Shortly after health reform was signed into law, many GOP lawmakers said they would not try to repeal the bill. For instance, Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) told a local radio host that he would not want to repeal health reform because such an effort is a “radical approach” based on a “political move, a political argument” rather than a “substantive argument.” However, pressure from ideological big business groups, Wall Street fronts like the Club for Growth, and an increasingly powerful far right faction of the GOP caucus has forced nearly every House Republican to sign Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) discharge petition to repeal “100%” of health reform. As of today, 172 of the 178 Republican members of Congress — as well as Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) — have signed King’s pledge.

Eventually, even Reichert signed onto a slightly less extreme bill to “repeal and replace” health reform. Yesterday, ThinkProgress asked Reichert to explain why he switched from explicitly opposing repeal to signing onto a repeal bill. Reichert said that although he does want to repeal health reform, he would rather focus on a “practical” path that maintains much of the original bill. He then explained that he would never sign onto King’s discharge petition because “it has no solutions really attached to it.” Reichert correctly stated that the discharge is an effort at “repealing the entire bill”:

TP: So you haven’t signed Steve King’s discharge petition. Is that correct, or have you?

REICHERT: No, I haven’t. I’m one of a handful of Republicans. I don’t know, maybe five or three or four or five? Something like that.

TP: You’re in the slim minority.

REICHERT: I’m not going to sign it because it has no solutions really attached to it. It’s about repealing the entire bill.

TP: It’s for taking out — Steve King said on the radio the other day, he doesn’t want preexisting condition coverage, he doesn’t want that extended coverage on your parents’ plan, the dependent coverage that you just cited, he doesn’t want any of that.

REICHERT: Yeah. Well, everyone has their own approach and preexisting conditions is one of those I agree with.

Watch it:

Notably, with the exception of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), every lawmaker at the GOP event unveiling the “Pledge to America” has signed King’s radical discharge petition to rescind all of health reform. In Reichert’s words, essentially the entire Republican caucus has already promised “no solutions” on health reform.

During the roll-out of the House GOP’s “Pledge to America” gimmick, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was asked for specifics on how his colleagues would balance the budget and cut the deficit, but he wasn’t able to hide the fact that document falls short on details. “I don’t have all of the solutions,” Boehner said, adding that the American people “will help us get the answers.”

Noting Boehner’s dodge, MSNBC host Chris Jansing today asked Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — a key GOP lawmaker involved with the “Pledge” — to help the Minority Leader out. “Can you tell us how, specifically, you’re going to cut spending?” Jansing asked. But like Boehner, Cassidy came up fairly empty, only offering the old GOP fallback of “tort reform” — saying it would save $54 billion over ten years — and ending the benefits enshrined in the new health care law. Echoing Boehner again, Cassidy said the GOP will ask Americans for answers, which Jansing called a “cop out”:

JANSING: Isn’t that a cop out? … If you’re going to say, “Here’s our pledge.” Don’t you have to say, “Here specifically is what we pledge to do”? Don’t say, “American people, I know you elected us to find answers but we’re waiting for you to give us the answers.”

Watch it:

To be clear, the proposal Cassidy is offering to reduce spending and reduce the $1.4 trillion deficit is to enact a law that may save $54 billion in ten years. Moreover, according to the CBO, which Cassidy cited for his figures, getting rid of the new health care law would actually increase the deficit by $143 billion.

But the fact that the GOP’s new “Pledge” does not answer these questions should come as no surprise. Republicans have been asked repeatedly over the past year what federal spending they would cut to bring down the debt and deficit and can never come up with an answer.

Read more about the “Pledge to America” in today’s Progress Report.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is fully embracing his role as the Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, eager to “subpoena the rats and cockroaches” in his crusade to impeach President Obama. While relishing his “duties” as a Oversight Committee member, there is one civic responsibility the five-term incumbent is dodging: the duty to debate.

According to the North County Times, Issa is now “refusing to debate his Democratic opponent” Howard Katz (D-CA), after personally agreeing to do so “when the two chatted at a July 3 parade” in Oceanside, CA. Katz contends that Issa said he’d “certainly” debate him “on a date that works with my schedule so I can come.” But now, Issa’s spokesman Kurt Bardella insists that “the topic of debate never came up” and, “because the economy is a free fall,” his job in “continuing the process of oversight” outweighs is responsibility to participate in a debate:

“I was asking him about a debate and he said, ‘Certainly, just make it on a date that works with my schedule so I can come,’” said Katz, a Temecula resident.

Bardella denied that Issa, R-Vista, ever agreed to debate whether he should continue to represent the district that includes much of North County and Southwest Riverside County.

“The topic of a debate never came up,” Bardella said Tuesday. “He (Issa) has never made any kind of promise or commitment to debate.”[...]

Bardella said Issa is concentrating on his role as the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a powerful panel he will lead if the GOP wins enough seats on Nov. 2 to wrest control of the House from the Democrats.

“This is a situation where the economy is in a free fall and the people are in a free fall,” Bardella said. “The congressman is focused on doing his job and continuing the process of conducting oversight.”

Katz insists that Bardella is telling a “fib” and even released a picture of the two talking at the parade “where he swears the promise was made.” Katz needed the debate because he is in a “‘David versus Goliath’ matchup” against “one of the wealthiest members of Congress.” Libertarian candidate Mike Paster (CA) shares Katz’s debate frustrations after “he was unsuccessful in repeated efforts to get someone from Issa’s office to respond to his call for a debate” last week.

While Issa may have specific reasons to be wary of public scrutiny, his debate denial reflects a growing number of House candidates “who are flat-out refusing” to debate challengers. Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who has never formally debated a Democratic challenger, told his opponent that he hadn’t “earned” the right to debate him. And while Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is willing to debate his opponent, he is backing out of all but two of the debates he originally proposed.

Today, Forbes released its annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, which is topped by Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway head Warren Buffett. Overall, the total worth of the 400 “rose to an estimated $1.37 trillion in 2010, up 8% from 2009.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), though, doesn’t think that the very richest of the rich have made gains. Inhofe wants to spend $830 billion over the next decade to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, and said that those who want to see the tax cuts for the rich expire are fudging the numbers, “making everybody think they are middle class and that the super-rich are getting richer”:

“It’s a continuation of class warfare. Nothing’s changed,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe said. “They try to play to the numbers, making everybody think they are middle class and that the superrich are getting richer.” Inhofe specifically rejects claims that extending the tax cuts automatically would add to the deficit.

As the Forbes list makes clear, the super-rich are, in fact, getting richer. And at the same time, their effective tax rate has been falling, all the way to 16.6 percent according to the latest data (as most of their income is subject to lower capital gains and dividends rates).

Of course, allowing the high-end Bush tax cuts to expire would affect people making far, far less money than those on the Forbes 400 list. But those affected are still in the richest two percent of American households, and 80 percent of the cost of extending the cuts would go to millionaires. And as The Wonk Room explains, income inequality is the worst it has been since 1928, with the top one percent of households earning an increasingly larger share of the country’s income. But maybe Inhofe is able to square all this by convincing himself that tax cuts don’t add to the deficit, and thus can be given to anyone whenever he wants, for free.