There is a 12th-century German proverb that warns, "When the fox preaches, look to your geese." Today, only the hapless Kevin McCarthy could assume both roles of the Teutonic metaphor. To President Biden he is the preaching fox, and yet it's his goose that could be cooked — along with 221 of his ravenous, fsermonizing brethren.
Granted, holding the nation hostage to the debt limit wasn't "Speaker" McCarthy's idea. It was, rather, one of the first Republican bullets loaded into the pistol pointed directly at his head. The House GOP caucus commanded its token keeper to threaten and prevaricate about the wholly false concept of debt ceiling increases-cum-increased government spending.
To the republic's ill-informed — that is, the GOP base — the conceptual ruse makes beaucoup common sense; a higher roof = new, greater federal outlays. And to those of the base who uniquely grasp the political con, there's still much joy to be had in conceiving the destruction of the American economy under a Dem prez. What could be more fun?
"Speaker" McCarthy, however, has a bit of a stickler on his hands. Amid all his whooping and hollering about wasteful, fraudulent and abusive federal spending, he and his Gang of 221 have yet to articulate just which waste, fraud and abuse they would cut. In the meantime, they have substituted the slogan of demanding "structural" changes to the federal budget — an utterly meaningless shibboleth designed to sidestep actual thought.
To which Kevin is adding more characteristic rounds of Republican table-turning:
Mr. President: I received your staff’s memo.
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) January 31, 2023
I’m not interested in political games.
I’m coming to negotiate for the American people.
Elsewhere on Elon Musk's propaganda sheet, Kevin feigns fiscal virtue: "Does anyone believe there is no waste in government? Does anyone believe there is no place we could find savings?"
These, of course, are not serious questions. Every institution, including families of one, harbor waste in which savings could be had. The pertinent question is: Should the full faith and credit of the United States be held hostage and subjected to devastating torture until a few hotheads in the House get what they want? Whatever it is that they want?
They have until June to tell us. The U.S. government is already "technically" in default; by early summer, it will be in ruins. I write will rather than may with a rather high level of confidence, since McCarthy's fiscal firebrands — the Matt Gaetzes, Paul Gosars and Marjorie Taylor Greenes, to whom Kevin owes his sinecure — are sickeningly nihilistic to their rotted, sadistic core.
Biden meets with the "speaker" today in the vain hope of getting him to reveal when his cluelessly scattershot members might release their budget "plan." You can see the inherent problem here. Radical, subversive nitwits are not known for coherence, for the laying out of specific plans. At any rate, McCarthy's top henchman, Steve Scalise, has offered an ETA of April. I wonder. Did Gen. Eisenhower plan a June D-Day before knowing what was required to meet it?
The president and congressional Democrats have a stupendous winner on their hands. Their political and macroeconomic foes are the dumbest, most irresponsible and exceedingly malignant ladies and gentlemen ever to soil seats of the U.S. House. These evil clowns make the erstwhile Thomas Tancredos and Steven Kings look like statesmen.
So I also wonder: Just how can Democrats screw this up? Most Americans want no monkeying with the debt limit and default. President Biden is on solid political ground. Congressional Dems have idiots as the enemy. House Republicans are hellbent on a global train wreck. Ultimately they'll have to reveal what cuts they're demanding, and each one will anger some significant bloc of voters.
But if nothing else, Republicans excel at turning the tables. McCarthy is calling Biden irresponsible and "childish" and asking "Why would [he] put the economics of America in jeopardy? Why would [he] play political games? I’m not." The customary concomitant to Republican argument-flipping is jackhammering repetition. And they have a bit more than four months to pound the message of Democratic intransigence.
One of the looser yet relentless fiscal objectives of the House GOP is a balanced budget in 10 years' time — those two magical words that send uncomprehending chills of appreciation up the spines of the macroeconomically challenged. One fiscal watchdog has estimated that if defense, veterans, Social Security and Medicare spending is left untouched — as most Republicans have pledged to do — then to balance the budget, federal spending on discretionary items would require cuts of 85 percent. The remaining, gaunt 15 percent would go to "transportation, education, housing, and social service programs, as well as science and environmental organizations."
Spending on roads, bridges, schooling of the young, shelter for the poor, the ailing planet and the like is merely money that goes to "woke & weaponized bureaucrats," says Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. But compared to Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Roy is a flaming liberal. The Florida malicicus ignoramus told Sean Hannity last week that he's heartbroken over some of his colleagues' refusal to slash wasteful social programs such as healthcare and food stamps for the less well-off.
Says Scalise, "President Biden said, 'Just give me more money.' He just wants to spend more money." Added Scalise yesterday, the day before the president meets with the speaker, "[Biden] wouldn’t even have a conversation" with McCarthy.
Democrats are about to collide with a viciously tight Republican phalanx of outrageous lies, misdirections and repetitious propaganda fashioned to make the responsible party look reckless. In this particular squaring-off, the deciding advantage would seem to go to the Dems, since the heated controversy is, or at least should be, altogether noncontroversial. We ought not mess with America's credit, and we sure as hell mustn't do so at the end of a gun barrel.
But, as noted, Republicans excel at this sort of thing. For 40+ years they have managed to bamboozle the electorate into opposing its own welfare. Democrats, on the other hand, have excelled at losing their grip on straight talk, and with the same resolute, focused jackhammering. In this go-around, the public cannot afford any screwing up by the party of FDR. The stakes are, potentially, too monumentally, even existentially, disastrous.