The House votes McCarthy out as Speaker
Lawmakers have voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership role, the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that the chamber voted to boot a member from the top job.
Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair. The final vote was 216 to 210 in favor of McCarthy’s ouster.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a measure against McCarthy known as a motion to vacate on Monday night, accusing him of breaking promises he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January.
I think this is a bad development. You notice why I say that? Let me highlight the reason: “Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair.” This was approved by Democrats and just a tiny number of Republicans. Do those eight Republicans – led by Gaetz – think that appropriations votes, or much of anything else, will go any better with another person in charge? If so, I think they are wrong.
In my opinion, now there will be an even more bitter civil war among Republicans, weakening them. And who will become Speaker? My prediction is that it won’t be someone better than McCarthy. I’d be fine with having those predictions be too gloomy, and seeing some better result. But at the moment I see this as a negative development.
Did McCarthy make promises to them on which he then reneged?
Art Deco:
In those three article I linked at the end, you’ll find some discussion of that issue.
This is going to make Republicans look like rowdy, disorganized amateurs and could hurt them next year.
Abraxas:
That’s because they ARE rowdy, disorganized amateurs.
The Democrats wouldn’t have voted for this if they thought this wouldn’t be hurting the Republicans.
The USA will either get its financial house in order, or it will inevitably deteriorate into chaos, disorder, and poverty when all the “ruin” is used up.
McC was elected Speaker after explicitly promising to return to regular order, and not to do more CRs.
Then, he did not return to regular order, and passed a CR.
Better to make a stand now while there is a chance to turn things around. They probably did not make their stand in the absolute best manner. So be it. My usually hard-red congresscritter voted in favor of the CR, and for keeping McC. I called his office to express my displeasure.
McC, being a smart and experienced politician, thought he could make yet another promise that he had no way to keep, and no intention of keeping.
Good on the R’s that called him on it.
Apart from opinion building and exposing investigations, what power does the House have against the lawless and hyper-partisan Executive State except spending bills?
Yes, there are genuine hurdles (see House Speaker history). But since McCarthy nailed together a unified front last January, the fiscal condition of the US has worsened. His can kicking strategy is thereby rejected.
From September 19th, SC Rep Nancy Mace is miffed at McCarthy not keeping his promises and is “very frustrated” and “unhappy” with his leadership. “We are spending our children into debt permanently,” she concludes. (Go to 2:10 HERE https://uk.news.yahoo.com/rep-nancy-mace-very-unhappy-192317399.html)
Mace also voted to oust McCarthy today.
At least no one can accuse the GOP as being part of a hive mind.
We have the GOP in a civil war, while the Ds march along like Borg drones. Looks like the Borg win. Resistance is futile.
I do not think you are overly pessimistic Neo.
In fact, consider this scenario. The GOP cannot unite as a bloc to vote for the next speaker, while the Democrats, as always, do.
I suppose that many people ignorantly believe that the Speaker must come from the majority party. Pelosi as speaker?
Anyone who has paid attention knows that McCarthy was in a very hard place. The Democrats, with their media allies, would have successfully blamed the GOP for a shutdown in the eyes of most of the mostly tuned out electorate. Biden, or his puppeteer, would have guaranteed that the shutdown would be as painful as possible. Did McCarthy have 100% of his caucus prepared to take the heat? Of course not.
Gaetz and his crowd may have the emotional high ground, but they are trudging through a political minefield on the path they are following.
The eight who voted with the Democrats will find this to be their most consequential vote. So ends their short political career.
A new kind of failure theater.
They just took Hunter, and Brandon, and Bowman, and the Trump trial out of the spotlight, 8 new clowns.
I didn’t support McCarthy for speaker but was willing to give him a chance, he said a lot of nice things and made a lot of promises to reform business as usual. But he broke his promises and and we are now right back where we started except we’ve added another $2 trillion to our debt.
It may be true that the alternative to McCarthy is worse but to continue down the same path with McCarthy is to guarantee the same results that put us in the mess we’re in. There is now at least a chance for some real change. A powerful politician actually has been held accountable for his lies and deceptions.
Sometimes having “Florida Man” in the House is not a good thing.
Unbelievable. And unbelivably stupid. I’ve already prepared myself for the worst of the next year.
Who is going to be able to win a majority to become Speaker? Any Republican? Which Republican would want the job considering what would have to be given up to get it?
This is a big win for Democrats. Instead of talking about Biden’s failures, now we’ll be talking about the insanity and incompetance of elected Republicans for how ever long it takes to elect a new speaker.
Politicians reneging on promises? I just thought that’s what they did.
we can walk and chew gum at the same time, can’t we,
At some point, to save our fiscal house, the government will have to be shut down for months if necessary. Perhaps the wrong time is with a 4 vote majority, but would it really have been any different if the McCarthy held a 40 vote majority?
The reasons for federal deficits are (i) entitlements and (ii) defense spending. Discretionary domestic spending is tiny in comparison. Anyone who isn’t willing to tackle entitlements–which would certainly include Donald Trump and Matt Goetz–is just rearranging the deck chairs.
We are never “right back where we started.”
Time.
Events.
Things have changed and actions have consequences.
Groundhog Day was a movie.
What percentage of the federal budget is defense spending?
From the WSJ article Neo linked to: “Mr. McCarthy had worked until the day before a shutdown deadline to pass a 45-day funding bill that included a spending reduction, money for border security, and a commission on the growing federal debt. It wouldn’t have passed the Senate, but it would at least have given the House leverage in conference. The GOP’s rejectionists defeated everything.”
Twenty-one Republicans voted against that bill, I presume because it failed to address the $2.2 trillion deficit we’re facing. The government created a crisis by disabling the economy during COVID and are now using that to justify huge deficits since then.
While all this sounds disastrous, shutting down the government for a short period was probably the only way conservatives could have won any concessions from the Senate, where fiscal restraint is a four letter word.
Rather than blaming the conservatives that want to do something to reign in spending, we should be blaming the Senate for refusing to show any desire to keep the US from drowning in a sea of debt, that, given rising interest rates will only result in greater deficit spending. Borrowing money to pay for the interest on money you’ve borrowed isn’t a long-term solution.
Had the government shut down, it would have been the fourth time in a decade. The longest shutdown was under President Trump at the end of 2018, when the government went on extended vacation for 34 days.
I think something drastic needed to be done, and yes, Biden would have made the shutdown as painful as possible, but social security, medicare and medicaid payments wouldn’t be part of any shutdown.
Yes, it’s getting increasingly difficult for conservatives to tell the truth about why a shutdown would have been necessary, given the bias of the MSM, but as I remember it, shutdowns have been the only method to force real negotiations.
Here’s a Reuter’s story showing the timeline of government shutdowns since Reagan.
This is the spending bill that failed with 21 Republicans voting against it that prompted McCarthy to pass a bill using Democrat votes, which of course prompted the move to oust McCarthy.
Republicans reject own funding bill, US government shutdown imminent
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hardline-republican-holdouts-push-us-government-closer-shutdown-2023-09-29/
Tactically, a mistake. Strategically, maybe not.
McCarthy made a number of promises, but the big one, to fellow members, was to quit handing power to the bureaucrats by passing a generic budget. Instead of, in regular orders, passing individual department budgets, with fairly specific appropriations, it was the the money equivalent of “kill ’em all, let G_d sort ”em out”.
The US national debt is now larger, in both dollars and % of GDP, than it was during WWII! Then, at least, we could say, ” When the war’s over, we can take all the money we’ve been spending on bombs and tanks and ships and pay back what we’ve borrowed.”
What war is going to be over? There’s a lot of bullet-biting to be done, and regular appropriations were a baby-step towards that, McCarthy couldn’t get it done. Forget the last few weeks histrionics, he’s had TWO YEARS. No, it was kick the can, “I have a fundraiser to attend, and I’ll be dead or rich and retired when those chickens get here”.
Pour encourager les autres. Strategic, maybe.
Defense is 13%, entitlements 55% (I guess) YTD
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
The GOPe will never get better unless and until they are individually held accountable. This is a step in the right direction.
On the last debt ceiling and on the last continuing resolution McCarthy sold out conservatives to the Dems. His replacement as Speaker will have this example before him to stiffen his spine when Biden asks him, too, to cave.
We don’t exist to vote for the GOP. When it doesn’t represent us, it needs to be held accountable. Not doing that is what got us here. Glad to see a change.
Valid point Y81.
All of the huffing and puffing is meaningless unless they are willing to cut into Grandma’s SS, Medicare, etc. (and mine as well). Of course they could start by cutting off the illegal settlers.
Right. We know the answer to any of that.
Grandstanders gotta grandstand and that is what Gaetz and company are doing.
Mark Levin is ripping these 8 dolts a new a**hole, deservedly, on the radio.
