When the conservatives protested and didn’t vote for Kevin McCarthy to be Speaker of the House, there was a reason. The debt ceiling “deal” shows why they were not happy to have him in charge.
Even when Republicans have the upper hand, they don’t know how to use it – and McCarthy sure hasn’t figured it out.
McCarthy should have stuck with whatever deal “our” side wanted and told Biden and his leftists that it was all they were getting. Let the Democrats take the blame for a default. Play hardball. Have some stones.
But that is not what the Republicans do. The Republicans always cave and give the Democrats what they want – or most of what they want. And this “deal” doesn’t appear to be any different than business as usual in dealing with Democrats.
It gives both sides talking points to claim they won and at the same time bitch about what they didn’t win. Ultimately, our side got what Republican Rep. Chip Roy from Texas called a “turd-sandwich.”
The Daily Mail [1]reports that instead of raising the debt limit by $1.5 trillion which the Republicans in the House wanted [2], it raises it by about $4 trillion.
Instead of rescinding all $80 billion in funding to the IRS, it cuts $21 billion in IRS spending – which means we’ll still get the 87K new IRS agents.
Instead of reclaiming $50 billion in unspent COVID funds, it reclaims $30 billion.
One of the few “wins” I see is that the student loan repayments have to finally resume [3] in August after they’ve been on a pause since March of 2020. Of course, if the Supreme Court [4] screws up, many of those loans will have thousands of dollars forgiven, although I honestly can’t see how the high court can just completely ignore contract law altogether. If this goes through, Trump needs to promise to forgive everyone’s VISA payments when he’s president.
And not surprisingly in the deal between Kevin and Joe, one of the main things that McCarthy and Biden agreed to was a two-year suspension of the debt limit until after the next presidential election. That helps both sides. When you have bipartisanship, what you end up with is just mutual insanity and evil perpetrated on the American citizens.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has it right. He said, “Conservatives have been sold out once again!”
With 72 hours of time for the bill to be read, that gives enough minutes and hours for the press and legislators to look through it – which might not result in a victory for Biden and McCarthy. It remains to be seen if enough members of Congress (on both sides) agree that it’s a “turd sandwich.”