The wingnut caucus in the House has proposed a short-term spending bill that would cut outlays by "1%." But it's not really that:
The 1 percent cut is an average for the federal budget. The Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs would not receive any cuts, while other government agencies would have their budgets slashed by 8 percent until the end of October.
This is ridiculous. What's the government supposed to do? Tell 8% of their workforce to take October off and then maybe come back in November? That's no way to run a railroad.
This proposal isn't going to get any traction in the Senate, nor should it. Conservatives agreed to spending levels during negotiations over the debt ceiling, and if they have any integrity left they should honor that even if they regret it in hindsight. A deal's a deal.
If they are so determined to to cut the budget, why not eliminate pay for Congressmen and Senators? And their staffs. Shirley will meaning volunteers would be willing to work for nothing.
Lead from the front!
Who's Shirley?
Cut 10% of the military budget every year for the next 10 years. Cash crisis solved.
Yup. And uncapp FICA.
Also, if you cut the IRS by 8% you don’t save money, you lose money.
Not the people who matter (the very rich donors / tax cheats)
Have you forgotten what world this is? They never had any integrity to begin with.
corrected for inflation?
Mark my words, when this hare-brained scheme gets rejected and a real CR looks likely, one of these people will pull the trigger on the "vacate the chair" motion to sow havoc. They don't have anyone to replace McCarthy with and they'll block all efforts to elect a speaker any more reasonable than Jordan or Comer, throwing the House into chaos for some period of time.
It's pure performative assholery, but it's all they've got. The fruits of a party's dedication to anarchy in the service of ultimate authoritarian rule-- aka getting its own way.
If you count the number of actual Republican House members, they had a 5-vote majority, then one resigned. One is ill (Scalise), one has “issues” (Soros), and two have newborns at home—so even if every one of these batshit crazy kooks agreed on anything—which is impossible—they still don’t have the votes for a bill.
Yet they still act as if they control the White House and have veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress.
Because they are insane.
The hilarious thing is that the good-cause absentees (illness, paternal duties) could have cast their votes remotely ...under the rules that the Democrats set up, but the conservatives hated that idea because it was a Covid provision, so they killed it and now House votes have to be in person again.
Own petard, hoisted by.
A democrat has resigned. A republican has announced his resignation but hasn't resigned yet. Republicans would never let a new born baby prevent them from voting. They hate babies, even their own. The one with issues has to turn out to vote or they will feed him to the wolves.
"... one of these people will pull the trigger on the "vacate the chair" motion to sow havoc."
Democrats can stop this by voting for McCarthy.
Anybody can explain what Democrats, or the country as a whole, would lose by doing that?
Looks to me like messing up the internal politics of the Republican without losing anything.
The country would be stuck with a spineless weasel as Speaker of the House and wouldn’t get any benefit since he’s not going to renounce Trump or Trumpism (and couldn’t be trusted even if he pretended to do so). And it would seriously complicate running an aggressive campaign against House Republicans in 2024. So it’s not worth doing.
I don't see the point about the campaign, and the first sentence is the current situation anyway. So I don't see where the loss is.
The gain is that the cranks will get a fir from havinbg a speaker supported by Democrats. That looks to me worth the trouble.
Mitch is correct in that we are not, in any sense, a parlimentary democracy.
Sure, some bills are passed with bi partisan support, so if a "Republican" bill gets some Dem votes, well, it obviously happens but that's not what is going on here.
What is going on is that on a fundamental level the Speaker, through his party, controls what does and does not even come up for a vote of any kind in the first place.
There is no system in place for every proposed bill to make it to a full vote, if there was, we would not have the Congress we have. But we do not have that system, so hoping it would work is a form of wishful thinking. Especially when there is this small percentage of Republicans whose major issue is that Government is a joke.
My personal issue is I don't know why people, and most of the mainstream media, do not understand that these idiots men what they say, government to them is a joke. So why would then care if they shut it down?
I didn't figure how what you write relates to the question I raised: What will go wrong if Democrats vote for McCarthy?
The plus of this is causing the Republican party to go into a fit. With some luck, maybe prevent shutdown, but that is a low probability.
Because in our system the Speaker of the House has responsibilities for what the majority decides makes it to the floor, if a Speaker cannot get their own party to go along its non-sensical -- and if the Speaker does not "speak" for his or her actual party its also non-sensical, you might was well elect me Speaker.
But what Mitch basically said is that it makes no sense for a person in party A to vote for party B's speaker, even if that meant electing him or her.
So what will go worse than it is now?
I think Dems could vote for him long enough to prevent a shutdown, then do the thing to call a vote again, but let him dangle.
It would be smarter and much better for the country if the Dems could convince a few Republicans to vote for Hakeem Jeffries.
Agreed, but it they didn't succeed and I think everybody agree unlikely to succeed in the future. So need to think of other possible line of actions.