Inglorious sons of bachelors vote with Democrats, not conservatives.
Even President Trump is calling this ill advised.
Maroons on center stage.
Om, I’ll bet that there are more go-along-to-get-along republican Congress critters primaried out of a job, than the number of the kick-out-McCarthy crew that lose in the next election.
For some context on where we are fiscally, the usual metric is federal deficit as a % of GDP.
1983 – 5.7%
2009- 9.7%
2019- 4.5%
2020- 14.7%
2021- 11.8%
2022- 5.3%
Most years the number was around 3%
Another metric is public debt as a % of GDP.
2009- 77%
2013- 100%
2019- 103%
2020- 133%
2021- 122%
2022- 121%
Q1 2023- 117%
Q2 2023- 119%
Numbers are from St. Louis Fed.
These are not healthy numbers
Vote with Democrats???
No, the Dems voted WITH THEM. A little different framing.
Pelosi? Schiff?
AOC has a following.
Take your choice.
Maybe Bowman, eh?
The race is wide open.
I used to facetiously say, “I will burn that bridge when I get to it.”
13% for defense. Trump wanted NATO to do what? 2%?
Hey Gaetz, it was a joke; and so are you.
McCarthy organized the votes of Democrats against conservatives in order to pick our pockets for over $2 trillion, but Gaetz is the bad guy for “voting with the Democrats” to move one hog off his prime spot at the trough. Interesting…
It’s not Trump’s doing, but ever since his involvement, it’s been refreshing to see the masks get ripped off.
I personally have more faith in the GOP than I did this morning, BECAUSE one of their own is being held accountable. From here one of two things happens: a) the House GOPe all understand that they have to keep promises made to conservatives and they stop cooperating with the Dems and Biden, or b) the GOPe takes the mask off and starts openly working with the Dems.
a) would be the preferred result, but b) would make it pretty clear whose side the GOPe has always been on, and hopefully wake some people up to the con. For a long time these guys took our money and votes for granted and then did what they pleased to favor their cronies.
Oldflyer,
I’m actually in favor of going after entitlements, but there’s no need to go after grandma to right the ship.
There’s a relatively painless, multi-year, tiered approach to getting entitlements under control but means testing needs to be part of it. If someone wants money from the government; for retirement or medical care… They have to open their books and prove their net worth is below a certain level. We don’t expect tax payers to fund nursing home stays so the wealthy can pass their savings down to their kids. So why does the government take money from my pay and my kids’ pay to send a social security check to Warren Buffet?
It should be phased in over decades, so those who paid into social security as is don’t get cheated, but start with getting it right for those 15 and under now, and then everybody else gets a haircut based on their age and net worth. The youngest and wealthiest get crew cuts, poor grandma keeps all her hair and rich grandpa gets a little off the top.
y81-
Agreed. Thanks.
It’s not that challenging to repair Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and put them on an actuarially-sound footing. They. Just. Don’t. Feel. Like. It.
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Please note that the Congresses in office during 1945-48 managed to balance the federal budget in just two years. There was no economic disaster associated with that. There were adults in the room then. They retired at the end of 1960.
It’s important to remember that Republicans in the House have the power to block just about anything. None of Biden’s laws or budgets can be passed without their assent.
And McCarthy delivered that assent for Biden when it counted: when there was money at stake. It was always more important to McCarthy to see that his cronies got their hands on our money, and he proved it in a huge way with the debt ceiling a few months ago and the continuing resolution just now.
In both cases, he threw away the full loaf and brought back a quarter, while the Conservative Inc talking heads solemnly reminded us that “half a loaf is better than none”. There’s nothing he’s done as Speaker that makes a dent against that $2 trillion he helped pick from our pockets.
And the “party before principles” crowd is trying to scare us with the specter of a Dem Speaker now. There are literally hundreds of House Republicans to choose from, and there can only be a Dem Speaker if–the GOPe sells out conservatives AGAIN. Like a wife-beating husband, “look what you made us do”. Hopefully most conservatives won’t accept the role.
The Democrats wouldn’t have voted for this if they thought this wouldn’t be hurting the Republicans.
Any thoughts on this? Democrats aren’t infallible, maybe they screwed up. But no doubt they thought it would damage Republicans, agreed?
Rufus T., where is this plan to get entitlements under control written down?
How many people know about SSI? SSI = supplementary security income. Who gets it?
“SSI provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income or resources.”
A little-known fact is that many illegals who manage to get green cards (and many do) can bring their elderly parent into the United States, and they can then apply for and receive SSI. Or legal immigrants can do the same. The elderly parents have never paid a dime into any fund but are paid by our government.
Why can’t this be tightened up?
They’re going to have to raise the maximum income that is taxed for FISA as well as setting limits on net worth to receive benefits.
None of this will be easy. There is a whole industry out there that depends on the income of retired and elderly people. They are not going to let the benefits be reduced without a huge fight.
Not to mention that SS/Medicare/Medicaid is a a powerful strawman for the Democrats.
How many people know about SSI?
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I do. IIRC, expenditure on SSI prior to 2020 amounted to < 0.3% of gross domestic product.
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/10/03/mitch-mcconnell-persuaded-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-to-donate-millions-to-anti-trump-republicans/
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Would not put this past our ghastly Senate Republican ‘leader’ for one minute.
In the short term, this is an incredible idiotic move. But it is reflective of the monumental frustration and anger among the GOP base. Gaetz is irresponsible to exploit that frustration and anger in such an ill advised way. But he would never have succeeded were the anger not present, and with great intensity, in the first place.
Trump tapped into that anger adroitly, and he has stoked it endlessly over the last eight years, but he didn’t create it.
It’s important to keep in mind: many GOP voters and conservatives in general are to the point where they do not care if Democrats win. They’re extremely jaded and often convinced Democrats will win through fraud in 2024, regardless. So why not go down fighting, and fighting like hell?
I don’t agree with the above level of cynicism, but I do understand it. I think McCarthy has done a pretty good job, given the narrow GOP majority; he certainly exceeded my expectations.
In the long term, I’m not sure this development will have much impact on anything. In itself, it’ll be long forgotten by next year. It really depends on what comes next. I don’t know the rules of the House, but if Gaetz extracts more concessions from McCarthy and the latter is quickly reinstated, all of this will fade quickly. Or, if the GOP Caucus comes to a consensus very quickly on a new Speaker, this incident will also fade away. Granted, the latter seems unlikely. If, however, this drags on for any length of time and affects the next budget vote…well it probably will negatively impact the GOP, possibly significantly
The Left’s successful March Through the Institutions has both dumbed down and degraded the American public’s moral sensibilities to the point where, in the aggregate, it is incapable of electing a sufficient amount of morally upright leadership. So much so, that it has reached the point where just eight Republicans are left who are willing to fight against America’s destruction.
I am not sweating this one.
I do want to see the Biden investigation going, regardless of who is Speaker.
Open borders and the whole transgender the kids and women’s spaces are currently the Democrat’s weakness.
At the state level and at the national level, Republicans must be bold about those things. Leave no doubt where we stand. Win, loose or draw.
I don’t see McCarthy being reinstated. and I certainly don’t see him making any concessions to Matt Gaetz to do so. Being dropped like this is a humiliation that it’s hard to get over, and McCarthy may not even want to go on. Without a real leader — for however long that may be — Republicans aren’t likely to have much of a strategy at all, let alone put it into effect. When they do get a leader, what are the odds that he or she would be better than McCarthy? Of course one can hope, but I think McCarthy was actually better than Hastert or Boehner or Ryan.
If this thing is about the debt, I do want to point out that Trump was never a fisical conservative.
He seemed to want to , at best, grow our way out of debt by growing the economy and increase the tax base.
Right or wrong, Trump is on trial for borrowing money. Not exactly a ” tight wad” when he came to business spending ?
Somehow, there is some irony in all of this. The Republicans are split over how to approach the debt and the Republican front runner is being tried over his practices of borrowing money.
A step in the ‘Right’ direction?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/acting-speaker-orders-pelosi-to-vacate-her-office-the-room-will-be-re-keyed/ar-AA1hEQ4E
Art Deco @7:49pm,
Very well and concisely stated.
Congress has failed at many of its fundamental duties for a long time.
Self loathing freedom haters are shoving the republic into the maw and our side is discussing political strategy. That’s precisely how we got here.
Basically it comes down to – keep the speaker and continue to lose slowly, or toss the speaker, send a message and hope something comes out of the chaos.
Sometimes you just have to roll the dice. Losing slowly is still losing.
Art Deco:
When that happened back in the 40s, what percentage of the federal budget was entitlements compared to today?
The other thing that puts context to this is the lack of support from the GOP side with respect to the bogus ethics investigation into Matt Gaetz.
