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Congress Economics GOP Kevin McCarthy

McCarthy Lacks The Republican Votes Needed To Pass His Draconian Budget Cuts: Report

It appears that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) dream of making drastic cuts in the federal budget as a condition for raising the debt limit is dissipating by the second, with reports suggesting that he doesn’t even have the Republican votes he needs to take a knife to spending programs.

Jackie Calmes of The Los Angeles Times notes that when GOP House members saw the actual cuts McCarthy is proposing, many of them balked and said they cannot support such draconian measures.

We got evidence of the squeeze this week, even as McCarthy, in his on-again, off-again debt ceiling negotiations with President Biden, was full of budget-cutting bravado to reporters. Just before midnight on Monday — midnight! — the House Appropriations Committee canceled its Tuesday and Wednesday meetings when voting was scheduled on the first of the dozen bills that annually fund the federal government’s operations. Those bills have to fill in the gory details of the spending cuts that Republicans left unidentified when they passed McCarthy’s debt limit bill last month.

The devil, the old saying goes, is in the details, and that’s the problem: McCarthy cannot get the votes he needs to enact his massive cutbacks.

Oh, and as you’d expect, when the Speaker couldn’t muster the votes, he began lying to cover the reason he was calling for a postponement.

The stated reason for the postponement: The committee’s Republican majority wanted to give McCarthy “maximum flexibility” in his talks with Biden.

The real reason: They didn’t have the votes to pass their own bills. Failure, in turn, would have undercut McCarthy’s leverage in the negotiations.

Clearly, McCarthy is getting hit on both sides. The White House is telling him the cuts are a no-go and his own Republican colleagues are also letting him know they won’t sign their name to anything that could hurt them politically with an election now just a little more than a year away.

Oh, and there’s also the matter of Republican hypocrisy, which was revealed when it was reported that they also intend to try and extend the Trump tax cuts for billionaires.

Even then, the savings generated would be small relative to the nation’s annual budget deficits. And Republicans, if they have their way, would in effect wipe out those savings by extending all the Trump-era tax cuts for another decade, adding trillions more to the federal debt they purport to fear.

What will McCarthy do? Probably what politicians are known for doing: Declaring victory and walking away really quickly before anyone can ask any questions. It’s the old Washington two-step, and all it requires is the willingness to pretend.

 

Categories
Congress Economics GOP WTF?!

GOP Brags About Taking The Nation ‘Hostage’ With Debt Ceiling Demands

In today’s edition of saying the quiet part out loud we have Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) giddily admitting that he and his fellow Republicans are indeed taking the nation hostage with their absurd demands for massive cuts to the federal budget before they’ll agree to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Joseph Zeballos-Roig of Semafor reports that Gaetz had this to say on Tuesday:

“I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, & they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.”

Gaetz’s comments were countered by groups aligned with the White House and Democrats in Congress, according to HuffPost.

Gaetz’s seeming brazenness immediately drew fire from some Democratic allies on Twitter. CAP Action, the political arm of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, said, “Rep. Gaetz said the quiet part out loud ― this was never about fiscal health, and always about holding our economy hostage to enact an extremist economic agenda that experts predict would push the economy into recession.”

If the U.S. does indeed wind up defaulting on the debt, it could prove catastrophic for the American economy, leading to massive job losses and a recession.

This isn’t the first time a Republican has compared the debt ceiling debate to hostage taking.

In 2012, then-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell noted, “What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.”

Would the GOP be willing to throw the economy into freefall? If they think it will help their electoral chances in the 2024 election, there’s basically nothing Republicans won’t do, including sacrificing the economic health of the nation.

 

Categories
Congress Economics GOP Taxation

WATCH A CNBC Host Tell Kevin McCarthy He’s A Hypocrite For Refusing To Repeal The Trump Tax Cuts

CNBC host Sara Eisen repeatedly asked Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) why he’s refusing to repeal the Trump tax cuts as part of the ongoing debate over raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

McCarthy was in New York to discuss the debt ceiling and stabilizing financial markets, and he wondered if Eisen would allow the country to continue to tax and spend: “Would you just raise the limit?”

Eisen replied, “Well, if it meant playing with America’s standing and full faith and credit of U.S. government debt, I feel like you can deal with the spending in other ways, which is totally legitimate.”

When McCarthy said debt can only be reduced with massive spending cuts, Eisen wondered, “You did it (raised the debt ceiling) three times in the Trump administration.”

The Speaker protested, “We never raised the debt ceiling by itself.”

Eisen: “And tax cuts. That was like $2 trillion in deficit.”

When McCarthy said those tax cuts had been good for the economy, Eisen countered, “So I was going to ask you about taxes because I wonder, because you want to extend the Trump tax cuts, correct? But isn’t that a little hypocritical when you’re talking about finding savings everywhere and being on an unsustainable fiscal path?”

In response, McCarthy resorted to his favorite trick: He lied.

“How’s that hypocritical when it’s bringing tax cuts, tax savings? I will always advocate for the idea that we are streamlining our tax policies, that we’re also streamlining our regulation.”

Someone please explain the basics of economics to Kevin McCarthy. It’s clear he has no damn idea what he’s talking about.

Here’s the video from CNBC:

Categories
Economics Fox News

WATCH Fed Chairman Powell Dress Down A Fox Reporter For His BS Claims About Inflation

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell set a reporter from Fox Business straight on the basics of the U.S. economy and inflation Wednesday during a press conference.

During the press conference, reporter Edward Lawrence suggested that government spending was partially responsible for inflation, remarking:

“Inflation has been rather sticky, so do you need help from the fiscal side to get inflation down faster?” 

Powell replied:

“We don’t give advice to the fiscal authorities, and we assume that we take fiscal policy as it comes to our front door, stick it in our model along with a million other things, and we have responsibility for price stability. And we will get inflation down to 2% in time.”

Lawrence tried again to link spending to inflation:

“But the spending that’s happened is working against what you are doing, right? So it’s prolonging inflation?”

That led Powell to dress down Edwards:

Categories
Congress Economics GOP

Jamie Raskin Masterfully Mocks The GOP’s ‘Pathetic’ Anti-Inflation Bill

On Monday, the House Rules Committee began hearings on the long-awaited Republican plan for controlling inflation, and it didn’t take long before it became clear that their bill — HR 347 a.k.a. the “Rein In Act” — is nothing but a publicity stunt that won’t do a damn thing to help reduce prices or inflation.

One of the committee members, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), began his comments on the legislation by noting, “The world has been waiting with bated breath for their answer to it. The long wait is over.”

Raskin added that the Rein In Act, which stands for Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation, would fight inflation by adding new reporting requirements for certain executive orders:

“You heard that right: A reporting requirement related to executive orders.”

Specifically, the bill would require would require the Biden administration to  “provide an inflation estimate” of every executive order “with a significant effect on the gross budget.” Why? According to committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY), so that the president will “think twice” before he issues any future orders.

This led Raskin to dryly comment:

“Whether you think this is the most brilliant legislation since Social Security, or the dumbest idea since the last trillion-dollar giveaway in taxes, you must concede that it will have little or zero effect on the global inflation rate or the domestic inflation rate.

“We know executive orders have nothing to do with inflation” and the Reins Act is “devoid of any serious legislative meaning where potential economic consequence … it’s pathetically weak.”

The Maryland Democrat suggested a more accurate name for the legislation would be the “Running on Empty Initiative based on no ideas — None — Act.”

You can watch the video of Raskin’s remarks at this link