or financial conglomerate like Goldman Sachs. With that in mind, when Neugebauer complains that Dodd-Frank is a violation of “democracy” — apparently his version of democracy is composed of banks with rights equal to that of citizens.

In addition to defunding bank regulators, legislators like Neugebauer have worked to undermine Dodd-Frank by creating boards that can easily override any new rule created to rein in bank abuses. This back door attack on Dodd-Frank is tantamount to a repeal, because it will ensure that banks will never have to change their behavior if new rules can’t be implemented.

GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) political platform is built on the idea that people should rely on neighbors and God, not government. In that vein, the existence of the government sponsored mortgage enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is practically heretical. A “fierce critic” of the mortgage-lending programs and their role in the financial crisis in 2008, Bachmann has repeatedly called to abolish the GSEs, wanting them to “wind down and file for bankruptcy.”

Thus, it is somewhat surprising to learn that “just a few weeks before Bachmann called for dismantling the programs,” she and her husband actually took advantage of a home loan backed by those very same entities. According to the Washington Post, the Bachmanns received the maximum loan available from either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to help finance a “5,200-square-foot golf course home”:

Just a few weeks before Bachmann called for dismantling the programs during a House Financial Services Committee hearing, she and her husband signed for a $417,000 home loan to help finance their move to a 5,200-square-foot golf course home, public records show. Experts who examined the loan documents for The Washington Post say they are confident that the loan was backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. [...]

The experts said the Bachmanns bought a more expensive home using typical strategies during a time of easier credit. With their existing home still on the market, they assumed liability on the same day for the $417,000 mortgage and a $249,999 secured line of credit backed by the residence, records show.

The $417,000 mortgage was the cap of what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would loan at the time in her region.

While hypocritical, the Bachmanns’ situation is not uncommon. In fact, “millions of other home purchasers” and “other members of Congress” took advantage of the lower interest rates that occur due to government backing. Indeed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back more than 90 percent of the mortgages in the U.S.

This is essentially why Bachmann’s demand to gut Fannie and Freddie Mac “would cause significant uncertainty among the investors in GSE-issued mortgage-backed securities,” thus “threatening the primary source of mortgage credit we have.” Such a serious blow to the already-fragile housing market would severely hinder economic recovery and shove housing policy back into the 1930s. As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo pointed out, “removing all government support for the mortgage market would take us back to an era when only the very wealthy had access to homeownership.”

Earning $174,000 a year, that might work for Bachmann. But for the millions of Americans who still dream of owning a home, her hypocritical ideology shouldn’t make it past the front door.

Countering President Obama’s call for a long-term increase in the nation’s debt ceiling, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said yesterday that “there’s absolutely no economic justification” for an extended increase:

There’s absolutely no economic justification for insisting on a debt limit increase that brings us through the next election. It’s not the beginning of a fiscal year, it’s not the beginning of a calendar year, based on his own words its hard to conclude that this request has anything to do with anything other than the president’s re-election.

Overshadowing all of the debt ceiling negotiations has the been the possibility of a downgrade in U.S. debt, something the IMF warned today could have a “universally large and negative” impact on the global economy. Investors and the credit rating agencies have made it clear that they prefer a long-term deal, and a source at Standard & Poor’s told CNN that Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) debt ceiling plan would probably lead to a downgrade because it would force a second vote on the debt limit several months from now. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch warned in a memo that a “stopgap deal” could have “negative impact on stocks.” The CEO Of PIMCO, meanwhile, said a “short term stop gap compromise” could hurt stock markets and leave the U.S. “extremely exposed” to a credit downgrade.

Even leading Republicans understood this — including McConnell — as their new position is a reversal from just weeks ago when they wanted a long-term deal. Rep. Dave Camp (R-CA), chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said a shot-term deal “doesn’t give you certainty,” while House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said a stopgap measure would just be “putting off tough decisions.” McConnell himself called for a “very large package that will impress the ratings agencies, impress foreign countries and astonish the American people that we’re actually going to come together.” But that was so last month.

GOP leaders stuck to their talking points last night in responding to President Obama’s speech on the debt ceiling, accusing him of the “largest spending binge in American history,” as Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said in remarks following the president’s. “[T]he President and his party continued to make demands which we cannot meet,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said yesterday, adding that Obama is demanding “a blank check to keep spending.”

But Boehner and Cantor, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) have all voted for some of the biggest contributors to the debt — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts, and President Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan — which helped to double the debt over the past decade:

Together, a Bloomberg News analysis shows, these initiatives added $3.4 trillion to the nation’s accumulated debt and to its current annual budget deficit of $1.5 trillion. [...]

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” for the debt, said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, an Arlington, Virginia-based group that advocates for balanced budgets. “If there had been no Barack Obama, we would still be bumping up against the debt limit.’”

The analysis shows the wars have cost $1.3 trillion since 9/11, the Bush tax cuts cost $1.7 trillion in lost revenue over a decade, and Medicare Part D costs $369 billion over a decade. The recession has also been a major contributor to the debt.

Republicans are often willing acknowledge their party’s profligate ways under President Bush, but attempt to dismiss it as a something done by their predecessors. But this analysis shows that the very same people leading the GOP in Congress today helped contribute to the problem they are now blaming on anyone but themselves.