When your own side doesn’t keep their promises, colludes with the enemy and doesn’t defend you against the enemies bogus accusations – are they really on your side ?
https://www.newsweek.com/could-matt-gaetz-expelled-house-gop-ethics-kevin-mccarthy-1831427
Note the Democrat controlled Feds investigated and declines to prosecute – yet the REPUBLICAN controlled committee continues to investigate Gaetz.
“The Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee quietly relaunched its probe into Gaetz this past July, CNN reported.
The investigation was originally opened in April 2021 alongside a Justice Department probe over allegations that Gaetz was part of a scheme that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.
Federal officials concluded their two-year investigation in February without handing down any criminal charges, but sources told CNN the Justice Department’s decision will not impact what the committee will and won’t investigate.
The details of the investigation have long been kept under wraps, but center around claims Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use; shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor; misused state identification records; converted campaign funds to personal use; and accepted bribes.
Gaetz has long professed his innocence of both the investigative claims and McCarthy’s contention the Floridian blames the now-former House Speaker for the reinvigorated investigation.”
https://nypost.com/2023/10/03/why-matt-gaetz-led-charge-to-remove-kevin-mccarthy-as-speaker/
“Jon baker on October 3, 2023 at 9:08 pm said:
If this thing is about the debt, I do want to point out that Trump was never a fisical conservative.
He seemed to want to , at best, grow our way out of debt by growing the economy and increase the tax base.”
That is also the plan being advocated by Vivek Ramiswami. Not sure what plan the rest of the GOP has other than to drown slowly clipping the ticket on the way down.
Possible new Speaker: Byron Donalds?
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1709353236681970018
Melisande, you are on fire. Totally agree with you.
LordAzrael:
One thing you can say about Gaetz is that he’s very very full of himself. Maybe, just maybe, he’s also guilty of the sort of corruption detailed in that list in your comment. I have no idea if that is the case or not, but it would not surprise me.
I’m having a little trouble getting a head count of the number of members in the House Freedom Caucus (the conservative House group). But it appears to be somewhere in the vicinity of 30. And yet only seven others voted with Gaetz to achieve this palace coup – all the rest were Democrats. To me, this indicates that even the most conservative members of the House are mostly NOT with Gaetz on this. I think this was a big grandstanding move by Gaetz.
Again, I suppose it’s possible that something good will come of it. I just don’t think it’s at all likely, and I think it’s much more likely that it will have been helpful only to the Democrats.
The “burn it down” wing of the party doesn’t care, but I do.
I also consider McConnell to be the real stumbling block. The coup was against the wrong person, in my opinion.
If you need almost entirely Democrats to “roll the dice,” then it’s not the time to do so. Gaetz made a power move with nearly 100% of his support being Democrats – what does that tell you? I think he rolled snake eyes.
McCarthy was fired because he did not keep his promices. This should be the standard for ALL people who work for government. You not do your job or abusing your authority, you should be fired.
The democrats are the type of people who pull fire alarms.
Robert:
And it was Democrats pulling this fire alarm. Unanimous vote by the Democrats. What does that tell you?
Why not…
https://news.yahoo.com/texas-republican-nominate-trump-speaker-003454745.html
cb:
Trump isn’t known to have the skills necessary to corral votes. What’s more, he’ll be spending his time split between campaigning and court appearances. He wouldn’t accept the job, and if he did accept it he wouldn’t be able to perform it.
Unanimous vote by the Democrats. What does that tell you?
Suppose the vote had gone the other way, with the Dems helping McCarthy keep his spot? Would you say “what does that tell you”, that he accepted their help?
McCarthy losing his position does not pick $2 trillion out of our pockets. McCarthy keeping
his position has… and counting.
If it’s now wrong to accept Democrat votes, well after all McCarthy accepted their help, raising the debt ceiling and for the continuing resolution. Not one dime of that $2 trillion could have been added without McCarthy and the Democrats helping each other.
But of course Biden and the Dems don’t care which hog takes his place at the trough if it’s not one of theirs, and as long as the new boss hog lets them get their share.
The anti-war left during the Iraq War always used to say that fighting terrorism was playing into bin Ladin’s hands and therefore we shouldn’t do it. I’m seeing plenty of GOPe types saying the same thing about holding McCarthy accountable. I don’t think it’s wise to let the other side dictate what you do, it either makes sense or it doesn’t on its own merits.
And the implied threats about a Dem Speaker say a lot more than is safe for the GOPe talking heads to have known. Threatening to throw the House to the other side undermines the rationale for which any conservative holds their nose and votes for them and sends them money.
However it works out, it’s refreshing to see the masks come off…
I have no doubt that when I got 67, the clowns in Congress will pass a bill so that only POC are eligible to receive social security and Medicare.
Melisande:
Do you really think that’s a hard question to answer? It’s actually exceptionally easy: any GOP Speaker who got elected with all Democrats supporting him or her and only eight Republicans supporting him or her would be a Democrat in disguise – and not a very effective disguise, at that.
“Accepting Democrat votes” when almost 100% of the Republicans are against you is not okay. And it’s not what McCarthy did – it’s what Gaetz did.
And it’s not what McCarthy did – it’s what Gaetz did.
I think Buckley once said that pushing old ladies into traffic and pushing old ladies out of traffic are two different things even though both involve pushing old ladies. Accepting Dem votes to hold the Speaker accountable to conservative principles, and accepting Dem votes to siphon $2 trillion from the taxpayers, surely is also two different things.
There is nothing Gaetz did, or McCarthy did, that speaks as loudly as that $2 trillion for anyone who cares about where this country is headed. When Biden demanded, McCarthy delivered. And now he can’t because he was held accountable. Not holding them accountable has got us where we are, past time we tried something different.
Melisande:
Did you read my comment addressed to you at 10:53? Perhaps you were composing yours and didn’t see it. Because in it I pointed out what you seem to be ignoring – the fact that Gaetz’s support was almost totally Democrats and almost no Republicans. That should tell you something.
There are 221 GOP members of the House. Plenty of them are conservative, but not the majority. The answer to getting more conservatives in the House is electing more conservatives to the House. Gaetz was joined by only a small handful of his fellow conservative members of the House. The rest of the conservatives can see his move for what it is. And the Democrats see it too, and revel in what he has done.
Melisande:
Funny that you should quote Buckley. Buckley wouldn’t be supporting Gaetz’s move. I am fairly sure Buckley would define it as pushing old ladies into traffic.
the fact that Gaetz’s support was almost totally Democrats and almost no Republicans. That should tell you something.
It tells me that there’s not very many conservatives in the House, and it tells me to thank God for the handful there are, and that they were able to do as much as they did. The next Speaker will hopefully be more careful about keeping his promises.
I pointed out what you seem to be ignoring
Well, in fairness, you have never addressed anything I said about the $2 trillion. All McCarthy had to do was nothing to make that number zero, and instead he did a lot of work to see to it that money got taken from us and spent. He’s not going to get to do that again. Asking him pretty please to stop was tried and didn’t work.
Melidande and Lord Az… and Buddahaha:
Playing the counterfactuals already? What if McCarthy had made a deal with the Dems, you know sold his soul to the devil, so to speak? Nope that was the Infamous 8. LOL
The 8 needed all the Democrats for their inside hit, and the Democrats saw it was to the Democrat’s advantage to help “Republicans” become weaker. Who benefits? Democrats. You think the Dems regret this one bit? How about a big nope, sucker.
Not rocket science. Not even rocket science fiction.
But, but, but in 2024 the gang of 8 will be 8 cubed, then they will fix things. (sarc infinite)
Send Matt Gaetz another million, it can’t hurt (LOL).
None of this will be easy. There is a whole industry out there that depends on the income of retired and elderly people. They are not going to let the benefits be reduced without a huge fight.
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The pols just cannot be bothered. The knotty problem would be staging the adjustments to the benefits regime.
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A. Institute cohort-specific retirement ages. The retirement age for your cohort fluctuates during your worklife per demographic developments, then freezes at age 55. The object is for the ratio of old age beneficiaries to employed workers to bounce around a set point.
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B. Debar the award of disability benefits for ‘anxiety disorders’ or ‘mood disorders’.
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C. Fix the ratio of Medicare expenditures to total employee compensation. Maintain that ratio by instituting deductibles which you adjust every year.
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D. Fix the ratio of Medicaid distributions to the states to a fixed % of total personal income flow.
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E. Make some amendments to program rules to encourage states to maintain expenditures to a fixed % of the state’s personal income flow by instituting deductibles and to finance the state’s contributions with a tripartite income tax (making use of a broad and uncomplicated definition of taxable income). Part 1 would be a flat-rate on income and finance long-term care finance. Part two would be a flat rate on income which has a maximal dollar value (adjusted each year according to changes in the state’s nominal personal income per capita); this would finance part of medical expenses for beneficiaries. Part three would be assessed only on those who sign up for medical benefits. It would consist of a flat rate assessment on any portion of one’s income over an exemption. The exemption would be in the form of a dollar value per household member and would be adjusted annually according to changes in nominal personal income per capita in the state. Two of these flat rates would be modest, the third considerable.
