T1B

When Kevin McCarthy’s spending cuts get spelled out, even Republicans balk

Whether you’re for the demand by House Republicans for deep spending cuts as a condition for raising the nation’s debt ceiling or you’re against it, there are some things you should know in assessing their gambit.

Perhaps the single most important fact is this: While Speaker Kevin McCarthy likes to claim that his debt limit bill would break Democrats’ “addiction to spending,” the Republicans — whose own appetite for spending is well established — would subject just 13% of federal spending to the knife.

They’ve said they’ll exempt national defense, some veterans programs, Social Security and Medicare, which amounts to about half of all spending. As for the portion they’re targeting, so-called domestic discretionary spending, that relatively small part of the overall budget covers just about everything else the government does, and that Americans expect it to do.

So the predictable has begun: The Republicans are having trouble making good on their boasts of easy-peasy spending cuts.

In short, they’re threatening the nation’s first default, and the chaos that would follow, by demanding spending cuts that many of them don’t truly want to become law.

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 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.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the committee, got her email canceling the meetings at 11:53 p.m. She called it “a sign of unraveling” among Republicans, given that the cuts they were finally specifying “are so staggering.”

McCarthy’s debt-limit bill calls for trimming 9% from the $1.6 trillion that currently goes to annual discretionary spending. But with Republicans’ promised exemptions for the Pentagon and some veterans programs, the cuts in what’s left on the table would reach something close to a devastating 30%. Accounting for inflation, the reductions would be even greater.

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.

So what’s included in the budget slice that Republicans want to carve up? The bills stalled in the Appropriations Committee by Republicans’ infighting would cover spending for agriculture, including farm subsidies and nutrition programs; border protections and homeland security; a new program to assist veterans exposed to toxins during wartime; and the construction and maintenance of military facilities and housing, to name some.

Also on the Republicans’ block in future appropriations bills: air traffic control; cancer and Alzheimer’s research; Meals on Wheels; infrastructure in general; opioid treatments; Head Start; rail, food and drug safety; and much, much more. Although Social Security and Medicare wouldn’t face cuts, good luck getting assistance once the programs’ staffing is reduced.

“Washington cannot continue to spend money we do not have at the expense of children and grandchildren,” McCarthy tweeted. Yet children, more than their grandparents drawing Social Security and Medicare, would be among the Americans most affected by the proposed cuts, and not just because of the reductions in education, nutrition, housing and healthcare programs that benefit many of them now.

At stake is the country they’ll inherit. Economists and fiscal experts consider much of the spending that is at issue as “seed corn” investments in physical and human capital, with a proven return.

How the debt limit talks end is anyone’s guess. I’m as concerned as the “scared” right-of-center experts I quoted months ago now that we’re nearing the June deadline when the Treasury says it will no longer be able to borrow to meet obligations incurred by past presidents and Congresses.

Republicans say they’ll make no concessions, that agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is concession enough. Really? Lifting the debt limit is their patriotic duty, especially considering their complicity in driving up the debt — fully a quarter of it during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“I believe there are a number of members on the other side of the aisle that understand the hypocrisy here,” DeLauro told me. “But they’re not going to say anything.”

And consider this: Republicans want to raise the debt limit only enough to allow the Treasury to borrow through next spring. What then? They’ll hold us up for more spending cuts.

That would be on top of the ones they’re already having trouble producing, while threatening the nation with economic disaster.

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:47 pm Lots of rhetoric, half truths, curated headlines, grandstanding and well-worn talking points from both sides.

I expect everyone on this board will play their respective roles and believe/repeat whatever their media gods tell them.

This is by design to keep the proles from asking the right questions or digging too deep into the real issues.

Give them bread and circus.

mvscal wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 11:31 pm Holy shit, Screwy. You are one dumb motherfucker. Jesus Spit-roasted Christ.

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:47 pm This is by design to keep the proles from asking the right questions or digging too deep into the real issues.

mvscal wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 11:31 pm Holy shit, Screwy. You are one dumb motherfucker. Jesus Spit-roasted Christ.

