Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)

During the Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the bill, Pence claimed, “I say with a heavy heart that abortion is now the leading cause of death in the black community,” and equated abortion with slavery and the legislation with the struggle for civil rights and women’s equality:

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The loftily-named Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) purports to somehow protect the “civil rights” of fetuses. In reality, it’s an opportunity for Republicans to denigrate the “family values” and character of communities of color that typically have higher abortion rates because of inadequate health insurance and poor sex education, among other reasons.

Pretending that terminated pregnancies cause more death and suffering than illness or violence is to be willfully ignorant of those ravages on the black community. The actual leading causes of death among African Americans include heart disease, cancer, stroke, homicide, and HIV/AIDS. According to the CDC, there are striking health disparities between blacks and other racial groups because of discrimination and lack of access to health care.

Because of inadequate health care, the AIDS rate among African Americans rivals that of some African countries. Homicide — often related to gang violence — is the leading cause of black males ages 12 to 19 years old.

If Republicans really wanted to do something to curb unnecessary deaths in the black community, they should improve access to health care, take on inner-city gang violence and provide more mentoring and education opportunities for young blacks — initiatives they have shown no interest in and have sought to defund.

Hypocrisy and the debt ceiling are two great tastes that taste great together, so there’s no news here. But this just underscores how weird a hostage-taking operation over debt would be. After all, the basic reality is that if it were up to Representative Pence all on his lonesome, he’d be raising the debt ceiling. When one side favors raising the debt ceiling and the other side also favors raising the debt ceiling, the most reasonable compromise is to raise the debt ceiling.

Several Republican members of Congress have taken the debt ceiling — and thus the credit worthiness of the United States — hostage for various demands. For instance, many Republicans say that they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress approves a balanced budget amendment or agrees to cut Social Security benefits.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said on Sunday, “I will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without real and meaningful changes in spending in the short-term and in the long-term.” However, back in 2002 Pence felt very differently about the debt ceiling. During a speech on the House floor, Pence said that the debt ceiling needs to be increased because failure to do so could threaten Social Security benefits. “I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts,” Pence said:

PENCE: I rise today as a conservative Member of this institution, Mr. Speaker. I did not come here to increase the government’s debt. I came here believing, as so many people I represent believe, that if you owe debts, pay debts.

I spoke to an elderly woman on a radio program in Richmond, Indiana, today, in the heart of the heartland district that I represent. And Mr. Speaker, she said with fear in her voice that she was worried that a conservative like me would not support raising the debt ceiling and would put at risk her Social Security check. She assumed that my loathing of red ink would cause me to vote in such a way or fail to act in such a way that it would jeopardize her benefits and the benefits of people that she loves.

Well, I assured her then and I rise today to assure all those that are listening, Mr. Speaker, that I will not do that. I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts.

Watch it:

Pence is far from the only Republican who once found raising the debt ceiling to be a noncontroversial task worthy of wide support, but now wants to extract concessions in return for doing it. It’s also worth noting that Senate Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling immediately after passing the budget-busting 2003 Bush tax cut.

Several Republican members of Congress have taken the debt ceiling — and thus the credit worthiness of the United States — hostage for various demands. For instance, many Republicans say that they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress approves a balanced budget amendment or agrees to cut Social Security benefits.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said on Sunday that, “I will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without real and meaningful changes in spending in the short-term and in the long-term.” However, back in 2002 Pence felt very differently about the debt ceiling. During a speech on the House floor, Pence said that the debt ceiling needs to be increased because failure to do so could threaten Social Security benefits. “I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts,” Pence said:

I rise today as a conservative Member of this institution, Mr. Speaker. I did not come here to increase the government’s debt. I came here believing, as so many people I represent believe, that if you owe debts, pay debts.

I spoke to an elderly woman on a radio program in Richmond, Indiana, today, in the heart of the heartland district that I represent. And Mr. Speaker, she said with fear in her voice that she was worried that a conservative like me would not support raising the debt ceiling and would put at risk her Social Security check. She assumed that my loathing of red ink would cause me to vote in such a way or fail to act in such a way that it would jeopardize her benefits and the benefits of people that she loves.

