The House of Representatives just passed the debt ceiling deal by an overwhelming majority – even among Republicans. The final vote is 314 to 117.
But there were 71 Republicans who did vote against the bill which is pretty significant: the list.
If you listen to the “Right Wing” talking heads, McCarthy blew this. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is an embarrassment that an amateur needs to explain it not just to my fellow plebes, but to 71 elected chest beaters calling for McCarthy’s head in the House of Representatives.
The House passed a Budget, something everyone said they could never do. It sat over in the Senate for over a month, here is what Politico said about it when it passed:
House GOP passes its debt bill, upping pressure on Biden
It’s a symbolic victory, since the legislation is DOA in the Senate, but Republicans hope it will force the president to the negotiating table.
House Republicans passed their sweeping debt-limit and spending-cuts plan after a tumultuous 24 hours. Now, they have to see if it will bring President Joe Biden to the negotiating table.
The vote followed a frantic day of eleventh-hour wrangling as Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies sought to lock down potential defectors ranging from conservatives to Midwesterners.
In the end, only four Republicans voted against the legislation — though the victory is merely symbolic given the bill’s DOA status in the Senate.
And it was a hard-fought victory, at that. The conference had been in talks over the bill for months, yet McCarthy was still negotiating with on-the-fence members shortly before the vote. Still, GOP lawmakers cheered the bill’s passage, hoping it will give them some leverage to force leading Democrats to back down from assertions they would not negotiate at all over the debt limit.
Two things about the bill they passed. First, the object of the bill, other than the people we elected actually doing their job and passing a Budget, was to force President Biden to negotiate on his Budget. The President sent a Budget to Congress over 100 days before and refused to negotiate anything in his budget. One of the excuses the Democrats and the President used continually was that the Republican House didn’t have a Budget of their own. It was leverage, a place to start and force the negotiations.
Second, McCarthy had to jump through hoops, twist arms, make backroom deals and just plain badger every Republican in the House to get the Budget passed, and it only passed by one vote. Yet this same herd of cats is pissed that the Budget they passed with the sole purpose of forcing negotiations was actually just that, negotiated with.
The Bill sat in the Senate for a month. It was never brought to the floor, it was never debated, it was never voted on, it was ignored and laughed at by both Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell while the President ignored the House Budget until the last week before the Debt Limit was reached.
If you listen to the pundits and the chest beaters they’re all screaming “That’s it! We have them!” Sorry you didn’t have anything except a strong starting point. That is what the deal the House passed was, a starting point. It was the bare minimum of leverage. That leverage came from the miracle that they actually passed anything. What little they got was due to that fact and nothing else.
Mitch McConnell screwed the House Majority Republicans by passing the Budget in December with Pelosi. That betrayal of the American People negated the fact that we had voted in a Republican House. McConnel neutered it, taking away the power of the purse for this year. This deal that McCarthy and the House put together in April was the ADJUSTMENTS to a Bill that was already passed. A Bill whose money was already distributed.
The 71 chest beaters and the MSM should have to account for the fact that they have not informed the masses of how the process actually works. The other cry you hear is “We should have forced a Default on the Debt”. That is the ultimate idiocy. Number one: general revenue income monthly to the Fed through Taxes is almost double what the payments on our debt are. What wouldn’t get paid for is the nonessential programs. That is what both sides are protecting.
The other really important problem with defaulting on our Debt is the fact that we are engaged in a war with China over retaining the World Reserve Currency as the Dollar. The Chinese are actively trying to supplant the Dollar with the Yuan. They have already done so with over half of the Worlds Oil Supplying Nations.
Jeopardizing the standing of the Dollar over politics gives the Chinese the leverage they need to convince the rest of the Financial Markets to switch from Dollars to the Yuan due to the instability of the Dollar caused by our Politics.
This deal was a very important win for McCarthy and all Americans. Let me explain below.
Two-year debt limit suspension, spending limits
The agreement would keep nondefense spending roughly flat in the 2024 fiscal year and increase it by 1% the following year, as well as suspend the debt limit until January 2025 — past the next presidential election.
For the next fiscal year, the bill matches Biden’s proposed defense budget of $886 billion and allots $704 billion for nondefense spending.
The bill also requires Congress to approve 12 annual spending bills or face a snapback to spending limits from the previous year, which would mean a 1% cut.
The legislation aims to limit federal budget growth to 1% for the next six years, but that provision would not be enforceable starting in 2025.
Overall, the White House estimates that the plan would reduce government spending by at least $1 trillion, but official calculations have not yet been released.
The important piece is right there in the 3rd paragraph. Let me explain why, something else the Republicans, let alone the press always neglect to do.
The bill also requires Congress to approve 12 annual spending bills or face a snapback to spending limits from the previous year, which would mean a 1% cut.
12 annual spending bills, that is how the American budget is by law supposed to created. What we have been doing is Omnibus Continuing Resolutions. The United States has only passed a full proper 12 bill budget once since 1977. That one time was Newt Gingrich’s balanced budget in 1994, and it cost him not only his Speakership, but his spot in Congress.
An Omnibus bill takes the existing budgets of every dept. and just adds a cost of living increase on it. When you’ve heard in the past 20 years anyone ever say a cut in government spending what you heard was a lie. The cut was always in the amount that the spending would grow. Those battles were over whether the growth would be 5-7%, they never involved the reduction of a single dollar to what was already being spent.
By doing the 12 spending bills individually each bill can be gone over with a fine tooth comb, and real cuts or increases can be made based on the efficiency of the individual line item.
McCarthy got that ability reinstated, and if the spending bills don’t get prepared and finished by October and an Omnibus CR is forced an automatic cut of 1% occurs, rather than the automatic increase of 5-7%.
That is a Win. This Congress has one job: to expose the corruption in the Department of Justice. The Biden Family Business has provided the perfect opportunity and vehicle to do that. What these chest beaters, and every other member of the Republican Party should be doing is going on TV everyday screaming about that. Not about battles they never had a chance of winning.
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