Yesterday, McCarthy unveiled a kind of budget thing, like an outline of what the Republicans want to take away from people in return for not defaulting on a national debt largely run up while Trump was in the White House and Republicans were passing outrageous tax cuts for the rich. Biden’s reaction to their attempt to blackmail him was to call McCarthy’s gambit “really dangerous… MAGA Republicans in Congress are threatening to default on the national debt, the debt that took 230 years to accumulate overall, unless we do what they say…They say they’re going to default unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have. Default. We’d be worse than totally irresponsible.No one should do anything to jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States of America. Take default off the table and let’s have a real serious, detailed conversation about how to grow the economy, lower costs and reduce the deficit… The speaker likes to quote his hero Ronald Reagan, who I knew when I was a senator, but he doesn’t quote everything Reagan said. Reagan said debt ceiling brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans’ benefits. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligation.”
Mostly we’ve been hearing about how McCarthy’s proposal will drastically cut the V.A., but veterans aren’t the only ones who will suffer under the Republican plan. McCarthy is also planning to eliminate Pell Grants for 80,000 students-- and that doesn’t even count millions of other students whose grants would be reduced. And the GOP wants to hit children long before they get to college. The plan would cause something like 300,000 children to lose access to Head Start and child care. And for all Marjorie Traitor Greene’s incessant screeching and lying about “The Border,” McCarthy’s plan would cut funding for over 2,000 border agents, not to mention 11 FBI personnel and hundreds of police.
Writing for Roll Call yesterday, Lindsey McPherson reported on McCarthy’s floor speech announcing the New Austerity, which he claimed would be voted on next week. “The bill would cap topline fiscal 2024 discretionary spending at $1.47 trillion, which is the fiscal 2022 level, or $131 billion below the comparable level appropriated for the current fiscal year. There aren't separate caps for defense and nondefense programs, but it's commonly understood among Republicans that the cuts will be concentrated among domestic and foreign aid accounts and that defense and veterans programs could see increases. The measure would also cap spending for the remainder of the decade, allowing for 1 percent annual growth; appropriations wouldn't return to the $1.6 trillion fiscal 2023 enacted level for a decade under the plan. After a push from [the fascist fringe of the party], the bill would repeal unobligated IRS enforcement funding and a raft of clean energy tax credits from Democrats’ 2022 climate, tax and health law that leadership initially wanted to leave out. Repealing the climate credits is estimated to save several hundred billion dollars. McCarthy cited an analysis from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that said the cost of the credits could be as much as $1.2 trillion. McCarthy said clawing back the enforcement funding would save taxpayers $70 billion, but the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that on net it would cost $114 billion over 10 years because anticipated tax receipts lost would be higher than the cost of the enforcement funding… Other spending cuts in the bill would come from rescinding roughly $70 billion in unobligated pandemic aid and canceling President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which is expected to save roughly $400 billion over 10 years.”
McCarthy also plans to kick people off Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and institute harsher rules for Medicaid beneficiaries.
Supporters say the new benefit requirements would help shore up the solvency of Social Security and Medicare by pushing more people into the labor force whose income will be taxed. “We will also protect and preserve Medicare and Social Security because more people will be paying into it,” McCarthy said.
…Under SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, currently beneficiaries ages 18 to 49 are subject to a requirement that they spend at least 20 hours a week working, looking for a job, in training or similar work-related activities. A Rep. Dusty Johnson-led bill would subject those up to age 64 to the rule; ultimately, GOP leaders settled on a cap at age 55.
…[Far right extremist] Tim Burchett (R-TN) said the 20 hours per week requirement should be upped to 30 hours. Burchett said he’s still reading the 320-page bill, however, and hadn’t taken a position yet.
…The package will also include much of a recently passed House energy bill and a measure to require congressional authorization for major administration regulatory initiatives. McCarthy described the latter as an effort to “prevent Biden’s executive orders to spend money outside the normal process.”
Republicans have not yet secured the 218 votes they’ll need to pass the bill without Democratic support, but leaders are confident they’ll get enough members on board.
The measure is meant to pressure Biden and congressional Democrats, who have insisted on a clean debt limit measure free of policy conditions, to come to the negotiating table and compromise.
…Earlier Wednesday, the bipartisan [but-all-conservative] House Problem Solvers Caucus released its own debt limit framework. The group’s plan is designed to show a middle ground between Democrats’ preference for a clean bill and Republicans’ desire for deep spending cuts that could pass through both chambers and become law. They say it’s just a backup plan, in case Biden and congressional leaders can’t reach agreement on their own.
A couple of days ago, Democratic activist Andrew Wortman put together an epic Twitter thread that attempts to answer the question Republicans have about why they can’t attract young voters. Let me credit Andrew and present it as he wrote it:
1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
4.) You have abused your disproportionate Senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and ideologues, including SCOTUS— which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generation
7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day.
8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.
13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.
16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.
17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the White House who incited an insurrection to have you killed.
18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans…
19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:
Universal background checks
An assault weapons ban
The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act
The ERA & Equality Act
The Climate Action Now Act
The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act
SCOTUS expansion
21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy…
22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate Social Security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning…
Let’s end this with a statement Biden made on Wednesday when he spoke to the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 77 in Accokeek, Maryland:
“Folks, that’s the MAGA economic agenda: spending cuts for working and middle class folks, Americans, and tax cuts for those at the top of the pile. It’s not about fiscal discipline, it’s about cutting benefits for folks they don’t seem to care much about. It’s about finding ways to squeeze out more of America’s middle class.”
A few days ago DataForProgress released a poll indicating how strongly voters oppose Austerity., especially raising the retirement age. Most— though not all— congressional Republicans have figured out they’d better stay away from that Third Rail. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Angus King (I-ME) are leading the charge to raise the retirement age above 67, something just 8% of voters like. In fact, just 9% of Republican voters like that approach. 45% of voters believe the retirement age should be lowered, while 43% believe it should stay where it is. The polling found that a candidate’s position on raising the retirement age has a notable effect on their ability to gain voter support. 63% of voters are less likely to vote for a candidate who raised the retirement age, including 71% of Democrats, 61% of Independents, and even 56% of Republicans.
As an alternative to raising the retirement age, some members of Congress are supporting Bernie’s Social Security Expansion Act in order to extend the solvency of Social Security by 75 years and increase benefits for recipients by $2,400 per year. The extension and extra benefits would be paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthiest of Americans. 75% of Americans support the Social Security Expansion Act, including 85% of Democrats, 77% of Independents, and 70% of Republicans. No conservatives from either party are backing it. Bernie has 9 cosponsors— Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tina Smith (D-MN) and Ed Markey (D-MA). Jan Schakowsky introduced a companion bill in the House and there are 31 cosponsors, mostly real progressives like Cori Bush (D-MO), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Rashia Tlaib (D-MI), Barbara Lee (D-CA), AOC (D-NY). Greg Casar (D-TX), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), as well as a number of Democrats who want to appear progressive.
I'm sure you noticed there are no Republicans co-sponsoring in either chamber; it would be against their religion.