Well, I assured her then and I rise today to assure all those that are listening, Mr. Speaker, that I will not do that. I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts.

Watch it:

Pence is far from the only Republican who once found raising the debt ceiling to be a noncontroversial task worthy of wide support, but now wants to extract concessions in return for doing it. Senate Republicans also raised the debt ceiling immediately after passing the 2003 Bush tax cut.

Republican leaders have repeatedly said they don’t want the government to close its doors. “Our goal is to avoid a shutdown,” a spokesman for Boehner said this week. Rep. Hal Rodgers (R-KY) — a powerful House budget negotiator who will attend the meeting –told ABC News yesterday that Republicans in Congress are “serious about trying to prevent a government shutdown.”

Behind closed doors, however, it doesn’t appear they are all that serious:

House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. That process includes alerting lawmakers and senior staff about which employees would not report to work if no agreement is reached.

Republicans have been rallying their Tea Party base with calls for a shutdown for weeks, despite public pronouncements to the contrary. For example, influential Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has repeatedly said that “nobody wants a government shutdown” — but then spoke at a Tea Party rally last week and cried out: “Shut ‘er down!”

“I’ve never advocated reducing funding for Title X,” Pence said during a recent radio interview with the chairman of a county Right to Life organization in his home state.

“Title X clinics do important work in our inner cities,” Pence said. “They provide health services for women and children that might not otherwise have access to them.”

As a prominent and influential House Republican, Pence and his defense of Title X may be able to win over the program’s most voracious opponent: Mike Pence. Not only did he vote to “eliminate the entire Title X program” in February, he is the chief sponsor of the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act — a bill that would ban those clinics that “do important work” from receiving any federal funds because they may provide abortions.

Readily admitting that the law prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for abortions, Pence insists that “common sense says there’s no question that taxpayer dollars received by Planned Parenthood are used to cover allowed expenses like overhead operational costs, thus freeing up other money for clinics that do provide abortion.” His bill, he says, would “close the loophole that’s forced millions of pro-life Americans to subsidize the nations leading abortion provider, sustaining and underwriting this nefarious trade.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan told ThinkProgress there’s only one way to view Pence’s open hypocrisy: “Clearly, Pence is feeling the political heat for being the head cheerleader for an over-reaching agenda that would take away millions of Americans’ access to contraception, cancer screenings, and health-care services.” But whatever he may say, his actions speak louder than words. (HT: Raw Story)

BACHMANN: I have to say I feel disheartened in that I’m not sensing a lot of outrage about this by other members or…hopefully they just don’t yet know or they just don’t yet realize because the marvelous opportunity we have is within the next week and a half we can get this funding back for Obamacare and effectively repeal it for the next two years if we get this money back, but we got to demand that we put the language in, that we’ve already written, on the next continuing resolution….we can do this, but I’m not sensing yet within the Republicans here in Congress a willingness to do that. It’s inexplicable to me…It’s like we’re in the Twilight zone here. I’m thinking, am I the only one who remembers there was no discussion of this $105 billion?

Listen:

Republicans may be less than surprised about Bachmann’s ‘revelations’ because the mandatory spending was, in fact, openly discussed in the various Congressional Budget Office estimates of health care reform and by Democrats hoping to protect the law from defunding. For instance, this CBO estimate from December 19, 2009 addressed the effects of “mandatory appropriations” for the Prevention and Public Health Fund,” “community health centers” and “the National Health Service Corps.” In an earlier document from November 2009, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf writes, “For example, the House bill would finance the operations of the insurance exchanges through mandatory appropriations rather than a surcharge on the plans offered in the exchanges. ” (The word “mandatory” is used throughout this CBO compilation of health care related documents).

As Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) explained to Hannity after Bachmann’s appearance, “with the advanced appropriations they built in there, it exists outside the normal appropriations process, but tell me something I don’t know.” “I don’t think nobody noticed it, I thought most of the estimates we were working off of were….all of our estimates were over the next 10 years,” he added.