Screw_Michigan wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 11:26 pm
Our "media gods" communicate facts and seek the truth.

Donnie wrote:Lots of rhetoric, half truths, curated headlines, grandstanding and well-worn talking points from both sides.

I expect everyone on this board will play their respective roles and believe/repeat whatever their media gods tell them.

Diego in Seattle wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 12:26 am

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:47 pm This is by design to keep the proles from asking the right questions or digging too deep into the real issues.

Like why the GOP thinks it's acceptable to give away $2.3 TRILLION in tax cuts to the wealthy but now think that cuts in services for the rest of us should be used to make up the shortfall in income?

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 12:20 pm This thread is following the script just as predicted. Goddam I'm a genius.

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Thu May 25, 2023 9:47 pm Lots of rhetoric, half truths, curated headlines, grandstanding and well-worn talking points from both sides.

I expect everyone on this board will play their respective roles and believe/repeat whatever their media gods tell them.

This is by design to keep the proles from asking the right questions or digging too deep into the real issues.

Give them bread and circus.

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 2:49 pm Read my post again, Mikey. See the first sentence? Where it says "from both sides." You're making this partisan, not me. I'm calling out the system, the process. You're playing semantics because you've been trained to do so.

These are the same tired old arguments we've heard for 40 years. Republicans want to starve the poor; Democrats want to cut defense; blah blah and on and on. Nothing ever changes. They're the same fucking arguments. Why? FUCKING WHY??? Ask yourself why it's the same goddam talking points you've heard and repeated for FORTY TITTYFUCKING YEARS yet defense always gets funded and the poor always get more benefits but we rehash this same bullshit every few years. WHY??

I'll tell you why. Because it fucking WORKS. You're being played. And so am I. We're being given bread and political circus and made to feel like we're part of the process. If we cheer loud enough the elephant will stand up to the donkey and vice versa. We read, we click, we share, and the political machine rolls on doing what it does; doing what it's always done. The grift never stops. It just shifts focus every so often. Republicans spend the public's money on shit that enriches their donors while the other side caterwauls. Democrats spend the public's money on shit that enriches their donors while the other side caterwauls. It's all a show because in the end every donor benefits and the members of each tribe cheer and bang their canes on the table "Hear hear!" thinking they won something other than a delayed ass fucking. It's a joke. It's a fucking clown show and morons like you AND ME are the idiots in the pews thinking our voice matters. Where you and I differ is I am trying to wake up and I am trying to wake you up. You seem content to play the game. The same game you've played your entire life. Can you see that? Can you see that nothing you've done matters?

If you had made a difference, and if I had made a difference, then things would be different. They aren't.

Kierland wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 3:28 pm Double down on tHeY ArE bOTH tHe saMe

Kierland wrote: ↑Sat May 27, 2023 3:10 am …you keep up the “we aren’t so bad cause China is worse.” Nobody cares about your Whataboutism.

Kierland wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 3:39 pm Changing your economic model does not equate to giving up sovereignty

Kierland wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 10:55 pm Nice backpedal.

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 3:45 am I am 100% certain that people in Kierland's vicinity pretend to have indigestion, sprained ankles, emergency phone calls, car trouble, and oppressive overtime to avoid conversing with him. Can you imagine this stooge at a work party repeating the same four takes over and over? Or regaling them with how many internet nazis he's been pWning? Carol from HR has probably texted Jim from records offering a blowie if he gets her out of a conversation with K about the debt ceiling. Fukken Bet!

Donnie Baker wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 3:45 am I am 100% certain that people in Kierland's vicinity pretend to have indigestion, sprained ankles, emergency phone calls, car trouble, and oppressive overtime to avoid conversing with him. Can you imagine this stooge at a work party repeating the same four takes over and over? Or regaling them with how many internet nazis he's been pWning? Carol from HR has probably texted Jim from records offering a blowie if he gets her out of a conversation with K about the debt ceiling. Fukken Bet!