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F. Institute a broad definition of taxable income. Inflow beneficial to one’s household outside the definition would be judgments, indemnities, gifts, inheritance, capital gains, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, SSI, veteran’s benefits, federal disaster relief, a miscellany of in-kind benefits distributed by governments and philanthropies, and the excess of nominal interest receipts over real interest receipts.
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G. Define federal income tax liability as the following: (0.4 x Y) – P – (m x c), where ‘Y’ is one’s discoverable taxable income, ‘P’ is FICA withheld on your pay stub during the year, ‘m’ is the number of members of your household (which requires a worksheet to calculate) and ‘c’ is a general credit which is adjusted each year per annual changes in the value of nominal personal income per capita. If the resultant is a positive number, that’s your income tax liability for the year. If it’s negative, you’re due a rebate. The maximum value of the net rebate is the absolute value of the resultant of the formula. However, if this exceeds the cap applicable to your household, you get only the capped value. If all of the signatories of the return qualify as elderly or disabled, the cap is a function of nominal personal income in your region of the country. If none of the signatories is, the cap is a function of the taxpayers’ earned income. If one is and one is not, the cap is an average of these values. The net rebates is meant to be an income supplement for the elderly and disabled and matching funds for earned income for the rest of the population. Actual federal income tax collections should amount to roughly 3% of gross domestic product.
==
H. Calculate FICA withholding according to an employee’s total compensation. Eliminate the employer’s portion. The maximum to withhold would be adjusted each year according to the annual change in nominal employee compensation per capita.
==
I. Eliminate federal subsidies to mundane expenditures (food, housing, utility bills). That means SNAP, WIC, school breakfast and lunch programs, public housing finance, housing vouchers, LIHEAP, and a mess of mini-programs run by HHS. Eliminate federal financing of TANF. Shut down the Food and Nutrition Service, HUD (except for the health and safety regulator), and important components of HHS.
==
J. Limit federal finance of primary and secondary schooling to the families of civilian federal employees posted abroad, to servicemen’s families, to reservation Indians, to the issue of miscellaneous persons in itinerant occupations, and to residents of the low census insular dependencies (in re specialty programs, not common and garden schooling). Limit federal finance of tertiary schooling to these segments, to federal employees who qualify for staff development scholarships, to veterans, and to those enrolled in ROTC. Shut down the Education Department except for the National Center for Educational Statistics and except for a temporary resolutions authority to wind down the student loan program.
==
K. End discretionary grants to private corporations, government corporations, and persons with institutional addresses, except for emergency disaster relief, and the finance of some inter-governmental agencies.
==
L. End special purpose grants to state and local governments bar for Medicaid, unemployment compensation, a residue of the highway program, disaster relief, indemnities for torts derived from federal regulation, and some spot fee-for-service payments. Distribute an unrestricted grant to state and territorial governments. The distribution to each would be directly correlated with population, inversely correlated with per capita personal income, and directly correlated with employee compensation per worker in the jurisdiction in question. The total value of this grant might be around $500 bn at this time.
==
M. Limit the applicability of federal corporation taxes to ‘interstate’ corporations, i.e. corporations for which (a) the parent company is domiciled abroad, (b) the company has a foreign subsidiary, or (c) the company employs people outside the state in which it was chartered. A company might apply to retain its ‘intrastate’ status if it could demonstrate that it’s out-of-state employees were itinerant and accounted for no more than 4% of the company’s workforce. Allow a business corporation to discharge its obligation by paying a particular % of its total revenues or by issuing to the federal treasury shares in the corporation of a number equal to a particular % of outstanding shares. The tax liability of non-business corporations would be a function of the “excess-over-ordinary” compensation paid to their managerial employees (with ‘ordinary’ defined by a formula including the total number of employees, the number of managerial employees, and nominal employee compensation per capita per year in the economy at large).
==
N. Set the levy rate on capital gains equal to the terminal rate on income. However, tax only real capital gains, not nominal capital gains by indexing the purchase price to the GDP deflator. Should the seller have incurred a real loss, he’d have a credit with the treasury whose nominal value would be adjusted each year per changes in the GDP deflator and which he could work off with subsequent income or capital gains liabilities.
==
O. Institute a federal value added tax. The tax would apply to any transaction to which income, payroll, capital gains, and gift-and-inheritance taxes did not apply bar sales of discarded, donated, and salvaged property. It would have a single rate.
==
P. Switch to defined-contribution plans for financing federal employee retirement. Limit the accumulation of early retirement credit to soldiers, uniformed police, and construction workers.
==
Q. Auction off ALL the federal government’s loan portfolios. GinneMae, FannieMae, FreddieMac, FarmerMac, SallieMae, all of them. Sell off all the insurance policies as well. Shut down the issuing agencies or auction them off.
==
R. Design an indemnity plan to compensate the holders of federal grazing permits. If you can complete that task, auction off all the land held by the Bureau of Land Management.
==
S. Assign all ‘old growth forest’ to the National Park Service. These sequestered, auction off Forest Service lands in any state which has enacted a constitutional prohibition on levying property taxes on forest land.
==
T. Auction off the Postal Service
==
U. Auction off the federal rail services.
@om:What if McCarthy had made a deal with the Dems, you know sold his soul to the devil, so to speak?
He already did, over and over, and cost you and me $2 trillion. Now he has to stop for a little while–unless he just decides to help install a Dem Speaker, or change parties, and help run up another $2 or $20 trillion. Yeah, that will show me he was the good guy, lol.
Melisande:
More for you to ponder (not that you will):
Melisande:
I bet before today you would have said there were more than 8 conservatives in the House. Now you define “conservative” as “going along with Gaetz” and his stupid move?
Absurd.
I’ve addressed the appropriations bills in many posts over the years on this blog. Go look them up if you’re curious.
Oh my lord! The gang of 8 are the real conservatives in the House!
LOL, They just have to cooperate and coordinate with the other hidden “conservatives” (the Democrats) to preserve freedom?
Is Gaetz infatuation like early onset dementia? There seems to be a departure from reality going on.
@neo:More for you to ponder (not that you will):
I’m not sure that jab is really necessary, neo. There’s nothing I’ve said to you that’s been disrespectful or assumed you were not willing to read and ponder anything that you might disagree with. It’s your blog though, take whatever tone you like…
I’ve already read and pondered what you quoted, thanks, more than one right-leaning blogger has posted it, and I totally agree with it that longtime DC insiders were not happy about this move. I’m sure you can find dozens if not hundreds more DC insiders saying similar things, and if you post them I’ll take a look, but I’ve been reading a lot of them lately, and seeing the same kind of message coordination we see (and decry) in the rest of the media.
I’m pretty sure that this development has interfered somewhat with their plans to take and spend more of your money and mine. I agree with them on that.
om:
People such as Melisande have departed from reality long ago, and are proud of it. They are the “burn it down” wing of the right, and they are not realists. They are idealists who are about as successful as Don Quixote was. The only thing is, they operate to mess things up in the real world.
The real world is already a messy enough place, where compromise is sometimes inevitable. But the Don Quixotes have no tolerance for it.
“Calculate FICA withholding according to an employee’s total compensation. Eliminate the employer’s portion. The maximum to withhold would be adjusted each year according to the annual change in nominal employee compensation per capita.”
There is no employer’s portion. The employee pays both halves. Just another government lie.
Which is what the tiny minority who blocked a better bill are now blaming him for.
==
Sorry, I’ve heard that refrain so many times I cannot take it seriously anymore.
There is no employer’s portion. The employee pays both halves. Just another government lie.
==
You’re confused. The employer’s assessment, were it eliminated, would not be entirely deployed or even largely deployed to more take home pay for employees.
As I’ve written here before, mandatory entitlement spending is consuming more and more of our entire Federal Budget, and reducing these mandatory expenditures is essential
The money spent in our annual Federal Budget is divided into two major categories—into “Mandatory” expenditures—funds which have, by law, to be sequestered and then paid out before any other expenditures are made, and, then, into the remaining funds, the money that can be spent on everything else, the “Discretionary” expenditures.
People tend to fixate on the total U.S. annual budget number, or on the amount of our mounting public deficits or debt.
But, I believe that the most frightening and ominous sets of economic figures are the ones which show what percentage of our entire Federal Budget each year is devoted to these Mandatory expenditures–to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to Federal Retirement and Veterans Benefits, to various other social welfare programs, and to Interest on the Public Debt—and, then, to the dwindling percentage of our Federal Budget that remains after those Mandatory expenditures are paid out.