In February, Republicans on the House Rules Committee refused to grant a waiver, requested by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), “for the consideration of an amendment to the 2011 funding bill that would bar mandatory spending” for the health law. House rules stipulate that “members cannot legislate on appropriations bills,” which King’s amendment would have done by eliminating $105 billion in mandatory spending from the health law. Republicans on the committee argued that the party would be better served by focusing on the $100 billion in cuts offered in the GOP’s continuing resolution proposal and suggested that King’s amendment would be dead on arrival in the Senate and would therefore jeopardize the party’s cherished spending cuts.

Since most of the Republicans who are most often mentioned as probable top contenders in next year’s election won’t be speaking at tomorrow’s event, it seems worth going over what they’ve had to say in the past about immigration — one of the Latino electorate’s top concerns:

PALIN: After Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) lost his presidential bid in 2008, Palin openly lamented that “we didn’t get the Hispanic vote—and that was very significant.” For a while, Palin kept her opinions on immigration to herself. Shortly after Arizona passed the toughest immigration law in Arizona, Palin declared, “I think every other state on the border should emulate what Arizona has done.” She indicated that after the border is secured, immigration reform can be considered. In the meantime though, “other states should do what Arizona is doing.”

ROMNEY: This past summer, Politico reported that Romney “signaled quietly to [Sen.] Graham that Republicans must address immigration before the campaign heats up.” Romney hasn’t said much publicly on immigration ,other than pointing out that Arizona’s immigration law was a response to the government’s inability to secure the border. “It is my hope that the law will be implemented with care and caution not to single out individuals based upon their ethnicity,” he added. “It is increasingly clear that the time has come for Washington to fulfill its responsibility for border security.” It’s unclear what position he’ll be taking this time around, but during the last presidential primaries Romney ran a bunch of nasty immigration ads.

GINGRICH: Gingrich had a lot to say about immigration last year. In December, he urged Congress to undertake immigration reform, stating, “There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.” At the time, Gingrich didn’t provide a lot of details about what that zone would look like. However, in 2009, Gingrich told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that the best way to deal with the 12 million undocumented workers currently living in the U.S. would be to convince them to uproot their lives and go back to their home countries for an undetermined amount of time in exchange for a temporary guest-worker visa with no guarantee of legal permanent residency.

PENCE: In an interview with Right Side News in May, Pence stated, “I simply believe that some day down the road we can find an intersection between the rule of law and the deep compassion of the American people — but in the intervening years, what’s become clear to me is that we must focus on border security and internal enforcement first.” Pence also justified Arizona’s immigration law by falsely claiming that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the world and saying, “there’s nearly a half a million illegal immigrants and, and a rampant drug trade and, and, and human trafficking trade that’s been besetting.”

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) is the one Republican 2012 presidential hopeful who will be speaking at tomorrow’s event. Today, Pawlenty touched on immigration briefly at a Press Club event, indicating that securing the border and making the electronic employment verification system — E-verify — should be “pre-requisites” to having a larger discussion on immigration which includes dealing with the undocumented population. Pawlenty compared “open and flagrant and sustained violations of [immigration] law” to allowing people to pee on sidewalks in New York City and how that led to “crack houses and the like.”

Watch it:

It’s easy to dismiss Bachmann’s bizarre pronouncement as just another in the long list of crazy things she’s said. But CNN was host to another attempt at deficit redefinition this morning, courtesy of Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). When asked to square his fearmongering about the cost of the tax package before the House today with his desire to permanently extend all of the Bush tax cuts (at a cost of almost $4 trillion), Pence replied that tax cuts only contribute to the deficit in the minds of “Washington number crunchers”:

Q: How can you say the American people didn’t vote for deficits, when at the same time your plan would add almost $3 trillion to the deficit?

PENCE: Yeah, I’ve heard that analysis for years. I know in Washington D.C., they tend, the budget, the numbers-crunchers here tend to think that when they don’t take money from the American people there’s a cost that they ought to round…With a growing economy, I think those predictions are wrong. I think as the economy expands, even revenues to the federal government will expand.