The Speaker does not actually have to be member of the House, but I can't think of any outsider who'd be able to get votes from both sides.
Which is why I think voting for McCarthy does not lose anything. There is no other viable ooption anyway.
They would also have to change the rules about challenging the speaker, else there would be constant motions to vacate the chair if Dems helped McCarthy--not to mention he'd be primaried out.
Nothing in what you say looks to me worse than the current situation.
Motions to vacate are fairly harmless as long as the majority vote them down; they just take up a little time, and there's lots of ways for obstructive members to waste time if that's what they want to do.
"Anybody can explain what Democrats, or the country as a whole, would lose by doing that?"
I'll take a stab. It would normalize a completely amoral and dishonest politician whose only interest is maintaining his power. He has proven that he will lie profusely to achieve that goal, and it would embolden him to continue such behavior.
I'd say that if Democrats exacted enough concessions, they could do this. But even here, how could you trust such a man to keep his "promises"?
I don't think it will normalize anything, because everybody will see it a political expediency rather than a principle move.
They don't need to trust him not to do anything worse than he already does, because he cannot.
There are all sorts of options. I think we can take it as given that the Republicans will unanimously reject any Democrat as Speaker, and they are the somewhat tenuous majority so a Democratic Speaker is not an option. However, that tenuous majority means that the Democrats only need to convince a few Republicans to vote with them in order to elect the Republican of their choice. There are a few "moderate" Republicans left in the House, and one of them may be preferable, from the Democratic viewpoint, to McCarthy. Presumably, if the Democrats lined up behind a Republican moderate, they could convince the required four Republican moderates to line up with them.
It would be better to get a saner Republican, but it doesn't seem to be viable, because Republicans are afraid of being primaried. Nee dto think of some other possibilities.
Find a retiring republican.
Why should we fix their problem for them?
If they want Democratic votes, they can buy them with policy concessions such as, oh, say, ending this ridiculous impeachment hearing. If their only offer is "well, Kevin would like to be Speaker but can't get enough Republicans, but we offer nothing in exchange" then they can pound sand.
"Why should we fix their problem for them?"
It doesn't fix their problem, it willput them into a a fit, and there is some (small) chance that it will prevent . These are both positives, and I yet to see the negatives.
prevent shutdown.
How does it prevent a shutdown? Do you think McCarthy will express his gratitude and allow a CR to come to a vote of the full House?
That is the idea. As I wrote, this is small chance.
The other possibility is to McCarthy resign immediately, will make him and looks stupid, which I think is a clear plus. In this cases it is possible that Democrats will be able to push it with the help of the less crazy Republicans.
The collapse of government is not merely a Republican problem.
Ingenious, but . . . they would only do that if they got under-the-table assurances from McCarthy to make it worthwhile, and every R in the House knows that. So it would have to be sprung as a surprise at voting time. Rs would then change their votes unless the clock was too close to running out. Even then, they'd just extend the clock, as I think happened in the January shitshow. So I don't see how it could actually succeed, as a practical matter.
It also wouldn't help Ds at election time next year, and I don't think it would get the House settled down at all. If getting their way via chaos is the aim of these 5 or 20 or however many Rs we're talking about, they'll produce chaos no matter what kind of deal anybody else wants to make. They follow Muad'Dib's dictum: "The people who can destroy a thing, they control it."
"... they would only do that if they got under-the-table assurances from McCarthy to make it worthwhile"
Why?
What will go wrong if they just vote for hime without any agreement?
The aim is to cause the Republican party to have a fit, and also to give McCarthy an opurtunity to demonsrtae that he is real stateman, which is obvious use to demonsratte that he isn't.
I get that it's trolling and it might serve the Rs right. But then in 14 months the Ds will be asking for the keys to the House on the grounds that the Rs are making the place into a cafeteria food fight and want to screw over everybody who isn't rich and white and/or a fundie Christian.
Well if they vote to keep McCarthy, the comeback to that is "you made it that way by supporting him and the rich white guys instead of getting rid of R leadership when you had the chance. How are you any better?" Isn't that the comeback?
And what do the Ds say to that? "We're really Serious People and we proved it by poking a stick into the spokes last year"?
So I like the trolling but I don't like where it would put them, let alone the country. IMO they'd be tactically better off keeping their distance and spotlighting the chaos and incoherence, since they can't bring order to it, and shouldn't visibly contribute to it. There's more than enough energy for that on the R side as it is.
Also they should be quietly working to turn a handful of Rs into independents who'll vote for Jeffries. I don't think they can do that, but I do think they should be trying (and probably are).
" the comeback to that is "you made it that way by supporting ..."
Nobody even quarter sane will think like that.
McCarthy will not be able to pass anything that Democrats really object to, so he cannot do much damage anyway. So the only damage will be the republican party behaving even crazier than they behave now. That isn't going to damage the Democrats.