Those remaining funds which are available for Discretionary expenditures—which pay for everything else—for the cost of running our entire Federal Government, for National Defense, for Foreign Aid, for all Federal Research and Development work, plus everything else.
For 2023 such Mandatory outlays are estimated to consume roughly 65% of the entire Federal Budget budget, with 35% left over for Discretionary expenditures to pay for everything else.
There are a couple of key facts to keep in mind here–
One key thing to remember about these “Entitlements” is that the percentage of the Federal Budget that they consume almost invariably and automatically grows each year—because more people are automatically “entitled” to them just due to normal population growth and immigration, and as existing Entitlement programs
are extended to more and more people, or expanded in coverage or benefits i.e. cost.
Moreover, eligibility for many of many of these entitlement programs is keyed to the annual dollar amount of the “poverty line,” the dollar amount of income below which you are entitled to benefits, and this threshold tends to get higher every year, so that more people fall below the poverty line and are, thus, eligible for some types of entitlement benefits–the Poverty Line for a family of four in 2023 is $30,000 ($37,500 in Alaska, $34,500 in Hawaii).
According to a July 2023 GAO Report Mandatory budget authority grew from $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2001 to $7.2 trillion in fiscal year 2021, an increase of 282 percent, or 160 percent adjusted for inflation in fiscal year 2021 dollars.
Another key thing to realize is that–as the percentage of our Federal budget that is consumed by entitlement spending increases, the percentage of our Federal budget that is available for discretionary expenditures shrinks—and the practical effect is that our federal government has increasingly less room to maneuver–less ability to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and less ability to respond to unforeseen events, and to emergencies.
One more thing to realize is that the amount of those annual mandatory expenditures devoted to “Interest on the Federal Debt” has been extraordinarily low in recent years—because interest rates have been essentially around zero.
But, as interest rates climb back to normal ranges, the increase in the additional percentage of our Federal budget that would have to be paid out for Mandatory “Interest on the Public Debt” payments would dramatically increase the percentage of our Federal Budget that would have to be paid, in toto, for mandatory expenditures.
It has been said that “Social Security” is the “third rail of American politics,” but unless the percentage of our Federal Budget that is devoted to Mandatory expenditures for entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is dramatically reduced, this whole scheme of mandatory vs. discretionary payments and how they are determined is reformed, or our economy can be revved up to produce massive and sustained increases in GDP and, thus, in tax revenues, we are headed for the situation in which these Mandatory expenditures will eventually grow to consume close to our entire annual Federal Budgets.
The Democrats voted against McCarthy because they think he’s too conservative. The only thing for the Republicans to do now is to elect a Speaker who’s even more repugnant to the Democrats.
And what will our ‘public servants’ in D.C. do when no one will loan money to them anymore? Just destroy whatever value the dollar has by ‘printing’ ‘money’?
Gaetz and the Magnificent Eight grew some balls.
With Rs in bare power, you can rationalise forever “kicking the can” down the road — besides, who cares? Who’s watching you? McCarthy gambled on “no one” or “not enough” and lost.
There comes a time where debt servicing consumes more than important items in the budget like defense. And that time has clocked much, much closer.
The interest rate is not just a matter for the Fed and chairman Powell to decide — economists say it is like pushing on a string as short term rates can be influenced by the Fed outright. But not the long-term interest rates.
People forget or just don’t know that the market for US Dollar debt instruments (bills, notes, and bonds) IS TWICE AS LARGE AS THE STOCK MARKET!!!
The market has a vote too, and with long-term rates currently at 4.80% (the highest since 2007), the market sees unquenched inflationary fires until we get to 7-9%! Even 13% has been mooted.
WHEN in the Hell Do WE Make A Stand against Fiscal Insanity?
It used to be pro forma that right reason had more than some influence on the D-Left.
Now that they’ve gone Revolutionary Jacobin, all such bets are off!
So, answer me, please. When was McCarthy ever going to grow a pair of balls? And say “HELL NO! We’re not gonna go [insane and full-on self destruct]!”
As much as I’ve admired his unexpectedly good performance since January, I believe the real answer is Never. Thus, necessitating Gaetz and the Magnificent Eight.
Government debt will ruin us, just as financial historian Ray Dalio says in his thesis of inevitable decline. (SEE his many talks available for free on YT to be informed by his dire and dour historic and contemporary insights.)
But decline IS still a choice. Thus I put it to Neo and other McCarthy acolytes, “when do you stop giving away the store?” Making deals in unsustainable bargaining and spending, when anyone but the shopaholic would learn to stop!
If not now, Neo, then WHEN. If not ASAP, then the US’ national “store” will disappear.
One key thing to remember about these “Entitlements” is that the percentage of the Federal Budget that they consume almost invariably and automatically grows each year
==
The ratio of entitlement spending to gross domestic product will grow if Congress refuses to compose eligibility rules which prevent that. You only get a crisis if someone’s asleep at the switch.
==
The ratio of Social Security payments each year to gross domestic product was 0.032 in 1972 and is 0.047 today. You could have avoided that by (1) fixing the definition of disability, and (2) having cohort specific retirement ages. Incrementally scrapping early retirement and moving the default retirement age to 68 would have prevented this bloat. Every couple of years, you move the age up by 3 months.
Dave writes “And what will our ‘public servants’ in D.C. do when no one will loan money to them anymore? Just destroy whatever value the dollar has by ‘printing’ ‘money’?”
Hey, aren’t Argentina and Venezuela successful role models? (/sarc)
The market decides what the cost of long-term borrowing is to be, and thus the size of the US Debt service Monster. And this is what’s at stake today.
TJ:
Balls without brains don’t account for much.
As for your question of “when,” I’d say you need to wait until you have more than 7 House GOP members in your corner. It would help to also have at least a small GOP majority in the Senate, and a viable alternative candidate for Speaker in the House who has enough GOP support that he or she could actually be elected by Republicans rather than Democrats.
Cap’n Rusty:
If the election of a more conservative Speaker is Gaetz’s goal, he certainly picked a funny way of going about it. What I think he has done instead, at least so far, is to alienate the other 97% of the Republicans in the House. I doubt he’s going to get a more conservative Speaker that way.
TJ:
Some balls alright, votes with Democrats; those are blue balls.
And to the other Matt Gatez fluffers and fangirls, what is he going to do now? No Speaker in any party will allow such restrictions to be a part of their employment. I would anticipate the rest of the Republicans want nothing to do with those 8 pirias. The Freedom Caucus may not want them after this stunt.
Do you all plan to start a turd party now? It will be a marvelous bonfire, burn the USA; join
The Pyro Party, Up From The Ashes!
Well, that didn’t take long: “Matt Gaetz supports Jim Jordan for speaker” “Thomas Massie wants Jim Jordan” “Jim Jordan ‘seriously considering’ run for Speaker” “Steve Scalise also wants the job” “Trump ‘might be open’ to accepting House Speaker role on temporary basis”
Jim Jordan supported McCarthy before Matt Gaetz sewed up his deal with the Democrats. Jordan would be wise to minimize Gaetz; something about making friends with a scorpion.
There may be 8 openings on the House committee that provides oversight of temporary sanitation facilities; the House PortaPottie committee.
How are we and America going to be worse off without McCarthy and the professional Republicans leading the House? Record deficits, no border, and war in eastern Europe is just the short list of ills voter support for the GOPe has delivered to us. What comes next with McCarthy out is unlikely to be worse.
steve walsh:
How about an even less effective oppposition to the Democrats than a Republican Majority led by McCarthy? Representative Blue Balls, who has shown his true loyalty, to himself, may choose to vote with them more often. Power before principles has some downsides you know. Are you of The Pyro Party or zportsPottie Party?
IrishOtter49 on October 3, 2023 at 9:54 pm said:
Melisande, you are on fire. Totally agree with you.
I second that!!
Wow. The outright rudeness against anybody who doesn’t tow the Republican line is just like what the Progressives do. It seems the Republicans can’t understand that their base is sick of getting lied to.
RE: Percentage of Federal Budget allocated to Defense vs Entitlements (i.e. payments to individuals )
Examples From U.S. Federal Budget, Historical Table 6.1 “Composition of Outlays, 1940-2028”*
1940 Defense 17.5%, Entitlements 21.9%
1942 Defense 73.0%, Entitlements 7%
2022 Defense 12.8%, Entitlements 72.1%
* See https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/
wendybar ~ “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell
Stay strong : )
Melisande – What viable path to serious fiscal reform is there with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate? There answer is none. There is absolutely no way to enact serious fiscal reform when Democrats control the White House and Senate. Absolutely none.