Watch it:

Pence, it seems, believes wholeheartedly in the tax fairy: the notion that tax cuts cause revenue to increase, all actual evidence to the contrary. No serious economist, left or right, subscribes to this notion, and we have ample evidence showing that the Bush tax cuts definitely did not cause a boost in revenue (either in real dollars or revenue as a percentage of GDP).

But House Republicans are so in thrall with the misguided idea that tax cuts do not add to the deficit that they are making it part of their official House-governing rules for next year. As Congressional Quarterly noted today, House Republicans are putting the finishing touches on a new rule called “cut-go,” which requires that new spending programs — but not new tax cuts — be offset with spending cuts:

The budgetary mechanism, which Republicans refer to as a “cut-go” rule, will mandate that lawmakers pay for any new spending program by eliminating an existing program of equal or greater value. It is similar to the pay-as-you-go rule previously introduced by House Democrats except that it does not allow spending increases to be offset with new taxes or fees. Also, tax cuts would not have to be offset with spending reductions.

Pence, of course, would dismiss this as the silly ruminations of number-crunchers, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that the Bush tax cuts are one of the biggest drivers of the long-term deficit, causing $3.4 trillion in deficits over between 2009 and 2019 alone.

More than shared humanity or diversity, the big takeaway from this speech for the Congressional Prayer Caucus was Obama’s choice of motto. Yesterday, in a letter obtained by Minnesota Independent, 41 Republicans — including Reps. Michele Bachmann (MN) and Mike Pence (IN) — and lone Democrat Mike McIntyre (NC) took to their bully pulpit to lambast Obama for forsaking the official U.S. motto “In God We Trust” in favor of E pluribus unum. Finding a “pattern” of subversive omittances among Obama’s speeches, the outraged lawmakers slammed Obama’s “disservice to the people you represent” and demanded Obama “issue a correction” to his speech:

E pluribus unum is not our national motto.[...]

As President of the United States, you are our representative to the rest of the world. By misrepresenting things as foundational as the Declaration of Independence and our national motto, you are not only doing a disservice to the people you represent you are casting aside an integral part of American society.

John Adams said, “It is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.” If Adams was right, by making these kinds of statements to the rest of the world, you are removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom. If we pull the threat of religious conviction out of the marketplace of ideas, we unravel the tapestry of freedom that birthed America.[...]

We respectively request that you issue a correction to the speech you gave, as it does not accurately reflect America and serve to undercut an important part of our history. We are willing to meet with you to discuss this further if you would like. As President Ronald Reagan warned, “if we ever forgot that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

To bolster their own view, these lawmakers blatantly ignore Obama’s repeated references to God in his speeches. In fact, they pointedly ignore his multiple references to God in the very same Indonesia speech in which Obama shows no sign of trying to avoid the subject.

In blasting his choice of U.S. motto, these lawmakers also insinuate that the motto E pluribus unum “does not accurately reflect America.” But while “In God We Trust” has been the nation’s official motto since 1956, E pluribus unum, or “out of many, one,” is the motto on the Seal of the United States and was the nation’s original “de facto motto” until 1956. Ironically, John Adams — a founding father who signed his name to the idea that the U.S. “is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” — suggested E pluribus unum as the young nation’s motto in 1776.

In fact, only when “the nation was suffering through the height of the cold war, and the McCarthy communist witch hunt” did Congress, desiring to differentiate between communism and Western capitalistic democracies, replace that motto with “In God we Trust.” And while some among the Congressional Prayer Caucus have no problem with Senator Joe McCarthy’s methods, most try to avoid the comparison.

View full letter here:

Cutting off benefits will also negatively affect small businesses, because, as MarketPlace noted, “when unemployment checks stop, it’s felt right away by businesses like gas stations, apartment operators, and grocery stores.” But Republicans in Congress have been screaming that the country can’t afford to extend benefits unless they are offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

Of course, these same Republicans have no problem extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy without corresponding spending cuts. And today, on MSNBC, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) — who has been serving as House Republican Conference chairman and is being touted as a possible 2012 Presidential nominee — twice refused to endorse extending unemployment benefits if it meant that taxes went up on only millionaires:

HALPERIN: If your leaders came to you and said ‘we have a deal with the White House. We’re going to extend unemployment benefits but the tax cuts for people making over a million dollars a year will not be extended, but that helps to pay for it,’ would you take that deal? Would you vote for that package?

