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**SEPTEMBER 22, 2023**
On the Prospect website
* Maureen Tkacik on the fallout from private equity's assault on
health care
* Lee Harris on dangerous retrenchment on America's flagship HIV
program
* Ramenda Cyrus on how a Black football player is reclaiming his story
* Luke Goldstein on how Bloomberg treats telecom propaganda as news
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Budget Follies: The Endgame
Expect the government to shut down, McCarthy to lose his Speakership,
and some renegade Republicans to eventually support a discharge
petition.
There's an old saying that when the other guy is destroying himself,
the best tactic is to stand back and let it happen. That's certainly
the case with the House Republican refusal to fund the government.
Yesterday, six members of the tiny nihilist caucus in the House once
again blocked even floor consideration of a rule to allow debate to
proceed on funding the Pentagon. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, humiliated for
the second time in a week, sent the House home for the weekend.
Even if the Republican ultras relent, this will be only the beginning of
a long series of extortionate demands that Democrats can't accept,
including cuts of 70 to 80 percent in domestic spending. McCarthy's
failure to get his own caucus to deliver on the budget agreement that
McCarthy negotiated with President Biden last May
in exchange for extending the debt ceiling, is one more example of
Republican bad faith, factional disarray, and McCarthy's dwindling
power.
It's only a matter of time before McCarthy is dumped as Speaker.
Democrats should welcome that. His successor will be even weaker because
the far-right Freedom Caucus can't keep doing in Speakers. One of the
sillier suggestions is that the Democrats should vote with McCarthy to
save his Speakership in exchange for some kind of budget deal (that
McCarthy can't deliver), as Steven Pearlstein proposed in a recent
**Washington Post** column
.
The endgame is almost surely a government shutdown once the current
fiscal year ends in just eight days on September 30. Government
shutdowns have invariably backfired on Republicans. This one is likely
to backfire even more disastrously, since it is a product not just of
the usual GOP demands for deeper cuts but of nihilism and dysfunction
within the Republican caucus vividly on public display.
The one exception to the rule that you stand back when the other side is
destroying itself is the role of President Biden. It would be a huge
mistake to insert himself into the negotiation process again, because no
reasonable compromise is negotiable. But Biden could be using his pulpit
to explain just what harms will ensue to ordinary families if the far
right succeeds in shutting down the government again. This will require
Biden to put aside his habitual preference for bipartisanship and to
stand up for the Democrats as the normal and sane party that actually
tries to serve the people, in contrast with Republican loonies.
Before last May's artificial debt ceiling crisis ended with a budget
deal, there was talk of using the parliamentary device of a discharge
petition. The Speaker ordinarily controls what comes to the House floor,
but an exception can occur when a majority of members file a discharge
petition.
If the government is shut down because of McCarthy's alliance with the
most extremist members of the House, my guess is that the somewhat
larger group of 18 GOP members from districts that Biden carried in 2020
will have had enough. Several of them could well vote with Democrats to
get a reasonable budget deal on the House floor. (They will get
primaried by MAGA Republicans whether or not they do this.)
This could be the beginning of a cross-party majority alliance of
Democrats and non-lunatic House Republicans that could even vote to
elect a RINO Republican as Speaker.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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Heads They 'Cha-Ching!'; Tails They Take Away Your Malpractice
Insurance
A tale of two private equity-spawned medical mega-practices BY MAUREEN
TKACIK
U.S. Retrenchment on Public Health Threatens Flagship HIV Program
Some lawmakers defend PEPFAR as a lifesaving 'soft power asset.' BY
**LEE HARRIS**
Bloomberg Treats Telecom Industry-Funded Analysis as News
An op-ed about net neutrality by two Obama veterans, later reported on
as news, was based on a white paper funded by two industry lobbying
groups. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
A Black Football Player Reclaims His Story
A book and hit movie depicted Michael Oher as a Black kid saved by
adoptive white parents. Oher says that's not the real story. BY
RAMENDA CYRUS
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