Thank you! This has been driving me nuts.

Republicans have run on major fiscal reform before, in 2012. They lost. Trump won by basically repudiating fiscal reform. I’m not sure that Republicans really had a coherent message in 2022…”— Bauxite

Governing coalitions have existed long before the Freedom Caucus.

I’m not sure what “major fiscal reform” you think the conservatives were proposing, but I’m not sure how returning to regular order could be considered a revolutionary idea– unless 20 years of CR’s where the debt has grown at a greater pace is the new norm and the old ways are “major fiscal reform”. Since the 70’s, the debt doubled every 10 years or so. I think the last doubling only took 8 years. Historically, when the federal government’s spending was around 17-19% of the GDP, the economy could expand as government borrowing didn’t crowd out private expansion. The last few years it’s been 23-24%.

President Trump isn’t a fiscal conservative, but he understood that getting the economy back to 3% growth is the only way out of our debt crunch– we can’t save our way out of insolvency. He did propose budgets closer to balanced which were ignored by Congress.

Here’s the real problem. Congress passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in May. It removed any need to raise the debt ceiling for 2024 and 2025. It supposedly would reduce spending by $1.2-1.5 trillion over the next 10 years– though we all know the spending cuts would occur in the later years of the 10 year cycle. I linked to an article that raised the alarm that Congress was already proposing increases in spending that would blow any savings in the bill. Meanwhile there will be no alarm signaling since the only time our debt is talked about is when we approach a debt ceiling.

You may think this is insignificant, and just political posturing, but we’re already looking at interest payments on the debt of $1 trillion annually, and rising.

Using the debt ceiling as leverage to force any pretense of fiscal sanity was the only tool left and has been used successfully (more or less) in the past. That’s now off the table, while spending will continue to rise.

sell this story elsewhere,

Republicans have run on major fiscal reform before, in 2012. They lost. Trump won by basically repudiating fiscal reform. I’m not sure that Republicans really had a coherent message in 2022, but whatever message they had, voters gave them an exceptionally thin majority in 1/2 of the legislative branch. So now a minority of the thin GOP majority in the House is supposed to force a government shut down to cut spending in a way that is opposed by the President, the Senate, and a majority of the House? It boggles the mind that anyone could see that as a good long term plan.

Sure, it’ll work in the short term, but it really is like jumping off a cliff and expecting to fly. You’ll fly for few seconds.

Larger point – if you want to make a major policy change in a democracy, you need a majority. There simply is no way to hack that truth. If a majority of the people want the government to keep spending until interest rates go to 20+% and the currency is inflated to worthlessness, then that is going to happen one way or another. Melisande’s suicide mission will just be a speedbump that Democrats will fly over and then double down.

And how is any of this consistent with a party that’s poised to nominate Donald Trump for President. Trump as a fiscal reformer? Please. Trump repudiated fiscal reform and continues to promise not to touch Social Security and Medicare. Trump repeatedly goes on about how stupid Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney were to try fiscal reform in the first place. So the GOP is going to shut down the government for a year and a half for fiscal reasons and then ask the voters to make Donald Trump president again? Pardon those of us who see the whole MAGA thing as a bad joke.

As RedState reported at the time former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had effectively named him to be her successor, the list of Jeffries’ own election denialism claims – which he made throughout Donald Trump’s presidency – would fill an encyclopedia.

Let’s roll the tapes and share the screen grabs of Jeffries frequently referring to Trump as the “so-called president” and repeatedly alleging without evidence that there was a “cloud of illegitimacy… over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”:
…
As I’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong with questioning the results of an election. There’s nothing wrong with filing lawsuits if you think something is amiss. But what is wrong is for The Usual Suspects to try to con people into thinking that having doubts about your opponent’s victory and taking action either in Congress and/or by way of the court system is something new and confined only to Republicans and is somehow “unAmerican.”

Simply put, Jeffries is – by the Democrats’ very own inconvenient definition – a threat to democracy. An election denier who has routinely tried to delegitimize and undermine “our sacred institutions,” as Democrats have often referred to the courts and the democratic process.

And yet they put him in the House Minority Leader position, proving once again that when it comes to standards, they hold Republicans to one and themselves to none.

I don’t think so. Republicans lost suburban districts where voters cared about mean tweets and abortion, but not so much about the wall. I thought of the wall as a means to an end, and if illegal immigration was finally under control, I didn’t need the thousand miles or so of wall. It would be great if politicians would keep their promises, but until then, expecting less of them has it uses.

“Not functioning” means no bills passed sent over by the Democratic Senate and no more money borrowed to fund Biden’s spending.

Block the money for the Ukraine and Israel and the Dems will play the “strong America” card, as well as the usual “stingy Republican Scrooges” card. Does the electorate really see through things like that?

And of course the isolationists are stuck on Ukraine. Will they pivot to blaming Israel next? Yes, there are some of those too.

Before there was a Uniparty there was the defense-industrial complex. Something about the complexity and lethality of weapon “systems” eludes the “I’m mad as hell, burn it down crowd.”

There is no majority without quite a few Republicans from districts that are not onboard with Speaker chaos in the middle of the term and are most definately not on board with shutting down the government until the next election. They’re not “betraying” you, they’re representing their districts.