PENCE: Look, I think the worst thing you could do for people that are struggling in this economy and looking for a job is raise taxes on any American. We don’t want to help with one hand and take away with the other.

HALPERIN: So would rather extend the tax cuts for every American, including those making over a million, or have the unemployment benefits extended, if that’s the choice?

PENCE: This isn’t a corner, but I feel the paint. I’m good. Nice move. I played chess with my son the other day and I lost, so I’m not good at this chess thing. Let me tell you, I think the minimum we have to do for Americans right now that are struggling in unemployment in this economy is make sure no American sees a tax increase.

Watch it:

As The Wonk Room pointed out, the average millionaire will receive $103,809 in tax breaks next year if the Bush tax cuts are extended. Unemployment benefits, meanwhile, average about $290 per week.

Cutting off benefits will also negatively affect small businesses, because, as MarketPlace noted, “when unemployment checks stop, it’s felt right away by businesses like gas stations, apartment operators, and grocery stores.” But Republicans in Congress have been screaming that the country can’t afford to extend benefits unless they are offset with spending cuts elsewhere.

Of course, these same Republicans have no problem extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy without corresponding spending cuts. And today, on MSNBC, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) — who has been serving as House Republican Conference chairman and is being touted as a possible 2012 Presidential nominee — twice refused to endorse extending unemployment benefits if it meant that taxes went up on only millionaires:

HALPERIN: If your leaders came to you and said ‘we have a deal with the White House. We’re going to extend unemployment benefits but the tax cuts for people making over a million dollars a year will not be extended, but that helps to pay for it,’ would you take that deal? Would you vote for that package?

PENCE: Look, I think the worst thing you could do for people that are struggling in this economy and looking for a job is raise taxes on any American. We don’t want to help with one hand and take away with the other.

HALPERIN: So would rather extend the tax cuts for every American, including those making over a million, or have the unemployment benefits extended, if that’s the choice?

PENCE: This isn’t a corner, but I feel the paint. I’m good. Nice move. I played chess with my son the other day and I lost, so I’m not good at this chess thing. Let me tell you, I think the minimum we have to do for Americans right now that are struggling in unemployment in this economy is make sure no American sees a tax increase.

Watch it:

But if the Bush tax cuts for millionaires were so great for job creation, how does Pence explain that Bush presided over the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period?

For comparisons sake, the average millionaire will receive $103,809 in tax breaks next year if the Bush tax cuts are extended. Unemployment benefits, meanwhile, average about $290 per week. As Steve Benen might say, Pence’s stance “crystallizes contemporary conservatism”: tax breaks for millionaires are sacrosanct, while helping those struggling in the wake of the Great Recession is not.

Bruce Bartlett hoped Mike Pence’s big address on economic policy might reveal a Republican wrestling seriously with the world’s economic problems. As a long-time Pence watcher, I assumed he’d just say something dumb. Bartlett has learned his lesson:

Unfortunately, Pence’s speech was nothing of the kind. It was a hackneyed rehash of every simplistic idea ever floated on Larry Kudlow’s TV show, which appears to be the only source of information Pence has on the economy. I don’t know how else to explain his obsession with inflation, a strong dollar, Fed bashing, tax cuts and the gold standard. Pence could have given the same identical speech in 1980 and barely needed to change a word. In the Pence/Kudlow world it is always 1980–stagflation is the primary problem and tight money and tax cuts are the cures.

