Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) gaveled in the GOP takeover of the House. Christening his rein in tears, the self-proclaimed “most transparent person in this town” promised an era of more “honest” and “accountable” government with a set of new House rules to match. But that was yesterday afternoon. By nightfall, the House GOP leadership had already broken key pledges of transparency and accountability. Republicans have already walked back three key promises they touted up through the end of 111th Congress:

– Open Amendment Process Now Closed: Republicans have long complained that Democrats “abused their power in bypassing regular debate” by ignoring “the open rule” which “allows for nearly unlimited amendments and debate.” After a victorious November election, GOP leaders promised “to treat the Democratic minority far differently” by ensuring an open rules process. After all, they had included it in their “Pledge to America.” But now, with their first legislation to repeal the health care law, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is suggesting the GOP will skip the open rule to avoid potentially embarrassing Democratic amendments. The excuse? It’s a “straightforward document” of a “two-page, straight repeal” so “there’s nothing to amend.” According to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), “there’s no ability” to have open rules because “if you want to have an up-or-down vote, this is how you have to do it. And that is what our pledge was: an up-or-down vote.” Despite demanding the same of the Democrats last year, Republicans now think “some things you don’t need a hearing on.” In response to backlash over his backtrack, Boehner said, “I promised a more open process. I didn’t promise that every single bill was going to be an open bill.”

– $100 Billion Spending Cuts Now “Hypothetical”: Confidently touting their “Pledge to America,” Boehner and his Young Gun squadron reiterated the promise that they’d “save $100 billion dollars in the first year.” Just yesterday, Cantor told reporters that Republicans will soon “spell out” the cuts to obtain that number. But, according to Republican aides, that promise is more “hypothetical” than literal and the actual number “is about HALF the original estimate.” When asked by how much, Ryan said “I can’t tell you by what amount.” When Fox News pressed Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) about GOP waffling, Pence said anyone who focuses on the $100 billion figure is just “number crunching” and trying to “parse words.”

– Public Access Committee Attendance Now Unfair: In the name of transparency, the initial rule package the House GOP proposed included a provision to make committee attendance public. But (fittingly) “behind closed doors” in the House GOP conference meeting yesterday night, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) stripped the provision. The excuse? Committees have to stop scheduling hearings at the same time first. Also, “some GOP lawmakers were concerned about getting slammed for missing hearings when they may have extenuating circumstances.” “That’s not a matter of transparency. It’s a matter of inherent unfairness,” Gohmert said.

On top of closing the amendment process, the GOP also will exempt the health care repeal bill from their own requirement that all bills be fully paid for. Because the health care law would reduce the deficit by $143 billion through 2019, not only are they backtracking on their own rules, but also their promise to reduce the deficit. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the repeal will increase the deficit by $230 billion over the next ten years. Of course — as Republicans prove time and time again — if any policy benefits the wealthy, that lower-deficit banner gets shredded.

But the GOP shows no sign of stopping its self-imposed hypocrisy. The visceral hatred of federal health care has only compelled a few Republicans to match rhetoric with action by forgoing federal health care, while members like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) leave it to others to “stand on principle.” The GOP instead voted down the idea to disclose whether members accept federal health care plan. And despite pledges of greater transparency and fewer backroom deals, House Republicans avowed Ryan, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, with the power to implement spending levels without ever having them voted upon. Another rule allows Republicans to reallocate the spending cuts that Republicans intend to make (whatever the amount) rather than pay down the deficit, a move some GOP members lambasted as “Washington-style gimmicks.”

The GOP is even undermining its own distorted understanding of the Constitution. Despite promising to include clauses citing the constitutional authority of each bill, not one of the three bills the GOP plans to introduce this week — health care repeal, congressional budget cuts, and instruction for new health care legislation — currently include the constitutional citation. Whether the citations will be available when the bills hit the floor remains to be seen.

While remarkably brazen, the hypocritical actions of the House GOP are not surprising. “That’s what they were going to do. Wasn’t it?” said former House Rules Committee Chair Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). “It’s the first day, and they’ve violated everything they said they were going to do.” Who knows what day two will bring.

House Republicans made a lot of noise in their pre-election “Pledge to America” regarding exactly how much government spending they were going to cut. At the document’s unveling, incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) confidently asserted “we can save $100 billion dollars a year. That’s $1 trillion over the next ten years.”

And Boehner was far from the only one laying out $100 billion in non-defense discretionary spending cuts as the benchmark. Incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that the GOP’s goal was to cut “a good $100 billion.” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (of “Young Gun” fame) reiterated the promise, saying, “We’re saying you go through, go back to pre-stimulus bailout numbers. We can live with that.” “We’ve got to roll back there. That will save $100 billion in the first year,” agreed Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN).

