Tag Archives: GOP

My Obligatory Rant About the Debt Ceiling

Okay–I’m sure that readers of this blog are well aware of the current threat by the usual suspects to hold the debt limit hostage in order to get concessions on spending from the administration and the Democrats in Congress.

I’m also sure that most of those readers understand what the debt limit actually is–unlike the intended targets of the crazies’ messaging.  America’s debt ceiling does not authorize spending–it authorizes government to borrow funds as necessary to pay for spending that Congress has already authorized. (That’s why the GOP obediently voted to raise it during the Trump administration–even though the Trump tax cuts significantly increased the deficit and thus the amount to be borrowed.)

Here’s an analogy: you went shopping and maxed out your credit card. The bill from the credit card company comes due, and your spouse says “We aren’t paying it until you agree to [whatever].” You either accede to the whatever, or destroy your credit rating, find yourself unwelcome in the places you shop, and incur higher interest rates in the few places that still accept your business.

In 2011, when Republicans last played this game, the delay in raising the limit caused a  downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt, raising government borrowing costs by $18.9 billion over ten years.

If the GOP’s  current game of chicken succeeds–if America fails to pay the bills Congress has previously racked up–the country (and globe) would descend into recession, Social Security and Medicare payments would stop, federal workers, soldiers and defense contractors wouldn’t be paid… And you could kiss your tax refund goodby.

The U.S. is one of only two countries requiring a separate vote to raise the debt limit–most countries understand that a vote to spend X on program Y implicitly authorizes payment even if funds need to be borrowed. For many years, rational lawmakers in both parties routinely raised the limit.

Since “rational” no longer describes most GOP lawmakers, what should the administration do? I’ll let Paul Krugman answer that question.

Krugman  warns that “it’s not even clear that the Biden administration could surrender if it wanted to.”

The current crop of House Republicans makes the Tea Party, which (alas) used the debt limit to blackmail President Barack Obama, look reasonable. Today’s G.O.P. doesn’t even seem to have a coherent set of demands; a significant number of caucus members may well want a crisis, preferring to “watch the world burn” under a Democratic administration.

If surrender isn’t an option, what is?

Democrats could seek a “discharge petition” to force a vote on raising the debt limit despite opposition from G.O.P. leaders. This would both take time and require support from a handful of sane Republican House members. But it’s surely worth trying.

Second, it’s probably possible to use financial engineering to bypass the debt limit. The most famous proposal calls for minting a platinum coin with a face value of, say, $1 trillion, depositing that coin with the Federal Reserve and spending out of the bank account thus created. Believe it or not, this would almost certainly be legal.

Another option would involve raising money by issuing “premium bonds” when existing debts come due — bonds whose face value is the same as that of the bonds they replace, so that they don’t officially increase the debt, but offer high interest rates, so they sell for much more than their notional value.

Krugman also points to language in the 14th Amendment providing that “the validity of public debt shall not be questioned,” and suggests that language might be construed as authorizing the government to ignore the debt ceiling rather than defaulting on payments.

Which option should Democrats pursue? I’d say all of them. Above all, this is no time for officials to worry about seeming silly or undignified. The Biden administration is facing the threat of economic terrorism — that sounds extreme, but it’s basically what creating an artificial debt crisis amounts to. And it should do whatever it takes to face down that threat.

So–what now? The Treasury department is ramping up what it calls “extraordinary measures” to avoid default, but without a resolution, the country will stop being able to pay its bills sometime around June 5th.

Even if the administration was willing to “negotiate,”  Republicans cannot seem to agree on what it is they want. In yet another demonstration of their lack of discipline (and in many cases, sanity), several on the far Right are insisting on cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while others are focused on cutting the Defense budget. 

And what, you might ask, about the “moderate” members of the GOP? That’s easy: there aren’t any. Bret Stephens was right-– today’s GOP consists only of reptiles and invertebrates.

Stay tuned….

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Pool Tables And Gas Stoves

Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves that drumming up fear to achieve less-than-admirable ends is nothing new.

I was on the treadmill the other day, listening to old show tunes on my iPods. ( My very unsophisticated musical tastes run to Dean Martin and the Rat Pack, although I make exceptions, especially for show tunes.) I was speed-walking to the Music Man. 

“Ya Got Trouble” was the song sung by Professor Harold Hill when he is using the fact that a pool hall has opened in River City to stoke fear in the city’s residents.

