In the first week of the 114th Congress, the new Republican overlords acted to undermine the Affordable Care Act; set up a Social Security funding crisis; require President Obama to accept the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline; enact new roadblocks to immigration reform; and undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.Republicans want to bull ahead with the Keystone pipeline regardless of the threat of potentially toxic leaks over the environmentally sensitive Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest, in pursuit of 42,000 short-term jobs in building the pipeline and less than 50 long-term jobs to maintain it — all to carry Canadian oil to Texas to be refined for export overseas. Of course, the GOP also passed a bill to make it much more difficult to pass and enforce regulations to be enforced by federal and independent agencies.The House got a quicker start at mischief than the Senate since House leaders don’t pretend to seek consensus. They adopted a rule to create a funding crisis for Social Security Disability Insurance by banning transfer of funds within the Social Security Trust. That wouldn’t be so bad if Congressional Republicans had any intention of fixing the shortfall that is expected in the Social Security Disability program next year, but they have no apparent intention to do so. If Congress does not fix the disability trust fund, it will result in a 20% benefit reduction for 11 million disabled Americans.“Reallocation has never been controversial, but detractors working to privatize Social Security will do anything to manufacture a crisis out of a routine administrative function,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said. “Rather than solve the short-term problems facing the Social Security Disability program as we have in the past, Republicans want to set the stage to cut benefits for seniors and disabled Americans.”Read More.Source: The Progressive Populist/Editorial/Jim Hightower