Just yesterday, in fact, incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) repeated that the GOP is aiming for $100 billion in cuts. However, according to the New York Times, this promise was not a promise in the literal sense:

Now aides say that the $100 billion figure was hypothetical, and that the objective is to get annual spending for programs other than those for the military, veterans and domestic security back to the levels of 2008, before Democrats approved stimulus spending to end the recession.

“I think they woke up to the reality that this will have a direct negative impact on people’s lives,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who will be the ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “You know, it’s easy to talk about these things in the abstract. It’s another thing when you start taking away people’s college loans and Pell Grants or cutting early education programs.”

Indeed, since the contractionary effects of $100 billion in spending cuts, and the layoffs that would follow, would do real damage to the economy, the fact that the GOP is backing away from its commitment is a good thing. But it’s just the latest in a flurry of budget promises that the GOP has broken, before it even officially comes into power. The Wonk Room has a round up of all the broken pledges. This morning, Ryan said on NBC’s Today Show that, while spending will be reduced, he doesn’t know by how much. “I can’t tell you by what amount…but it will all be coming down,” he said.

This month, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) penned a Politico op-ed calling for a ban on earmarks, saying they are the “poster child for Washington’s wasteful spending binges. They have been linked to corruption and scandal, and serve as a fuel line for the culture of spending that has dominated Washington far too long.” Many other House Republican leaders have also called for an end to earmarks: Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) has said he aims to “end earmarks as we know them.” A ban on earmarks is a controversial issue among House Republicans — it was conspicuously left out of the GOP’s “Pledge to America,” to the chagrin of conservative commentators.

There are also members of the caucus that oppose such a ban, like Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky. He defended earmarks in September, telling Politico that “there is obviously a need for a member to be able to come on out to the Congress for a particular need in his or her district that the regular order is not solving.” Rogers is no backbencher, however — he has long been discussed as being “in line” to take over the House Appropriations Committee, the place where earmarks originate. Now, he tells the Rural Blog that he has secured the votes necessary to assume the committee chairmanship.

Rogers defends earmarks because he’s very good at getting them. Rogers received over $431 million in earmarks just in fiscal years 2008-10, and has steered billions of dollars to his rural Kentucky district over the course of his career, making him one of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress. Many times, Rogers will create a non-profit in his district and then steer money to it, something that troubles government watchdogs:

“When we see a member of Congress using tax dollars to create such non-profit entities, we call it phony philanthropy,” said David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based group that tracks federal pork. “It’s easy to spend someone else’s money; it’s much harder to spend your own. If you set up a non-profit advocacy and they’re advocating a point of view, then every citizen is advocating that view whether they agree with it or not.”

One example among Rogers’ earmarks is Operation UNITE. Critics say that while the program, which was created by Rogers and is poised to receive roughly $13 million in earmarks to ramp up anti-drug initiatives, has been effective, UNITE focuses too heavily on law enforcement and arrests and doesn’t channel enough money into treatment and rehabilitation.

While Republican leaders and candidates on the campaign trail say they want to end earmark abuse — and even earmarks entirely — the task will be very difficult when a powerful Republican pork king assumes control of the committee that hands out earmarks.

(HT: Barefoot and Progressive)

ThinkProgress filed this report from Costa Mesa, CA.

Speaking at an event last week in Orange County, CA, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said he expected big gains for his party at this year’s election, but said he worried that Republicans would squander the victory, as they had in the past, by nominating a slew of “bad candidates” and having a lackluster commitment to conservative principles:

The American people are about to give Republicans a second chance that we know we don’t deserve, that we haven’t earned. … The American people have every right, and every reason, to blame a Republican president and a Republican Congress for the mess that confronted the Obama administration on January 20, 2009 — let us be honest be about this.

ThinkProgress attended the luncheon at the opulent Center Club in Costa Mesa, which was hosted by the Pacific Research Institute, an oil-funded right-wing think tank.

McClintock — a tea party favorite with a strong libertarian streak — had particularly harsh words for his party’s nominee for governor, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Asked about Whitman following his remarks, McClintock suggested she is not loyal to the “principles of the American Founders,” and said he agrees with her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown as much as he agrees with Whitman:

My loyalty is to the principles of the American Founders. My loyalty to the Republican party and to its candidates extends only so far as they are loyal to those principles. And I don’t see that in the current ticket. Two of the people on the Republican ticket were singularly responsible for biggest tax increase by any state in American history. These are Whitman’s handpicked running mates. [...]

I look at all of these things and I realize I agree with her maybe 20 percent of the time. I agree with Jerry Brown about 20 percent of the time. I agree with the libertarians about 80 percent of the time. So I’m not making an endorsement, particularly for that!

McClintock endorsed Whitman’s opponent during the GOP primary, and publicly criticized her during that time. “I’m afraid that if Whitman were the nominee, the Republican base would have no reason to turn out,” he said in April. His comments yesterday were unusually strong for fellow member of the same party so close to the general election.

