As Will Tomasko pointed out, last night Senate Republicans “bolt[ed] town en masse” without taking care of a series of judicial nominations, which due to the intricacies of Senate procedure will now have to be resubmitted in September, as any nominations that aren’t acted on before a long recess get kicked back to the White House. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) went to the Senate floor to request unanimous consent to waive the kick-back requirement for a Rhode Island judge, but deferred, as he thought it would go against the tradition of the Senate to make such a request when no Republican was around.

Also sent back to the White House due to inaction was the nomination of MIT professor Peter Diamond to the Federal Reserve Board. But unlike the judge Whitehouse is concerned with, Republicans were around to hear a request dispensing with the kick-back. They simply objected to it:

Under Senate rules, all nominations that aren’t completed before a lengthy recess go back to the White House and have to be resubmitted unless the Senate unanimously agrees to hold onto them and act later, Stewart said. Routinely, the Senate does agree to retain the nominations. If a single senator objects, the name goes back to the president’s office. In Diamond’s case, at least one senator did that. [Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) spokesman Don] Stewart said he didn’t know the identity of the lawmakers.

Whitehouse said that the re-submission rule “adds nothing to the process other than…deliberate and unnecessary hassle.” And in the case of Diamond, it leads to the Federal Reserve remaining shorthanded at a critical time for the economy. “It’s very hard for the Federal Reserve to operate with only five people,” said former Fed Governor H. Robert Heller. “To have the Fed at full strength with seven persons there is very important.”

As David Dayen put it, it sure seems like Republicans are “just obstructing for sport now.” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has expressed concern that Diamond was not qualified for the position, but as Matt Yglesias pointed out, his PhD in economics means he “would clearly raise the level of macroeconomic expertise on a board that’s currently dominated by bankers and bank regulators.”

This is just part and parcel of an unprecedented effort by Republicans to slow down, stall, and delay the Senate, thereby denying the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats the opportunity to claim any accomplishments. The Fed currently is contemplating, though hasn’t undertaken, more steps to boost employment amidst the sluggish recovery. Diamond, as well as Obama’s two other Fed nominees, would likely be in the camp that wants to take such steps.

Earlier this week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted what many of his Republican colleagues will not: that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans will “dig the hole deeper” when it comes to the deficit. But that hasn’t changed Cantor’s desire to spend $830 billion to extend the cuts anyway.

But if the tax cuts were actually extended, how would Cantor go about reducing the deficit? Today, Robert Barbera, chief economist of Mount Lucas Management — who seems sympathetic to extending all of the Bush tax cuts himself — asked Cantor three times what he would do to get the long-term budget deficit under control if the cuts were extended. “Excuse me, do you have any proposals about out-year cuts in entitlement expenditures?” he asked. The results were predictable:

CANTOR: First of all, let’s just talk about these so-called tax cuts. If you look at the entrepreneurs and small and large businesses out there, nobody’s getting a tax cut. One of two things is going to happen in January. Taxes go up or they stay the same.

BARBERA: No, no, no, I agree. I want my taxes to stay the same. I agree with you. I’m just saying if the contention is that we have a large expenditure problem, can’t you attach to this, and end the debate, some cuts in out-year entitlement spending? You’re saying we need to cut spending, so let’s cut spending.

CANTOR: Absolutely, listen, we’ve got spending to cut in the short-term, and what we’ve got is a huge problem in the long-term, where we’ve got to get serious about it. You’re absolutely right.

BARBERA: We could get serious about it now. In other words, there’s nothing preventing you from saying ‘I would propose that we cut, ten years out, expenditures on Social Security by blank.’ You could do that today. You could put out a press release.

Watch it:

Cantor finally came to the eloquent conclusion that we need a “commitment to long-term address these situations.”

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) had a nearly identical performance on MSNBC last week, where he couldn’t name one single solitary program that he would cut to rein in the deficit. The inability of Republicans to propose just one idea for dealing with the long-term deficit proves that they are fundamentally disinterested in actually grappling with the problem. They’d prefer to extend tax cuts now while making the long-term structural deficit someone else’s problem.

In fact, just yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed a measure (which was ultimately defeated) extending all of the Bush tax cuts, with instructions “to offset as necessary through spending reduction.” As Charlie Eisenhood put, that’s “Senate-speak for ‘we’ll worry about the cost later.’”

Of course, considering that Cantor’s “big idea” for job creation is “to get, to get, to produce an environment where we can have job creation again” his performance really isn’t surprising. See here for a list of programs that could be cut and revenue increasing steps that could be taken to begin addressing the long-term deficit.

Back in April, the Arizona legislature passed its controversial immigration law, SB-1070, that has brought the state a deserved amount of scorn. But that is not the only pernicious work being undertaken by the Arizona state government.

This week, Republicans in the Arizona legislature are scrambling to repair the language of an anti-union ballot initiative that they hope to put before voters in November, after a judge tossed out their previous version. The initiative is meant to pre-but passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — which would grant workers the right to immediate union recognition if a majority sign cards indicating that they support the union — by outlawing unionization not done by “secret ballot.”

But the initiative’s proponents tried to bury their intent by applying their secret ballot standard to all elections, including those for federal and state political offices. A Superior Court Judge was not amused by the move, which violated “a prohibition against constitutional amendments dealing with more than one issue”:

Courts generally have said the purpose of that ban is to prevent “logrolling,” where voters who want one provision are essentially compelled to approve something else they do not want. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Oberbillig said the legal problems appear to go beyond that. He said elections for public office already are by secret ballot. And Oberbillig questioned whether that provision wasn’t included as an inducement to get voters to approve the more controversial union measure.

The Arizona GOP is now back at work, drafting a version of the language that it feels will pass a judge’s muster.

But this whole effort is silly for a couple of reasons. The first is that the states are usually not allowed to circumvent a process that has been explicitly laid out by the federal government. Even the attorney representing those pushing the initiative “acknowledged that the provisions of federal law generally preempt state regulations and even constitutional provisions.”

The second is that workers are already allowed to form unions without a formal election, and have been doing so without controversy for years. In fact, since 2003, more than half a million workers have been organized by majority sign-up, including those at Cingular Wireless, Dow Jones, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Kaiser Permanente. The only catch is that, in order for this process to proceed, the employer has to give its okay. Even if a vast majority of workers indicate that they want to join a union, the employer can demand an election, giving itself ample time to intimidate or even fire pro-union workers.

A joint study by Rutgers University, Cornell University, and the Universities of Oregon and Illinois, which examined data from union campaigns in four states, shows that “the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union or employer abuse,” and that “contrary to business claims…there was not a single confirmed incident of union misconduct.”

Yesterday, President Barack Obama said that “we are going to keep on fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.” It’d be really great if that were so, Arizona’s suspect attempt to nullify it notwithstanding.