The problem is that stagflation isn’t the problem today. We have stagnation all right, but the “flation” we are suffering from today doesn’t stand for inflation, but deflation. But because it is always 1980, right wingers are incapable of seeing that monetary policy functions very, very differently in an inflationary and a deflationary environment. They seem utterly incapable of comprehending constraints like the zero-bound problem, which sets a floor on how low interest rates can go. They are also incapable of seeing the exchange value of the dollar except in macho terms, which demands that the dollar be strong at all times. That makes about as much sense as saying the price of oil or any other commodity should always be strong. That’s obviously nuts, but the dollar is no different. It must be allowed to adjust freely for changes in supply and demand or the result will be imbalances–too much will be imported if the dollar is overvalued, too little exports, thus increasing American’s international indebtedness. Indeed, it was right wing saint Milton Friedman who taught economists the truth of this mechanism.

There do seem to be a lot of people, Pence among them, who have a weird amount of trouble with the idea that you do different things in different circumstances. If inflation’s too high, you need tighter money—that’s the early 1980s. But if nominal expenditures are too low, you need looser money. If high deficits are forcing the central bank to keep nominal interest rates high, you need a lower deficit—that’s the early 1990s. But if nominal rates are at zero and total spending is still too low, then you need a bigger deficit.

For my part, I believe the answer is a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution. Since World War II the federal government has operated on an average of just under 20 percent of gross domestic product. But, in the past three years, federal spending has climbed to nearly 25 percent of GDP. Left unchecked, and accounting for no new programs, federal spending will reach 50 percent of GDP by 2055. We should remember what Ronald Reagan said, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.” We must have a mechanism that forces Washington as a whole to make the hard choices necessary to reform our nation’s addiction to big spending and unsustainable entitlements.

Pence then appeared on CNBC to reiterate his support for spending cap amendment. Watch it:

But over at Capital Gains and Games, Bruce Bartlett — who served as an economic official under both Reagan and President George H.W. Bush — blasted Pence as “not ready for prime time” because of his amendment proposition:

I just want to call attention to Pence’s ultra-gimmicky plan for dealing with the deficit: a constitutional amendment limiting federal spending to 20 percent of GDP. No need to spell out spending cuts or anything politically unpopular, just let the Constitution do all the dirty work. What a total crock.

Pence does have an awfully hard time identifying any actual spending cuts he would make in the budget, so proposing a constitutionally mandated spending cap is indeed a convenient way to pretend to be serious about the deficit without getting into actual substance. A cap like the one Pence envisions is totally unworkable for a variety of reasons, including: our imprecise GDP measurements (which would make assessing the dollar amount allowed under the cap very difficult); large and very obvious loopholes that could be exploited by Congress to circumvent the cap; and a complete lack of enforceability.

For someone who invokes the sanctity of the Constitution so often, Pence seems pretty cavalier about changing it to suit the political moment. And at the end of the day, proposing this sort of blunt budget instrument does nothing but provide Pence with a nice talking point that he can parrot to cover for his lack of actual, constructive ideas.

The first item of Pence’s five-point plan for the economy is a “sound monetary policy.” Pence elaborated that he believes a return to the gold standard could create such a policy:

PENCE: Before I move on, I’d like to note, in the midst of all that’s happened recently — massive borrowing and spending, QE2 — a debate has started anew over an anchor to our global monetary system. My dear friend, the late Jack Kemp, probably would have urged me to adopt the gold standard, right here and now in Detroit. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, encouraged that we rethink the international currency system including the role of gold, and I agree. I think the time has come to have a debate over gold, and the proper role it should play in our nations monetary affairs. A pro-growth agenda begins with sound monetary policy.

Currently, the global financial system does not assign any value to gold, and the U.S. Federal Reserve is not required to tie the value of the dollar to anything. A return to the gold standard, which would tie the value of the U.S. dollar to the value of gold, is a fringe economic position that could lead to a drastic reduction in prices. “Very few economists think this would be a good idea,” Paul Krugman has noted. It would prohibit the government from adjusting interest rates, which it often does based on the health of the economy — instead everything would be tied to the value of gold.

The U.S. abandoned this policy in 1971, and as Krugman notes: “Since then the price of gold has increased roughly tenfold, while consumer prices have increased about 250 percent. If we had tried to keep the price of gold from rising, this would have required a massive decline in the prices of practically everything else — deflation on a scale not seen since the Depression. This doesn’t sound like a particularly good idea.”