And while McClintock expressed strong loyalty to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), he acknowledged that the Boehner’s “Pledge to America” governing agenda was somewhat lacking. During his speech, McClintock noted that conservatives were widely disappointed by the “Pledge,” and ThinkProgress asked him afterwards if there is any validity to their criticism. “There’s a lot of stuff I would have liked to see in it, and there are several things I didn’t like to see in it,” he said. And while saying the purpose of the pledge is to lay out “principles” and not necessarily specifics, McClintock admitted that one specific policy prescription — bringing federal spending back to 2008 levels — “doesn’t nearly anyway nearly far enough.”

Listen to a compilation of McClintock’s comments:

Even before House Republicans unveiled their “Pledge to America” governing agenda last month, conservative pundits and tea party activists were dismissing it as feeble and hollow. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) even turned on the GOP leadership, saying “the Pledge really didn’t go far enough.” In an interview published today in Politico, tea party-backed GOP House candidate Allen West said the Pledge deserves a “D” grade, and suggested that some Washington Republicans “whore” themselves to special interests:

West quickly staked out his ground against his party’s potential future leadership. He said the Pledge to America, championed by Boehner, deserves a grade in the “D” range. He said it was missing key policy plans on immigration, earmarks and term limits. The section on national security was “same old stuff…missile defense, rah, rah, rah,” he said.

“It’s very important that in the first 90 to 120 days that the Republican Party very quickly has to earn the trust of the American people once again,” West said. “And I don’t think that the Pledge to America went very far in gaining that trust. It’s what we call in the military, boilerplate.” [...]

“I don’t want to be up there – and I’m going to say it very clearly – I’m not going to whore myself out to special interest PACs, you know, finance or anything of that nature,” West told POLITICO.

Ironically, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is heading to Florida today to campaign for West. But West was reticent to support the leader, saying, “If John Boehner is speaker, I’m going to hold his feet to the fire.” He also split with Boehner on several key issues, saying for example, that he doesn’t support fully repealing the Affordable Care Act because “there are parts of that health care law – preexisting coverage, things of that nature – that are good and I agree with them on.” Moreover, he pointed out that talking about repealing the law is pointless because it could not be done as long as President Obama is in office.

And like a growing number of tea party candidates, West was lukewarm about Palin’s qualifications to be president, saying, “We don’t need to be worried about who’s going to be running for president in 2012, we need to be focused on this.”

Last month, when House Republican leaders unveiled their much-anticipated “Pledge to America,” conservative activists were nearly universally disappointed by the “milquetoast” agenda, especially for its failure to include a ban on earmarks. “There is definitely someone playing out of tune by not talking about earmarks,” said David Keating, the executive director of the far-right anti-tax group Club for Growth.

Republicans countered by noting that they have already implemented a temporary moratorium on earmarks, and say they plan to extend it after it expires. “Republicans, we’re going to continue this earmark ban. We’ve already done the earmark ban. That’s why it’s not in the pledge,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Good Morning America late last month.

But Roll Call reports today that House GOP leaders may not be as committed to earmark transparency as they are letting on. A House GOP website set up early this year to provide a searchable database of federal earmark requests “has disappeared.” Sunshine.gop.gov now links only to a March press release which trumpets the House GOP’s supposed commitment to transparency:

Republican aides who were asked Wednesday afternoon about the website’s disappearance were puzzled about what had become of it, and none could explain why it went dark.

A spokeswoman for the Sunlight Foundation said the site had been “laying low” for a while, seemingly replaced by other GOP initiatives, and had not functioned off the Hill for “some time.” [...]

A spokesperson for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who spearheaded the project, was “not available for comment.” McMorris Rodgers touted the website as a major innovation when she announced it in January, saying, “As Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, one of my top priorities is to increase transparency and accountability in government. That’s why I launched a website which enables citizens to track earmark requests by every member of Congress.”

House Republicans’ voluntary one-year moratorium on earmarks will expire in March, conveniently just months after they expect to retake the lower chamber. “Washington Republicans have already broken several of their ‘Pledges,’ indicated they are going to abandon their earmark moratorium next year, and are now scrapping this website,” said a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

In a recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute, House Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) offered strong rhetoric on earmarks — “I believe it is our obligation to end earmarking as we know it” — but “did not offer any specifics as to how the GOP would reform the process of earmarking.” Nor did he actually promise to end earmarks if his party retakes the House, merely saying that “the future of the moratorium will be a collective decision, made by our members,” offering himself a helpful excuse should Republicans choose not extend the moratorium.

The GOP has been roundly panned for many of its claims in the “Pledge to America”. They declared that it was a grassroots-inspired document, despite being authored by a lobbyist for AIG, Exxon Mobil, and Pfizer. House Republicans maintained that it wasn’t necessary to include an earmark ban because they already had a self-imposed moratorium, despite the fact that the agreement expires before the next Congress even begins.