Your points about our fiscal position are absolutely correct, as are the points of those who note that our spending problem is based on Social Security and Medicare. But when one party is completely unserious about it, and is willing to effectively use that unseriousness as a political weapon (as Dems did in 2012), what can you do? Well, pretty much exactly what McCarthy was doing. Make incremental gains until you have the power to make bigger gains. (And it really doesn’t help that Republicans lose their fiscal religion as soon as they have real power in Washington.)
I also agree that there comes a point where it becomes untenable to participate in the budget charade when you know that a fiscal crisis is coming.
But understand that all of this talk about shutting the government down and keeping it shut down until Democrats agree to spending reform is nonsense. Democrats will never agree to spending reform until a crisis forces their hand. They will hold out as long as necessary and paint Republicans as immature fools who can’t handle the responsibility of keeping the government running. It will be a load of total BS, but it will work, and Republicans will lose what little power they have in Washington.
So the position of Gaetz and the other eight is the political equivalent of setting themselves on fire. Hey, maybe that’s morally necessary at some point! Really, the only question now is should the left will have total power until such time as a fiscal crisis hits? Should Republicans basically boycott political power until the fiscal crisis? Gaetz and his eight answer that question in the affirmative.
More early ‘comments’ on what happened:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4186813/posts
The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is a Republican named Kay Granger. Is anyone curious as to why her committee was unable to produce a stack of (say) 25 appropriations bills to bring to the floor? That committee used to do that routinely.
To those who are ready to set themselves on fire – recall Adam Smith – “There is a gread deal of ruin in a nation.” A fiscal crisis is coming, but it may be farther away than any of us expect. (I was with those who thought the fiscal crisis was imminent in 2010.) And there is a great deal of damage that unchecked Democratic control can do before the crisis comes.
Art Deco – Hasn’t it been more than a decade since Congress went through regular order for spending bills? Do I recall correctly that it was in 2009 that Democrats first abandoned the regular order over Obamacare machinations, or was it before that? I would also ask, which House Freedom Caucus members are on the Appropriations Committee and what were their demands?
It’s difficult to get the wheels turning again when regular order hasn’t occurred for a decade or more. It is even more difficult when the GOP has such a slender majority, and more difficult still when a significant minority of that majority has unrealistic expectations for the results.
(And frankly, the whole thing is something of a charade given that no one is willing to touch entitlements.)
Another question/point – Without touching entitlements, we’re simply not going to solve or even make a significant dent in our overall fiscal problems. So if entitlements are off of the table, why not try to bank incremental fiscal and political victories on discretionary spending?
It’s difficult to get the wheels turning again
==
Thanks for the stupid metaphor. We’re all educated.
Art Deco – Do you care to actually engage with my points, or are you content with smug superficialities?
Art Deco – Do you care to actually engage with my points
==
You made no argument, just an assertion. What do they do all day at the appropriations committee?
This reminds me of 1992, when a very conservative friend of mine told me he was going to vote for Clinton, because Bush had reneged on his promise of “No new taxes.” He felt the importance of sending a message about keeping promises was more important than this particular election (not that one person’s vote has any impact). I voted for Bush, taking the view that the least bad alternative was preferable. But I understand his argument, and maybe it’s more compelling in this case to send that message.
I don’t buy the argument that McCarthy did the best he can with such a slim majority. He knew the size of the majority when he made those promises. And while the Republicans in the House can’t get any legislation passed, they can at least refuse to appropriate funding for all the reckless spending, and insist on regular appropriations rather than endless continuing resolutions that keep feeding the beast. That’s what McCarthy had promised and failed to deliver on.
Art Deco: “The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee is a Republican named Kay Granger. Is anyone curious as to why her committee was unable to produce a stack of (say) 25 appropriations bills to bring to the floor? That committee used to do that routinely.”
This is the excuse Gaetz and the seven used to torch McCarthy. It’s not a bad question. The House Republicans did promise to return to sending individual appropriation bills up to the Senate. I think they got about half of them done. Whichever next victim becomes Speaker, he should push like crazy to get the rest done before November, and tell the Senate to get to work on them, one by one.
And the next Speaker needs to stop trying to curry favor with Dems, who are snakes.
I agree with Neo in general, and in particular with her comment that the real problem is, and has long been, McConnell. He doesn’t want to trim money, anywhere.
Jimmy:
“I don’t buy the argument that McCarthy did the best he can with such a slim majority. He knew the size of the majority when he made those promises. And while the Republicans in the House can’t get any legislation passed, they can at least refuse to appropriate funding for all the reckless spending, and insist on regular appropriations rather than endless continuing resolutions that keep feeding the beast. That’s what McCarthy had promised and failed to deliver on.”
Exactly. I don’t think anybody expected that the slim GOP majority in the House would completely get its way on the budget. But there was nothing stopping them from passing their versions of appropriations bills and then negotiating with the Senate. At least then we would have a record of who supported what. That would have been incremental progress, instead we got a return to business as usual.
The Pyro Party is tired of being lied to? And yet will vote with Democrats and say it is a good thing, sending a message. It certainly sent messages, one to the Democrats and another to the Conservatives and other Republicans: a) Pyros are fools to be played, and b) Pyro leaders (Rep. Blue Balls, etc.) are treachorous.
From the same people who made the case that siding with the Democrats was not a problem regarding multi-billion dollar support of Ukraine (while the invasion at our southern border that daily presents real issues for me personally as a high-tax paying citizen of Los Angeles) now make the case that siding with the Democrats to hold the Speaker accountable is evidence of foolishness. When we as Republicans held the Senate, House and Presidency, exactly what were the benefits awarded the constituency? My favorite comment from someone at Ace on the latest brouhaha:
“I find it funny that so many republican representatives are angry over McCarthy’s ouster. Why weren’t they angry over the DOJ railroading citizens over hyped up January 6th charges? Why weren’t they angry over 33T in debt? Why weren’t they angry over Trump being railroaded? Why weren’t they angry over their constituents getting hammered over inflation?”
Again, with the border situation are we even a country anymore?
People such as Melisande have departed from reality long ago, and are proud of it.
It is ad hominem comments like this that cheapen this blog and make it difficult to enjoy.
Democrats voting in block with Gaetz is just opportunism on their part. They don’t support Gaetz and have shown this by holding failed investigations of him. I don’t respect Gaetz because he was dumb enough to date habitual liar Cassidy Hutchison, but his demand for return to regular order in spending bills before Congress is a reasonable request. If Democrats support regular order too, then what is wrong in holding them to it? Or can we recognize Democrats support of Gaetz isn’t because they support his call to reduce spending? I think it is the latter.
In the meantime the acting Speaker is doing well. I’m out and for a long time.
Very interesting discussion thread. Can’t make up my mind on this. neo makes some very good points but crosses the line with some of her comments. Melisande makes some very good points but neo’s critque is compelling.
So here I am, stuck in the middle again. Trying to make some sense of it all. But I can see it makes no sense at all
the pyro party is the one that supported the destruction of cities, the collapse of the border, which is tantamount to invasion by mass migration, mccarthy who thanked babbitt’s killer, did not follow through with the entire J6 video archive, only julie kelly has been able to optain snippets, yet the Kangaroo tribunal continues,
“People such as Melisande have departed from reality long ago, and are proud of it.” Neo
This bothered me too. Melisande stated her opinions respectfully and deserves respect in return. I have long appreciated the discourse here though there are a few that hurl barbs. To date, overlooked. I hope it doesn’t become the norm.
everything has been a liel
https://twitter.com/KyleSeraphin/status/1709373510299029717
To a Pyro Ukraine is the same as the Mexican border, reasons.
To a Pyro siding with the Democrats is principled because the House under McCarthy hadn’t been fixed yet and the debt crisis hadn’t been resolved. Expectations of a pony beneath the manure.
After all the Pyro antics the Democrats roll on, implacable. With a weakened opposition. Can Rep. Blue Balls light his hair on fire again? Hair gel is flammable IIRC.
one is wide open, with hundred of potential terrorists streaming through the border, the other is stuffed full of weapons we will need sooner than later,
Small steps, low hanging fruit… usually a good place to start:
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/10/04/congress/more-hideaway-hubub-hoyer-mchenry-house-00119874
Someone else is asking what does Rep. Blue Balls plan to do now (beyond raising money and running for Governor of FL)?
https://redstate.com/joesquire/2023/10/04/what-happens-when-the-dog-catches-the-car-n2164661
IMHO the House dumbpublicans are more incensed over McCarthy’s ouster than, say, our wide open borders, the efforts to diminish US oil / gas production, the over reaching of the EPA, the Stalinist activities of the DOJ and FBI and IRS, the deal to send a few BILLION $$$$ to Iran (yes, I know; the $$$ will be used for “humanitarian” purposes; just ask the highly educated and worldly moron, Antony Blinken), etc.