"quarter-sane"
You have far more confidence in the average voter's political insight and/or attention span than I do. Let's not forget, tens of millions voted for trump. Twice.
"McCarthy will not be able to pass anything that Democrats really object to"
You mean if D votes hypothetically get him back in the speakership? That doesn't mean he has to care about D votes on anything from then on, and so it's status quo ante, nothing gained for the Ds.
But it's hypothetical. If there are any D votes for him in a new speakership election, Rs will immediately change their votes away from him. Actual deal or no deal, they'll have to assume there was one and he'll be poison. It's a recipe for amping up the chaos, which I think would be a bad thing. It would give the numbnuts caucus exactly what they want.
Also I think Yikes is right that voting for speaker is voting on who controls the floor, and no D can vote for an R-- it would contradict everything Ds say they stand for. Think about the ads that can come from that.
The point of a motion to vacate coming from these people would be to shut the government down if agreements on spending are close to passing. They like having a weak McCarthy on their leash but they don't trust him because of the debt ceiling deal. They'd rather keep him where he is. They'll cut him loose only if they see a second betrayal coming, and in that case, maximum chaos is what they'll want, to shut the government down one way or another.
Spending deals they don't want would be one kind of betrayal that would trigger the motion. They would also see D votes to put him back in the chair as a further betrayal. They'd abandon him, no one else will want the job, a speakerless House follows. Hello chaos.
McCarthy controls the clock
Completely off-topic, but on the unlikely chance that Kevin reads these comments, here’s a story highlighting precisely how shitty and entitled your typical Republican politician is: an Idaho senator tucking into an FAA authorization bill a requirement that planes not fly over his property—which is two miles away from an airport that has been there since 1938.
The Republican Party is a disgrace.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/idaho-sen-jim-risch-wants-to-reroute-flights-away-from-southwest-boise-where-he-lives/
All noise. We're going to have a shutdown.
First, the far-right wants to shut the government down if they can't get much larger cuts than this one month plan. They'd shut down the government through the end of the calendar year if they could.
Second, McCarthy needs a shutdown to (1) gain leverage against the rest of the GOP that isn't far-right, and (2) the support of Blue Dog Democrats for a much more modest proposal of cuts.
Third, we've had so many shutdowns over the years, it's become normalized as a standard tactic of the GOP to gain concessions.
They want the shutdown to sow chaos. See--we need a strong man...
No cuts. none. We agreed to cuts last spring. Not one dime more. If we have to gut it out to the end of the year to get there, so be it.
I wonder if repulsives lie awake thinking up this guano or is it remembered night mares.The definitely have the talent for chaos in spite of a lot of it being regurgitate. Do they ever have real problem solving ideas?
These shutdowns always blow up in Republicans' faces, but it plays well with their base and most of the House GOP members are safely ensconced in gerrymandered districts so they don't give a crap.
"...if they have any integrity left"
That's a knee slapper!
Can I get your (Citizen Lehew) answer:
What will go wrong if when a motion to vacate comes, Some Democrats will vote for McCarthy?
Dems would almost certainly vote to keep McCarthy in, which would make him completely radioactive to the MAGA lunatics and ensure they'd be even more dysfunctional than they are now.
"would" or "should"?
"would" looks to me quite optimistic.
I think "would" is a fair evaluation. The Republicans reflexively oppose anything the Democrats support, so if McCarthy got Democratic support that could definitely be expected to harden Republican opposition.
I think you misunderstand the question, I was referring to the first "would", i.e. the prediction that Democrats will actually do it. Totally agree that it would screw up McCarthy, and I wouldn't be surprised if in this case he will actually resign with some excuse.
What benefit is it to the Democrats?
It shows the Republicans are a mess, even m ore than it looks now.
Either McCarthy will stay as speaker, in which case the crazies will go craziers (and MCcarty may pass a "continuing resolution"), or he will resign immediately, which will make him and the Republican party look stupid.
From a risk reward perspective, it appears that the GOP feels they get more benefit, than political cost, from a shut down. Assuming the aforementioned is correct, then of course we get a shut down.
Stated differently, voters need to punish the GOP for shutdowns...
Mystery Iowa mailers proclaim Trump to be a 'transgender trailblazer',
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-lgbtq-2665584145/
Well, yeah, how much does he really spend on his hair?
Makes you think, doesn't it.
Hey, if the Dumb and Dumber folks manage to cut the non-military budget by 8%, that establishes the new baseline! When Dems come back after Halloween (sweet!) to try to, ya know, negotiate an actual budget, then if they so much as want to restore funding, "Hey!! They're trying to increase the federal budget by over 10%"
Remember, the American public is no better at simple arithmetic than magarepubs. Or "journalists."
" if they have any integrity left..."
Well, there's your answer. If you can scream about decorum and etiquette while simultaneously displaying dick pics of Hunter Biden and screaming at the State of the Union like a howler monkey, then no. You have no integrity left. You probably never had any in the first place.