![]() ![]() And Cruz’s influence with the Republican base and the G.O.P.’s congressional caucus in 2013 was nothing compared with the power Trump now wields. McConnell and the Republican former House speaker John Boehner didn’t have enough command of their members to reject Ted Cruz’s doomed 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, which both of them thought to be lunacy. ![]() To put it gently, the record of Republican Party leaders on resisting the demands of their party’s hard-liners, even when they think those demands are mad, is not inspiring. I mean, they ought to impeach Mitch McConnell if he allows that.” “Mitch McConnell keeps allowing it to happen. “It’s crazy what’s happening with this debt ceiling,” the former president recently told a conservative radio host. And there will be plenty of voices demanding that Republicans pull the trigger or at least prove their willingness to do so. A hostage is leverage only if you’re willing to shoot. McCarthy may sound measured, but that he would open the door to this tactic at all shows either his weakness or his recklessness. “We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right?” “We’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader and possible speaker of the House, told Punchbowl News. Republicans have been perfectly clear, though: They see the debt limit as leverage in negotiations with Biden. (I guess that’s one way to deal with inflation: Crash the global economy!) government defaults on its debt, it would trigger financial chaos. Treasuries - and then add their premiums atop that. Much else in the financial system is priced on this assumption of American reliability: Lenders begin with the riskless rate of return - that is, the interest rate on U.S. They are the safest of safe investments, the security that countries and funds buy when they must be absolutely sure that their money is safe. Treasuries are the bedrock asset of the global financial system. And even where Republican leaders do not actually believe that crisis would win them the day, they may have to trigger it anyway to prove their commitment to the cause or to avoid the wrath of Donald Trump. What Republicans could do is trigger crises they hope would give them leverage to force Biden to accept this agenda or perhaps force him out of office. There are plans to privatize much of Medicare, repeal much of Obamacare and raise the Social Security age and no fewer than eight bills attacking critical race theory.īut even if Republicans win the House and Senate, they cannot enact this agenda. ![]() Legislation that would upend the structure and powers of the government - like the bill sponsored by Representative Byron Donalds that seeks to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - gets exactly the same treatment as Representative Bob Good’s bill to force schools to release their correspondence with teachers’ unions about when to reopen or Representative Michael Cloud’s resolution disapproving of vaccinating 11-year-olds in Washington, D.C. It lists bill after bill that House Republicans would like to pass. It counts well over half of House Republicans as members and includes Representatives Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik and Gary Palmer - all the leaders save for Kevin McCarthy.Īfter spending some time with the document, I would say it lacks even the pretense of prioritization, preferring instead the comforts of quantity. The committee is meant to be something akin to an internal think tank for House Republicans. ![]() The closest thing to an agenda that congressional Republicans have released is the House Republican Study Committee’s 122-page budget. That is not to say there aren’t bills House Republicans would like to pass. And a body blow to the government’s efforts to prepare for a slew of other crises we know are coming. What Republicans are offering, if they win the 2022 elections, is not conservatism. ![]()
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