So, instead of actually doing somehing about he destructive policies of the Bidet presidency and of the out of control bureaucratic state, the dumbpublicans reserve their ire when one of their own gets the boot.
This should come as no surprise. When Trump was president a good percentage of dumbpublicans worked against him instead of trying to work with him.
When it comes to political suicide, the dumbpublicans set the standard.
As for the next speaker – whoever that is – rest assured the demonkrats will all vote in unison with a nay vote as ordered by their General Secretariat of the Communist Party and BLM, aka, Hakeem Jeffries.
In recent years (since ??) you can always count on the demonkrats to kibosh any sort of “reaching across the aisle” to accommodate their dumbpublican “colleagues.”
Who knows how this mess will unfold, but it’s crap like this that makes many voters
(though probably not enough ) to support a Trump.
While the USA crashes and burns, the dumbpublicans circle up yet again into their firing squad.
Of course, if they were circling up to face their demonkrat opponents, they would bring their swimming pool noodles while the demonkrats would bring their guns and knives – just as they always do.
yes, someone who targeted by the bureau protecting a corrupt hack, like joel greenberg, they didn’t actually have any evidence, the nerve of him,
I
Of course it is far easier to lump all Republicans with the Democrats, a Pyro theme, and highly effective (sarc).
House members get elected every two years, they have to respond to constituents and other interests, but not all constituents are “conservative” as the Pyro true believer (Pyros don’t seem to recognize this). But Pyros would have to move the constituent preference to influence the Rep. Easier to rant than work.
Rep. Blue Balls, like Liz Chenney, may find himself out on the street. Who knows, fog of war (sort of).
liz cheney was for riots and gulags, gaetz is the opposite,
they previously ran that crazy stalker, deb who made up her own covid charts,
Gaetz is for Gaetz, votes with Democrats for Gaetz.
“To a Pyro Ukraine is the same as the Mexican border, reasons.
To a Pyro siding with the Democrats is principled because the House under McCarthy hadn’t been fixed yet and the debt crisis hadn’t been resolved. Expectations of a pony beneath the manure.” om
Who is doing the lumping? To prioritize concern over 7 billion dollars of tax-payer provided military weapons left in enemy hands to end up who knows where and then question aligning oneself with President Biden’s whose subsequent handling of the Putin/Ukraine issues resulted in war in Eastern Europe, supported by over 80 billion to fund that is to be a “pyro”? No…just a different opinion and understanding. I try to imagine what California would look like with 80 billion dollars spent on righting the ship beginning with honoring immigration policy.
Maybe Art Deco can enunciate for us all the gains conservatives experienced when the House, Senate and Presidency were in Republican hands.
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
So what is the Pyro plan? Ignore the facts that even when Republicans have the Presidency and a majority in both houses of Congress it is extremely hard to change long entrenched policies?
It seems the Pyros are angry but have ADHD.
This would have been a good time to take a stand on the budget. Anybody remember the last shutdown?
This from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
“The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
With the end of the fiscal year upon us, it looks as though Congress will go yet another year without completing the appropriations process and fully funding the government on time. This along with associated political posturing has become all too commonplace and is a sign of deep government dysfunction. Funding the government is one of the most very basic tasks of governing, yet this is likely to be the 27th year in a row that Congress fails to pass appropriations before the end of the fiscal year. At a minimum, they should pass a continuing resolution to keep the lights on.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) was meant to pave the way for an easy appropriations process by setting the topline defense and nondefense spending levels. Yet both chambers seem intent on ignoring the spending levels they agreed to just three months ago.
Some House lawmakers rightly argue that deficits need to be reduced further. The FRA was only a start, and we need to immediately turn to finding more savings. But refusing to go along with the agreed-upon levels undermines trust and makes future negotiations more complicated. Instead they should engage in a process of suggesting further savings to build on the work of the FRA, either through specific policy changes or by creating a bipartisan fiscal commission.
Meanwhile Senate appropriators seem to be intent on making things worse. They are working on a bipartisan basis to boost spending above the FRA levels by classifying $14 billion of ordinary appropriations as “emergency spending,” which would reverse at least 10 percent of the FRA’s savings. This is separate from any actual emergency spending they may appropriate for Ukraine, natural disasters, or other purposes. Rather than engaging in recklessly increasing the deficit, the Senate should cut their regular spending down to the levels agreed to under the FRA. Any true emergency spending should be fully offset so it doesn’t worsen an already dismal fiscal situation.”
Myra goes on to say “They (Congress) need to honor the deal agreed to in the FRA; fund the government on time either through appropriations or a CR, but absolutely avoiding a juvenile and inexcusable shutdown…, but what recourse is there when Congress makes no attempt to live up to commitments?
https://www.crfb.org/press-releases/congress-should-avoid-shutdown-without-further-debt-increases
Obamacare and the porous border were long-entrenched policies?
As to “regular order”, “With the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), appropriations bills were marked up in the House and Senate in June and July, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Neither the House nor the Senate are doing their job. Maybe they should have stayed in session, instead of taking a month off in August. Instead of directing anger at Gaetz, maybe it would be more appropriate to direct it at the folks that refuse to do their job.
Instead they continue to ignore their own bills and pass CR’s.
” The FRA caps total base discretionary spending at $1.590 trillion for FY 2024, with base defense spending capped at $886 billion (a 3 percent increase from FY 2023) and base nondefense spending capped at $704 billion (up to a 9 percent decrease from FY 2023, depending on how it is measured).”
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/appropriations-watch-fy-2024
If I understand it, Gaetz objected to the CR that ignored the FRA caps and increased spending by another $159 billion.
Brian E:
There were multiple objections to foul ingredients in McCarthy’s CR sausage, including the one you cite. What got McCarthy unseated as speaker (see my comment in today’s open thread) was the sneaky side deal with Dems on Ukraine.
There is something creepy about Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert (Vichy Republicans).
The border problem goes back before 1980. Dwight D Eisenhower had “Project Wetback” IIRC. Obamacare is now well entrenched although the non-Pyros have made some inroads. Those came before Rep. Blue Balls. Government intrusion into health care kicked in in WWII, so that’s been a while.
Yep, ADHD.
Rep. Blue Ball’s job is to raise money and get re-elected or elected to something bigger. (cynicism alert)
And of course Boned Loser brings Vlad’s POV into the fray.
In retrospect, McCarthy hasn’t conducted himself much differently from other powerful wheeler-dealer figures on the Hill. His ouster from the speaker’s chair is a potential change from past low expectations to a new higher standard of accountability. Portraying the skirmish with Gaetz as personal misses the significance.
Banned Lizard:
Gaetz’s support is a millimeter deep, and that’s the problem, and that’s why it’s basically a skirmish with Gaetz at this point. It may be a skirmish of which you are in favor, but without more support it’s not winnable, just in the practical sense. At least, I don’t see a path to a win for the Gaetz position, and Gaetz and his group of seven others have failed to even articulate one. That is the reason a lot of people are against what Gaetz did.
If Jordan ends up being Speaker, that’s fine and would be a good temporary resolution. But a Rubicon has been crossed, and the danger is that in a House where the GOP has a very small majority, ANY tiny group of discontents can throw the Speaker out, and that sort of chaos telegraphs a party in disarray that will appeal to fewer and fewer people, which will help the Democrats win more power.
And of course there’s no guarantee that the House will unite behind anyone at this point, much less Jordan, and certainly not anyone better than McCarthy.
And to those who say it doesn’t matter because Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable, just you wait and see what happens when there’s a Democrat Congress and Joe Biden is re-elected. End of conservative majority in SCOTUS, many new states like Puerto Rico and DC cementing that Democrat power in the Senate, the end of voting security on a national basis and not just a blue state basis, and plenty more.
Because Rep. Blue Balls made it his personal mission, Boned, and got the Democrats to provide the needed votes to accomplish his coup. That has never been done before.
Dealing in counterfactuals again?
If the non-Blue Ball Republicans have any sense they will strip the Blue Ball provision (Motion to Vacate the Speaker?) from their rules. That simple little trick empowered Rep. Blue Balls to pull his coup, it was just a matter of time until “the knives came out.”
Rep. Blue Balls voted with the Democrats once why won’t he do it again? Scorpions.
Sharon W; Leland:
Please read my actual comment and understand what I actually said about Melisande. I will quote myself from the comment in question:
The idea that someone is not being realistic is not a terrible insult. I compared – and have long compared – people advocating the sort of thing that Melisande is advocating to the fictional character of Don Quixote. Don Quixote was an idealist who lost touch with reality and embarked upon failing campaigns for idealistic reasons.
I wrote a post about this dichotomy in the GOP a while back. Please see this, and it’s not the first time I’ve made the comparison. I see the two wings as Don Quixote vs Sancho Panza, and the conflict is a very basic human conflict between two ways of approaching a problem.