Moreover, as Matthew Yglesias has observed, the idea of the enforcing a gold standard doesn’t exactly fit into the Tea Party’s free-market ethos. As none other than Milton Friedman wrote: “I think those people who say they believe in a gold standard are fundamentally being very anti-libertarian because what they mean by a gold standard is a governmentally fixed price for gold.”

Returning to the gold standard wasn’t the only far-right economic proposal Pence offered in his speech. The Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel details Pence’s call for the elimination of the U.S. tax code in favor of a “flat tax.”

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) got caught playing a similar game yesterday, also on CNN with Blitzer. Pence — who has also made listening to the American people a priority — argued that in order to reduce the deficit, the government should cut spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But when Blitzer told Pence that a recent poll showed that Americans don’t want cuts to those programs, the Indiana congressman pulled a Schock:

PENCE: Well, I don’t know if they’re saying don’t touch it. I think they’re saying for people who are on Medicare and Social Security or depending on Medicaid today, let’s keep the promises we’ve made to seniors.

To his credit, Pence did say that cuts in defense spending should be on the table as well, but he also argued that Social Security should be revamped for those under 40 years old — an age that conveniently leaves Pence out of any potential changes to the popular social program. Watch it:

Indeed, as Blitzer noted, according to a new CNN poll, while Americans do want to reduce the deficit, employing significant cuts in social programs to do it is very unpopular:

For most of the government programs tested in the poll, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, college loans, and aid to farmers and unemployed workers, Americans say that avoiding significant spending cuts is more important than reducing the deficit.

“Many of the budget cuts proposed last week by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, who are heading up a presidential commission on deficit reduction, appear to be highly unpopular, including changes to Social Security and the federal tax code,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The public opposition to some of the proposals made by Simpson and Bowles illustrates what a hard sell spending cuts will be.”

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)

Republicans in Congress — after refusing to support of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or any of the myriad job creation bills brought before Congress in the last few months — have criticized the Fed’s move, with spokesman for both incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) telling Politico that the Fed’s plan is uncalled for.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is so displeased, in fact, that he plans to introduce legislation today that would entirely remove the Fed’s mandate to ensure full employment:

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, a top House Republican, said he plans to introduce legislation Tuesday to end the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate, which requires the central bank to balance both employment and inflation concerns in its monetary policy…“The Fed’s dual mandate policy has failed,” Pence said in a statement. “For a record 18th straight month the nation’s unemployment rate is at or above 9.4 percent. It’s time for the Fed to be solely focused on price stability and not the recently announced QE2 which will monetize our debt and trigger inflation.”

Pence is joined in his push by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who released a statement today saying, “It is time that we work to clarify the mandate of the Federal Reserve. Providing our central bank with a clear and explicit focus on keeping inflation low will serve America better than the broader mandate approach we have today.”

This crystallizes quite well the Republicans’ set of priorities — as they’re pushing to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, they’re criticizing the last step available for alleviating wider economic suffering. As economist Mark Thoma summed up, “Republicans oppose fiscal policy — including things such as extending unemployment compensation and job creation initiatives to help to overcome severe conditions (though tax cuts for the wealthy are okay) — and they oppose monetary policy that tries to lower the unemployment rate. So, in essence, they oppose doing anything to help the unemployed during a recession.”

At the same time, the GOP’s concern about inflation is quite overblown, as there is no sign of inflation at the moment. As New York Federal Reserve President Bob Dudley said yesterday, “People do not understand clearly” that “we can have an enlarged balance sheet and not have a long-term inflation problem.”

