GOP Wheeling and Dealing May Bite Them

Wednesday was the anniversary of the day in 1944 when Democrats nominated Franklin Roosevelt for a fourth term. If he could see the wheeling and dealing in D.C. during the current budget deficit debate, FDR wouldn't be surprised. Republicans are still trying to kill Social Security, and the GOP is still cozy with bankers, billionaires, and big business.

Tea Party House Republicans, under the leadership of Eric Cantor, are doing everything they can to protect their BFFs on Wall Street from paying their fair share of taxes. If majority Leader (and presumptive peaker) Cantor and the rest of the Tea Party types were really concerned about the budget deficit, they would support President Obama's effort to save money by ending billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to big oil and for corporate jets. Tax breaks for corporate jets with full bars don’t stimulate the economy, but they do stimulate corporate jet setters. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the Tea Party.]

Republicans did score one victory this week which may come back and bite them on the butt. President Obama passed over consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren for the job of director of the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Senate Republicans said they would filibuster her appointment. Warren’s crime was her fight to protect consumers from the big financial firms that rip off working families. Today is the first anniversary of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which Congress passed to curb predatory behavior by Wall Street. [Check out a roundup of GOP political cartoons.]

Warren will return to her home in Massachusetts, and she may run against Republican U.S. Senator and Cosmo centerfold, Scott Brown. If the GOP has any hope of taking control of the Senate next year, Brown must win. But polls show that Brown is vulnerable, and Brown has the chops to show blue collar Democrats that Wall Street is the enemy of the working families who have lost their jobs and then their homes in the wake of the great recession, a downturn caused by big business and the bad boy bankers and billionaires that Warren has fought to regulate. [Read Susan Milligan: GOP Could Regret Pushing Elizabeth Warren Into a Senate Run.]

And one last date for all you American history buffs, Tuesday was the anniversary of the day in 1848 when a pioneering women's rights convention met in Seneca Falls New York. The convention paved the way for way for women like Elizabeth Warren and Michele Bachmann to run for office. By the way, Representative Bachman, the convention was in Seneca Falls, N.Y., not Seneca Falls, N.H., if anyone asks.

• Check out a roundup of GOP political cartoons.
• See how the recession changed the job market.
• See political cartoons on the economy.