A Herd of Prey Animals

Timothy Birdnow

House Republicans are pondering the use of the rule allowing them to declare the Speaker's seat vacant after the dreadful McCarthy surrender to Biden over the debt ceiling.

McCarthy was forced to reinstate that rule in return for the Speaker's gavel. Nancy Pelosi had removed it. Prior to that it was used to remove the drunkard John Boehner by his own party.

Matt Goetz, who had been a bitter McCarthy opponent at the time, stated:

"If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the Speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate,"

The Florida Republican will no doubt be the one to file the motion.

This is exactly what all of us feared about Kevin McCarthy. He is cut fromt he same cloth as Paul Ryan.

24 Republicans have vowed to oppose the bill. McCarthy will have to pass it with a majority of Democrats.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina had this to say:

I’m voting NO on the debt ceiling debacle because playing the DC game isn’t worth selling out our kids and grandkids," the South Carolina Republican said.

Mace argued the bipartisan debt ceiling package "normalizes record high spending started during the pandemic" and "sets these historically high spending levels as the baseline for all future spending" while growing the government annually at around one percent.

"After factoring in a small cut to discretionary spending over the next 2 yrs, we are still talking about ~$6T more or less in spending [because] of large increases in spending elsewhere," Mace wrote. "In other words, it’s a wash spending-wise."

[...]

"During this time, govt grew 40% or by $2 trillion from 2019 to 2023," Mace wrote. "We went from spending just over $4T to spending just over $6T."

"This deal keeps that record high spending intact and makes it the baseline for all spending," she continued. "Wild."

[...]

Mace said the debt ceiling deal "doesn’t actually set a debt limit" and instead "suspends the debt limit entirely" until January 2, 2025 with no real cap on the debt ceiling.

"Some say there will be a $2T deficit in 6 years, but that CBO guesstimate relies on spending caps that do not exist and are not binding in any way in this deal," Mace wrote.

"And only in DC is a bill clawing back small amounts of unspent COVID funds considered a cut. They tell us this bill cuts $41b in its first year; about the same amount as the unspent COVID funds. Pretty convenient. Also not a cut."

[...]

The South Carolina Republican wrote that "pay-as-you-go has some fine print under Section 265" and encouraged Americans to read it, noting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director "has sole waiver authority to spend if it’s ‘necessary for program delivery.’"

Mace argued "that one line wipes out PAYGO" and that the "words on paper are totally meaningless if you read the fine print."

End excerpts.

All this does is lock in the pandemic levels of spending. And what do Republicans get? A SMALLER INCREASE than Biden was demanding. Promises by Biden for money now. And in the process they give up the most powerful weapon in their arsenal; the power of the purse. There will be no spending caps for two years, making the House impotent.

McCarthy should be drummed out of Congress for this betrayal. I hope Chip Roy files a motion to remove this idiot.

I am often struck by an analogy I devised based on a nature show I once saw. It was about wolves in a Canadian wildlife preserve. The wolves hunted Buffalo. The buffalo were bigger, stronger, and more numerous than the wolves, but it didn't matter. The wolves showed up and the buffalo faced off with them. And there matters rested, along with the wolves who were confident about how this would play out. The buffalo grew increasingly nervous as the wolves rested, confident in the outcome. Eventually a coward turned and ran - and all the rest of the buffalo stampeded away, and the wolves took out their fill of buffalo at their leisure. Replace wolves with Democrats and buffalo with Republicans and you have exactly what we see in D.C. The Democrats are the predagtors, confident in the knowledge they were hunting prey animals. The Republicans always turn tail and run after a time. They know it.

Frankly, there is no reason to vote FOR Republicans any longer. We vote for them solely because they aren't Democrats. They are willing to sell their own mothers for five more minutes in the political paradise.

The GOP is never, ever on the offensive. Always it's about how deep they should dig the hole in which to hide.

Trump wasn't a hole digger nor a buffalo, which is why they hated him. He suggested they stampede and crush the wolves. Like those Canadian bison the GOP was skittish, and hated Trump for making them face the pack.

We don't have an opposition party; we have a herd of prey animals.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:53 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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