There are problems with the Sancho Panza approach, too, by the way. But neither appellation is an ad hominem insult, in my book.
@ Snow on Pine, Bauxite
• Nice research.
@ Art Deco
• Interesting proposals.
• What would be your proposed implementation/ phase order?
• Do you have an “80/20” plan?
So both Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise have put themselves forward as candidates for Speaker of the House. I see either of them as being an improvement, if elected.
Glad to see the bare knuckles though, with respect to the squatters.
McCarthy along with most Rs and all of the Dems, loved ruling by CR. Last time congress actually passed a budget was late 90’s. Using one bill, yes or no vote, and then stuffing all kinds of crap in it-was a cowards way of running congress.
At some point someone has to say enough. One person stood up and did that. What happens next is anyones guess.
But continuing on, running the government by CR was a bad idea. And it was/is shared by McCarthy and most of congress.
and burning it all down isn’t a bad idea. When things are so corrupt that it becomes acceptable to lie cheat and steal, then it is long past time to take action. CR is simply congress telling everyone that power, corruption, and grift are the order of the day, and fu*k you to the people.
And yes, i’m in the burn it all down camp. Nothing will change, nothing will stop the relentless march to totalitarianism, unless we take the entire apparatus apart.
The concern was with the sentence that preceded the “burn it down” sentence.
I don’t have a problem with your saying it (it’s your blog and all that), but it is rather harsh. Those of us who are more sympathetic with punishing McCarthy obviously see things differently, but not unrealistically. Just different priorities and a different model of how the world works, taking the view that punishing the failure to keep a promise in the long run will be more beneficial than continuing with the status quo.
Jimmy:
Sometimes I’m “rather” harsh, although I think that by blogosphere standards I wouldn’t say it’s “harsh” at all. But if I am at all harsh, it is because I’ve seen the disconnect from reality over and over, and I’ve seen that it usually only helps the Democrats.
The GOPe side angers me, but the “burn it down” side angers me as well. I think I am quite polite, considering the stakes.
I think if you punish that failure of the GOPe – and I’m all for doing that, in the abstract – if you don’t do it in a smart way, with a viable plan, you’re likely to cause even more problems than the one you’re trying to solve.
If you woke up from a coma six months ago and just watched the legislation from congress, no theatrics on TV, commentary, etc, would you guess the house was democrat or republican?
If you say democrat (like me) then removing the speaker is not really a big deal one way or another and needed to happen if republicans were really in control. How it happened is inside baseball and really irrelevant.
If you say republican (like Neo) then it’s a disappointment.
Overall I find the histrionics on both sides overdone. No one on the street knows or cares this happened, and even news hounds will forget about this in six months. I was in a crowded sports bar when this broke last night – one TV of 20 not on sports – and no one but me cared.
Sundance had an interesting look at the McCarthy kerfuffle:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/10/03/kevin-mccarthy-tells-republican-caucus-he-will-not-seek-speakership-again-heres-my-thoughts/
At some point, someone has to lead a [serious] campaign to block and reverse the decades-long, leftward progressive racheting into a final, catastrophic, financial failure.
JohnTyler gets it, absolutely, 100%. Thanks.
Art Deco seems to be auditioning for a high rank corner office at our beloved IRS. Did his alphabetized list/discussions only stop at M? If so, he’s used up some 50% of the alphabet!
Cicero likes rants but not specific proposed solutions, shocked.
Final thoughts:
By Sundance – Allow me to provide some simple clarity.
https://gellerreport.com/2023/10/heres-why-mccarthy-is-out.html/
Art Deco seems to be auditioning for a high rank corner office at our beloved IRS. Did his alphabetized list/discussions only stop at M? If so, he’s used up some 50% of the alphabet!
==
To people with poor reading comprehension, yes. To people with passable reading comprehension, the point of my suggested adjustments in tax policy is fairly transparent.
==
One is to break patron-client relationships between politicians and lobbies and promote pareto efficiency by neutrality between commercial-and-industrial sectors.
==
Another is to promote pareto efficiency by neutrality between income derived from different factors of production.
==
Another is to remove the power of swine like Lois Lerner to harass people by granting or with-holding exemptions; the mode of calculating a company’s corporation tax liability would be a function of their architecture, their distribution of employees over jurisdictions, and whether or not they had shareholders, none requiring an occult decision-making process by Lerner clones evaluating a company’s activities.
==
Another is to improve the actuarial soundness of Social Security and Medicare.
==
Another is to reduce the consequence of personal income taxes as revenue generators and make use of them as a redistributive device and one that can replace subsidies to mundane expenditures and ill-considered cash transfers.
==
Another is to make use of a (sectorally neutral) consumption tax as the default means of raising federal revenue, in part to reduce the collective tendency to borrow from abroad.
==
Another is to stop taxing phantom capital gains and phantom interest income.
==
Another is to retire some debt by liquidating assets the federal government can and should do without.
==
And I’d be happy to leave the IRS with the task of collecting income and payroll taxes. Other taxes can be collected by different bureaux.
Snow on Pine on October 3, 2023 at 11:47 pm
Good summary of the situation. Too bad it continually needs to be repeated ad nauseum.
David on October 3, 2023 at 11:49 pm
Yes.
Wow, a thread with 146 comments!
Neo, is that a record, or are there other threads with a few more?
Somehow I missed all the public marches and rallies that Melisande et. al. conducted in order to bring public attention to their pet political causes. Was there a media blackout in force since that day in 2015 when their orange idol rode the down escalator?* Or have Melisande et. al. chosen to forego building the necessary public support for their agenda?**
I’m sooo old that I can remember all the way back to the political campaign year of 2016 when Trump was all over the map regarding Obamacare, telling one crowd he would abolish it, another crowd that he would keep it, yet another crowd that he would fix it, and still another crowd that he’d replace it. Trump and Trumpies never made an effort to build public support for abolishing Obamacare. When Trump failed to keep his contradictory promises, what did Trumpies do? Blame Republicans in Congress, that’s what. All the chatter about regular order, spending bills, yadda yadda yadda is nothing more than an attempt by Trumpies to re-run their losing moves from the Obamacare repeal days.
Another Saturday will be here soon, Melisande et. al. Don’t waste it as you have all the other Saturdays for the past eight years.
* down–a foreshadowing of the political trajectory of Trump and all those on his political bandwagon
** Yes, that was a rhetorical question.
• What would be your proposed implementation/ phase order?
==
Not sure. A federal value added tax would require the incorporation and staffing of a new bureau, sending out instructional materials, and going into the weeds of a company’s accounting in auditing them. Radically simplifying corporation and income taxes would generate some idled labor among federal tax collectors and private tax attorneys alike, who could redeploy. The VAT would have to be the last step.
==
• Do you have an “80/20” plan?
==
No clue what that is.
There have been some consequences from this coup. The amusing ones are precedent, in which the previous Speaker gets a cushy office in the Capitol. That is now McCarthy, and Pelosi has been booted, per precedent.
Another unintended consequence is that apparently the interim Speaker, McHenry, doesn’t have all the powers that the Speaker does to move legislation. So, with an upcoming mid-November deadline, and the demand that regular appropriations bills get through the House, the coup has caused a delay of a week or two in legislating while a new Speaker is chosen. The new Speaker will now have even less time to push appropriations bills, although he may take the effort more seriously than the previous Speaker.
@ Art Deco
A) “What would be your proposed implementation/ phase order?”
• Thank you for the response.
B) “Do you have an “80/20” plan?”
• A plan that targets the implementation of proposals/ actions that will provide the most benefit (see 80/20 Rule, Pareto Principle).
Lastly, always appreciate efforts to generate analysis/ proposals/ etc. – especially original Thinking/ Thoughts – and the willingness to share.
well ryan couldn’t gather the votes, and mccain stabbed him in the back, so he may have had a point,
I don’t think the rules have changed, it a matter of what they do with the powers they are given,
While the two were close allies during the Trump White House years, McCarthy would later say that Trump bore “responsibility” for the Jan. 6 Capitol assault.
I wonder if McCarthy is on Jack Smith’s witness list.
Meanwhile,
Ukraine Freaked Out Over “McCarthy Chaos”, not to mention Biden, McConnell/Schumer, and Brian Kilmeade.
A little hysteria now and then can be a good thing.
Let me get this straight, McCarthy depended on the promises of Pelosi, to keep him as whip, in return for his compromises, while reneging on his promises to the GOP base and Congress?
The masks have come off. Its time that these sewer dwellers are called out and all who cover for them are all part of the same cabal that got us into a 33 trillion dollar hole; drag queens in libraries; schools; the military. A military that has racial quotas. A DOJ that persecutes its political allies.
And a GOPe leadership that stands by and goes tisk, tisk and fills its pockets.