You probably remember:

Friends, let me tell you what I mean. You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table. Pockets that mark the diff’rence Between a gentlemen and a bum, With a capital “B,” And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool! And all week long your River City Youth’ll be frittering away, I say your young men’ll be frittering! Frittering away their noontime, suppertime, chore time too! Get the ball in the pocket, Never mind gettin’ Dandelions pulled Or the screen door patched or the beefsteak pounded. Never mind pumpin’ any water ‘Til your parents are caught with the Cistern empty On a Saturday night and that’s trouble, Oh, yes we got lots and lots a’ trouble. I’m thinkin’ of the kids in the knickerbockers, Shirt-tail young ones, peekin’ in the pool Hall window after school, ya got trouble, folks.

Hill ramps up his warning, telling the “fine folks” of River City what’s in store:

One fine night, they leave the pool hall, Headin’ for the dance at the Armory! Libertine men and Scarlet women! And Rag-time, shameless music That’ll grab your son and your daughter With the arms of a jungle animal instinct.

Scary! Hill warns that, “the idle brain is the devil’s playground!” But then he offers the antidote to all this evil: a boy’s band. For which he will sell them the instruments and band uniforms.

Contemporary Harold Hills are selling medicines for imaginary diseases  all around us.

Did the Consumer Product Safety Commission issue a finding that gas stoves can cause asthma in small children? OMG! “They” are coming for our gas ranges! Those “woke” bureaucrats in Washington are going to ban the use of gas cookstoves, and they probably won’t even pay compensation! That’s what you get when you let Democrats run the administrative branch of government!

The fear and frenzy stirred up by GOP culture warriors prompted the head of the agency to issue a statement confirming the research results and the fact that the CPSC is looking for ways to reduce indoor air quality hazards, but does not intend to ban gas stoves. 

CPSC also is actively engaged in strengthening voluntary safety standards for gas stoves.  And later this spring, we will be asking the public to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.  This is part of our product safety mission – learning about hazards and working to make products safer. 

There’s a lesson here for Americans who laughed at the comedic effectiveness of Harold Hill, or are currently marveling at the ability of Republican culture warriors to convince lots of people that “the government” is coming for their gas stoves. Stoking fear about– and then directing anger against– otherwise innocuous matters, works. In the Music Man, the tactic sold band instruments; in the great gas stove eruption, it allows angry citizens to confirm their anti-“wokeness” and determination to vote against “the libs.”

We see the tactic all around us. 

Are LGBTQ people more visible? Those Drag Queen story hours and library books about Heather’s Two Mommies are turning toddlers gay!

Are the kids learning about events we older folks didn’t encounter in school? Things like the Trail of Tears or the Tulsa massacre? Allowing teachers to include the seamier side of American history is a “woke” attack on American Exceptionalism and the firmly-held belief that we are–and have always been–the good guys.

Did epidemiologists tell us to  protect our friends and families from disease by wearing masks during a pandemic? They are obviously part of that “woke” elite that is constantly attacking American freedom!

Etcetera, etcetera.

Ya got trouble, my friend–right here in  America! You need to fight back. Threaten the library. Scream at school board members and have the smug culture warriors who dominate your legislature tell teachers what they can and cannot say. Insist that the President fire Dr. Fauci! (Whoops–too late. He retired.)

And tell your friends on Facebook that the government will have to pry your gas stove out of your cold, dead, oven-mitted hands.

Harold Hill clones are everywhere.

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Education And The GOP

Yesterday, I posted about the continued effort by self-described  Hoosier”conservatives” to expand the state’s already massive school voucher program–a program that has failed to deliver the educational benefits that justified it in the first place, while deepening the divides between Americans of different races and religions.

A few days ago, I had coffee with one of Indiana’s most conscientious and effective state senators–Fady Qaddoura (who also happens to be a former, excellent student of mine)– who has introduced a bill to fully fund pre-kindergarden in the state. We discussed that proposal and several other education measures that have been or are likely to be introduced during the legislative session that just began.

In addition to the coffee with Senator Qaddoura, I’ve scheduled meetings with several other people who are knowledgable about both education policy and the Indiana General Assembly.  (My retirement allows me to dabble in matters that interest or infuriate me, and–with some prodding from my youngest son–I’ve decided to follow education bills in this session.)

In the course of our discussion, Senator Qaddoura pointed to a very interesting–and very revealing–aspect of voucher legislation that had not previously occurred to me.

The GOP’s voucher program classifies families that earn up to $145,000 per year as “poor” enough to qualify; so the state pays for their kids to attend private schools. When it comes to qualification for state-funded childcare and/or pre-kindergarden, however, families bringing home a mere $27,500 are “too rich” for their children to qualify.

This makes perfect sense–if the actual goal of the voucher program is to encourage an exodus from the state’s public schools, a goal that furthers other obvious goals of Indiana’s GOP: destroying the teacher’s union, and finding a “work-around” of the First Amendment’s prohibition against funneling tax dollars to religious organizations.

The difference in those definitions certainly sends a message about which Hoosiers our Republican legislators are there to serve.