Now, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is peddling absurd claims about the Pledge’s fiscal policies. Responding to a question during a conference call with Republican supporters on Thursday, Cantor claimed that next Congress, the GOP would “stop this cycle of” deficit spending because, he alleges, the increase in the national debt we’ve incurred since President Obama took office “has exceeded that which this country has incurred over the last 200″ years.

JAMES: I’ve been very concerned for quite some time about the fact that the national debt just keeps growing, growing and growing. The point being that it’s around $13 trillion now. What makes us different than, say, Greece or Spain, in terms of facing collapse while we’ve already borrowed all the money we can from China. It appears to me that we have the Federal Reserve loaning money to the Treasury, for God’s sake. What’s going to stop this?

CANTOR: Well James, we can stop it, and that’s why we need your help. We’ve got to stop this cycle of spending money we don’t have. This spending and debt we’ve incurred over the last two years has exceeded that which this country has incurred over the last 200. And so, you’re right by issuing the alarm that if we do not stop and arrest this trend, we will become like those European welfare state countries where more and more people are going to be taking more benefits from the government than that which they pay in.

Listen here:

Both assertions are laughable. First, CAP’s analysis found that the GOP’s policy proposals in the Pledge would result in a budget deficit that was $200 billion larger in 2020 than it would be under President Obama’s budget, “and over the next 10 years deficits would be $1.5 trillion higher than under the president’s budget.” Consider the two plans side-by-side:

Second, on the day President Obama took office, the national debt stood at a record $10.6 trillion. Since then, the debt has increased an additional $2.8 trillion. The notion that President Obama incurred more debt over the past year and a half than had been incurred in the two centuries prior is comically false.

It seems that “Young Gun” Cantor — the brains behind the GOP’s “You Cut” website — needs a basic class in accounting.

After House Republicans unveiled their anticipated “Pledge to America” last week, it quickly fell under heavy criticism for failing to include a ban on earmarks. Even right-wing groups are attacking Republican congressmen for this key omission. Matt Kibbe, president of one of the leading tea party groups FreedomWorks, called it “disappointing,” while the right-wing group Club for Growth said that without an earmark ban, “the Pledge has no teeth.” The Center Against Government Waste piled on as well, declaring that “if the Republicans regain control of the House and go back to their old earmarking ways it could be a VERY short majority for the Republicans.”

ThinkProgress went to Capitol Hill this week to see why Republicans congressmen were against including an earmark ban in the Pledge. What we found was collective apathy on the issue. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) told us tersely that “the pledge is a great beginning, and that’s all I have to say right now.” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said an earmark moratorium that expires before Republicans would even take power was sufficient and there was no need to go further. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) refused to address the issue altogether.

Prospects for earmark reform aren’t much brighter among Senate Republicans either. In an interview with National Review Online, Tea Party Godfather Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said earmark reform wasn’t included in the GOP Pledge because “there was some pushback from the Senate.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) echoed this view in an interview with Fox News yesterday, telling host Neil Cavuto that Republican leaders in the Senate would not eliminate earmarks until they were forced to do so by rank-and-file members:

CAVUTO: But I don’t hear it out of the leadership. So I suspect, when I hear your party leadership rallying against earmarks, not under our watch, and then someone puts a question to them, so, will you end them all, well, well, not so fast. So, I hear the same B.S. out of them.

COBURN: [Americans] are going to see the foolishness that goes on up here, and rightly so. And that is why the vast majority of the people who are running on my side of the aisle for the Senate have said, I am not doing any earmarks. And that is 11 out of the 15 that are running. So, if we get those 11 people here, that’s going to make a big difference. And then we’re going to have leadership that is going to say that.

CAVUTO: If Mitch McConnell has not ruled out earmarks, would you vote for him to be your majority leader should Republicans assume control of the Senate?

COBURN: I think what has to happen is, we need to have the caucus say we’re not going to do earmarks. And when we vote that, then it is not going to happen. And he’s going to follow our lead.

An earmark ban wasn’t included in the pledge for a simple reason: establishment Republicans still love earmarks. Consequently, support for pork barrel appropriations is unlikely to abate should Republicans win control of Congress in November. Two weeks ago, Politico reported that “with their eyes on a House majority, Republicans are leaving the door open to allowing earmarks after a one-year party-imposed moratorium.” A week later, GOP whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) confirmed that Republicans are eyeing a return of earmarks if they retake the majority.

Though some Republicans like Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) have waged a lonely fight in the GOP against earmarks, only recently have other Republicans signed on to the issue with an election-year stunt. However, when the GOP had an opportunity to implement this idea in their Pledge, they balked. It’s increasingly clear that the House GOP won’t heed the words of country music star Toby Keith: “a little less talk, a lot more action.“