Kevin McCarthy was unprincipled, dishonest, contemptible. It’s a rich irony that he lost the House Speakership because for once he actually did the right thing, working with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. Unpardonable to Republican extremists.
It’s another irony that their ousting McCarthy for relying on Democratic votes itself required Democratic votes. We’re told this mess reflects a big split in the GOP. Yet only eight Republicans voted against McCarthy. The other two hundred were Democrats.
Their voting against a Republican was merely normal politics. Especially considering McCarthy launched a presidential impeachment over nothing, pandering to the worst elements in his own ranks. And he was seen as already reneging on the deal to avert the shutdown — he even, in a speech, bizarrely blamed it all on Democrats. So they deemed him simply untrustworthy and unfit. While helping him crush his GOP foes might have tamped down that party’s internecine woes, which Democrats are gleeful to prolong.
And yet . . . my wife argued that Democrats should have put aside partisan animus, to do what’s best for the country. She has a point. Plunging Congress into chaos isn’t good for the country. It will be a challenge for any Republican to achieve the requisite virtual GOP unanimity. Until then, Congress is paralyzed (more than usual).
While the deal averting the shutdown merely postponed it for some weeks. And it left out Ukraine aid. Anything that risks both of those might seem downright irresponsible. Avoidable had Democrats thrown McCarthy a few votes.
Trump has endorsed Jim Jordan for the speakership. Jordan acts the faux-indignant in-your-face attack-dog in defending every indefensible Trump transgression while indiscriminately smearing Democrats. Vilest of the vile. He opposes Ukraine funding, saying, “Can anyone explain what the objective there is?” How disingenuous can one be? If Jordan is speaker, Putin wins in Ukraine, and our world becomes far more ugly and dangerous.
Now we see why, back in January, I called it simply insane to elect a Republican House majority. How did it happen? Gerrymandering played a big role; Republicans did not win a majority of the nationwide Congressional vote. And Republicans tend to be extreme because it’s really primaries they must win — where few people bother to vote, mostly highly motivated extremists.
And so we get these nihilists who just want to blow things up. It used to be that each party’s members would vote to choose their nominee for speaker, and then they’d all support that person. Such orderly nicety is kaput on the Republican side. The whole party is culpable in standing for it, empowering its most irresponsible elements.
The main argument is still about the budget, which was supposed to have been settled in June (before the shutdown threat), when House Republicans and the Biden administration agreed upon some spending constraints in exchange for avoiding a catastrophic debt default. Now, just months later, the House GOP Loonie Legion wants to tear up that agreement.
Their posturing about federal spending is phony to the core. They simply have no plan for what they claim to want, a balanced budget. They lack the guts to tackle its biggest parts, Social Security and Medicare (careening toward insolvency in the not-so-distant future). They won’t touch defense or veterans spending either. What’s left would have to be cut by 85% to reach balance over ten years.
Our problem is that spending, and deficits — and thus borrowing — ballooned when interest rates were practically zero, so it seemed cost-free. Now interest rates have spiked up, so the cost of financing our $33 trillion national debt is exploding, as older low-interest bonds come due. While low birth rates and an aging population leave fewer taxpaying workers to support rising retiree benefits. All making our deficit spending unsustainable. Democrats share some blame, unwilling to talk about reining in spending.
But that’s not the only way to deal with this. The other side of the picture is revenues. Republicans won’t countenance any rollback of the irresponsible 2017 Trump tax-cuts-for-the rich. But nor do Democrats advocate that — despite their “tax the rich” talk, raising any taxes has become a political taboo.
Actually, we wouldn’t even have to raise tax rates. Just have the IRS work to collect what people owe, even under Trump’s giveaway. That alone would eliminate much of the deficit. But Republicans refuse to fund the IRS for it. Making their professed deficit concern all the more dishonest.
This is a giant national problem we should be having public debate about — proper taxing and spending levels, and what should indeed be cut. Somehow that’s lost in all the sound and fury. Once upon a time, in 2010, we had the Simpson-Bowles commission to come to grips with the problem, producing a responsible centrist compromise plan. Unfortunately, President Obama timorously shelved the whole thing. Today the problem has grown far bigger, while our politics is far more dysfunctional.
I’ve probably failed to convey just how tragically FUBAR all this is. “Making America Great Again?”