The session has just started, but thus far, a proposall being referred to as the house’s “High School Redesign” bill has been introduced and given a low number (H.B. 1002), suggesting that it is is a GOP priority.  As another friend described it,

Basically, it is a new voucher-like program for high schoolers who would get some of their education through an employer/a company.  Student support dollars would follow the child to pay for this experience.

I haven’t yet read the bill, but if my friend’s description is correct, it looks like yet another effort to divert dollars from public school classrooms–at a time when Indiana ranks 41st among the states in teacher pay and the state’s public schools  have a massive teacher shortage.

Then, of course, there’s the culture war. Education lobbyists fully expect that an anti-CRT bill will be filed, and probably a “Don’t Say Gay” Florida rip-off.

One “culture war” effort that previously failed has already been refiled. It is back again in both the House and Senate (HB 1130 and SB 12). The bill’s synopsis reads:

Synopsis:Material harmful to minors. Removes schools and certainpublic libraries from the list of entities eligible for a specified defense to criminal prosecutions alleging: (1) the dissemination of material harmful to minors; or (2) a performance harmful to minors. Adds colleges and universities to the list of entities eligible for a specified defense to criminal prosecutions alleging: (1) the dissemination of material harmful to minors; or (2) a performance harmful to minors.

I assume that the identification of “harmful” material includes any reference to the existence of LGBTQ Hoosiers, and that the inclusion of “performance” is aimed at those “grooming” Drag Queen Story Hours. (Can’t have someone in a costume reading Green Eggs and Ham…)

Also on the culture war front, there are a few bills that would turn Indiana’s currently non-partisan school board elections into partisan contests. (Wouldn’t want a Democrat sneaking onto one of those school boards…)

There is some good news. In addition to Senator Qaddoura’s bills (one of which includes tightening oversight of charter schools) there is evidently a possibility that Indiana will finally join the great majority of states that pay for textbooks.

I realize that many if not most of the people who follow this blog don’t live in Indiana–and may be uninterested in details about our regressive legislature.  That said, these efforts are hardly confined to Indiana. ALEC provides the templates for many of these bills to numerous states, and observers fully expect our General Assembly to “borrow” from states like Florida, where Governor “what Constitution?” DeSantis and his obedient minions in that state’s legislature continue to wage war on gays, “woke” corporations and academic freedom.

Unlike Vegas, what happens in The Backward States does not stay in The Backward States.Unfortunately.

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Telling It Like It Is

Sometimes, a single observation accurately explains an otherwise confounding situation. Such an observation was included in a guest essay in last Wednesday’s New York Times.

The author began by citing survey results showing that Republicans are far more unhappy with their party’s lawmakers than Democrats are with theirs.

He then wrote:

The problem isn’t that Republicans don’t win legislative victories. It’s that legislative victories can’t answer the party’s underlying discontent, which is less about government policy than about American culture. Democrats worry about voting rights, gun control, climate change and abortion — enormous challenges, but ones that congressional leaders can at least try to address. What Republicans fear, above all, is social and demographic changes that leave white Christian men feeling disempowered, a complex set of forces that Republicans often lump together as “wokeness.”

When Donald Trump won the Presidency, those of us who attributed his support to racism were excoriated for oversimplification–characterizing all Trump voters as bigots was clearly unfair! Suggesting that votes for Trump and embrace of his MAGA message were evidence of White Supremacist attitudes oversimplified a complicated landscape and overlooked the impact of economic factors!

In the years since, however, numerous studies have confirmed that the single most reliable predictor of a vote for Trump was “racial resentment.” (As my youngest son has put it, only two kinds of people voted for Trump: those who agreed with his racism, and those who did not consider that racism disqualifying.)

The essay also cited to research identifying the GOP base as the population most upset by the current state of American culture.

Despite Republican power in Washington, these shifts have produced a deep gloom among the party’s base. A 2021 poll by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found that white evangelical Protestants — the heart and soul of the modern Republican Party — hold a bleaker view of America’s future than any other major racial or religious group. They’re more than 30 points less optimistic than Black Americans, the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting bloc. As the conservative writer David French noted in 2019, “one of the most striking aspects of modern Evangelical political thinking is its projection of inevitable decline.”

This pessimism is inextricably bound up with demographic change. A poll last year by the University of Maryland found that more than 60 percent of Republicans want to declare the United States a Christian nation. But according to the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped to 64 percent as of 2020 from 90 percent in the 1970s. Almost 60 percent of Republicans believe that “American customs and values” will grow weaker if white people lose their demographic majority. But non-Hispanic white people now constitute only about 60 percent of the population, down from around 80 percent in 1980, and already make up a minority of Americans under the age of 16.