After the GOP victories this week, Democratic leaders said they want to work with Republicans to get things done. Obama said there are a “whole bunch” of areas where Democrats could work with the GOP. “We’ve got to start working together. … Legislation’s the art of compromise,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. Yet, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) doesn’t think so. On a local radio show today, not only did Pence reiterate his “no compromise” pledge, but he upped the ante, saying voters don’t want Republicans and Democrats to work together:

PENCE: I’m going to ensure that Republicans come out of the gate and seize this moment, we’ve really been given a second chance at a first impression and I’m going to tell them that we have to rise to the challenge with principle and conviction and not with this attitude that you saw coming from the White House yesterday and from some other quarters on the establishment left in Washington which was that somehow the message of the election was that they want Democrats and Republicans to work better together, to get along — good heavens.

Listen here:

Pence doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on what the American people want. An Ipsos/Reuters poll released on Monday found that “[m]ore than half of voters (56%) want to see Congress prioritizing cross-party working to enable consensus-based policymaking.” And a New York Times/CBS News poll released last week reported similar results. A whopping 78 percent said that Republicans should “compromise some of their positions to get things done” versus only 15 percent who said they should “stick to their positions.”

Appearing on CNN’s Parker/Spitzer last night, House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) seemed to endorse defense cuts:

SPITZER: You said everything will be on the table, which I admire you, I agree with you, it’s got to be on the table. … Are you willing to consider any cuts in defense? [...]

PENCE: But you bet, Eliot, come on, I mean, we know there are inefficiencies in defense spending in this country. We have real challenges. There are rising threats around the globe far beyond the reach of the war on terror. We need to be preparing for, for the future. I think we can do that if we look for greater efficiencies and if we set into motion processes that will encourage efficiency and a better use of taxpayer’s dollars in providing for the common defense which of course is the first article of the federal government.

Watch it:

Pence’s rhetoric on defense cuts sounds good, but like many GOP promises to cut spending, it rings hollow. Earlier this year, Pence was presented with a great opportunity to cut “inefficiencies in defense spending,” and he passed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for major cuts to a number of big-ticket weapons programs and chief among them is a proposed extra engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Gates called the second engine — which costs $560 million a year to develop — “costly and unnecessary,” and said, “Every dollar additional to the budget that we have to put into the F-35 is a dollar taken from something else that the troops may need.” Gates even urged President Obama to veto any funding for the engine.

After the House Armed Services Committee failed to strip the second engine from the Defense Authorization bill in May, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) offered an amendment to de-fund the superfluous project — Pence voted no and the amendment failed. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt in July, Pence defended his vote. Seemingly knowing more about defense than Gates, Pence said, “I really do believe that it was in the interest of our national defense.” Not coincidentally, the company that would manufactures the extra engine has a large presence in Pence’s district.

If Pence refuses to cut funding for a program that the military adamantly does not want, what will he cut?

It seems the Republican leadership agrees with Issa — there will only be compromise if the President agrees to everything it wants. According to a Washington Post profile published yesterday, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “let out a long sigh when asked where he would look to work with Obama,” and then said “I came here to fight for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government, and to the extent that [Obama] wants to work with us in terms of where we’re going, I would certainly welcome it.” On Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, he made it much more explicit: “This is not a time for compromise, and I can tell you that we will not compromise on our principles,” he said.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), appearing on CNN’s Parker Spitzer last night, was equally as strident, saying that in 1994 when the Republicans took control of Congress “there was altogether too much compromise,” and promised that “there will be no compromise” if Republicans take control after the midterms, specifically on issues like “repealing ObamaCare lock stock and barrel.” Watch it:

Polls show Americans want Republicans and Democrats to work together in order to achieve progress on major issues, and at a meeting with some progressive bloggers at the White House yesterday, President Obama said he was willing to do that:

THE PRESIDENT:  Look, the — I’m a pretty stubborn guy when it comes to, on the one hand, trying to get cooperation.  I don’t give up just because I didn’t get cooperation on this issue; I’ll try the next issue.  If the Republicans don’t agree with me on fiscal policy, maybe they’ll agree with me on infrastructure.  If they don’t agree with me on infrastructure, I’ll try to see if they agree with me on education.

So I’m just going to keep on trying to see where they want to move the country forward.

If Obama “wants to see where they want to move the country,” GOP leaders are making clear they’re less interested in moving it than in defeating him.