It is no secret that the frantic opposition to immigration–especially immigration from the country’s Southern border–is an expression of racism.But as the essay points out, even if the United States totally stopped all immigration tomorrow, legal or illegal, the White share of the population would keep declining, because White Americans are much older than the population at large.

And the Court decision in Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade–a long-held aspiration of the hard Right–will not and can not reverse the changes in the gender norms of American society, changes that have empowered women and infuriated the MAGA base.

 A 2020 survey by the research firm PerryUndem found that Americans who oppose abortion rights are also deeply hostile to the #metoo movement and believe that “most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.” Overturning Roe won’t change the fact that most Republicans think American society discriminates against men.

Bottom line: Looming over all of the other problems faced by a self- emasculated Kevin McCarthy is the real nature of the GOP’s discontent. McCarthy can’t return America to the 1950s or even the 1980, but ultimately, that’s what the MAGA warriors want. The impossibility of that demand is why today’s GOP has no agenda, no philosophy and no platform. The (very slim) Republican House majority can only continue to engage in performative antics, throwing tantrums and acting out.

For today’s GOP, nostalgia for lost privilege is everything. Governing is entirely beside the point.

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The Party’s Over

Okay. I was waiting for the spectacle to conclude before commenting on the ongoing sh*t show in the House of Representatives, but I can no longer restrain myself. 

Let me begin with points made by observers more astute and informed than I am.

After day one, Robert Reich wrote that we are witnessing the “mindless hostility of a political party that’s lost any legitimate reason for being. For all practical purposes, the Republican party is over.”  

The party line became confused, its message garbled, its purpose unclear. It thereby created an opening for a third and far angrier phase, centering on resentment and authoritarianism…

Today’s Republican base is fueling hate. It is the epicenter of an emerging anti-democracy movement.

What we are seeing played out today in the contest for the speakership of the House involves all of these phases – what remains of the small-government establishment, the cultural warriors and the hate-filled authoritarians – engaged in hopeless, hapless combat with each other.

In the Washington Post, Matt Bai focused on McCarthy’s multiple deficits.

During the Boehner era, which now seems like some distant eon when woolly mammoths roamed the Earth, the future of the Republican Party was said to belong to three of his younger colleagues. They called themselves the “young guns,” but a better metaphor now would be the three little pigs.

The pigs were Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy. The first two left when the “MAGA wolf” blew their houses down.

Unlike the other two, who got by on guile and smarts, McCarthy’s gift was his easy charm. No one was going to mistake him for a Mensa candidate, but he was fun and flexible.

If McCarthy emerges with the title by ceding effective control to the crazies, he will  be neutered.  As Bai points out, appeasement of extremists never works . Acquiescence to irrational demands just encourages more irrational demands.

As McCarthy’s humiliation continued through day two, Reed Galen of the Lincoln Project wrote (no link)

This is not a clash of ideals on what kind of tax policy or health care is best for our country. It is a bare-knuckle brawl for power – and given Democratic control of the White House and Senate, all the GOP can do is cause chaos — it is a brawl that is not going to end well for America.

Do you, reading this email, think letting Lauren Boebert fire the Speaker on a whim is a good idea? What about letting MTG, Gaetz, and others have their own private lawsuit power? That’s what the crazies are asking for in their “negotiations.” Not policy. Not representing their constituents. Personal power to take this thing off a cliff and try to hang it around Joe Biden’s neck.

If there is any doubt about that desire to take America off a cliff, one holdout was  quoted as saying he wouldn’t vote for McCarthy without a commitment to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling. He defined that commitment as “a non-negotiable item.”  If that isn’t insanity, it’s a close relative. 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has observed that–while every Republican Congressperson isn’t the same as Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz– virtually all of them rely on a coalition of voters that supports Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz. Today’s GOP is a “balkanized party made up of elected officials who either are Jim Jordan or aren’t willing to cross Jim Jordan.”

As if the chaos, dysfunction and sheer insanity on display aren’t worrisome enough, Robert Hubbell has highlighted an even more ominous development. 

McCarthy made a smidgen of progress that may have secured an additional vote or two on Wednesday evening. But that progress came at a deeply disturbing cost that should concern every American. The details of the agreement negotiated by McCarthy are complicated and obscure—deliberately so because they involve a “treaty” between two dark money PACs that fund GOP candidates for the House. The fact that the election of a constitutional officer—the Speaker of the House—is being brokered by dark money PACs is an insult to the rule of law and an open wound on democracy…

To use a technical term, the agreement “stinks to high Heaven.” 

At the end of day three, it turned out that even this unprecedented intervention by the GOP’s dark money donors wasn’t enough to move the lunatic caucus. As I write this, there have been eleven votes, and the House still has no Speaker. 

Disarray is too mild a description. We are watching the death throes of an American political party. The question now is: what comes next?

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