Over the last week, the 20 or so dissidents who held up the nomination of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House were almost universally reviled by all of the Washington establishment. They managed to win the enmity of the White House, the Republican leadership, the New York Times, and all the swamp creatures who were collectively indignant that a handful of conservatives could push over their apple cart. Joe Biden called the rabble rousers “an embarrassment” to our democracy.
What’s the old saying: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
As we noted when this whole scrum started: Washington is dangerously broken and precariously close to triggering a financial collapse. Three cheers for those who exposed the mischief and demanded reforms. A government that is spending more than $5 trillion a year on a completely dysfunctional government and then borrows $1.5 trillion to finance this pig trough is speeding ahead like a bullet train over a cliff to financial catastrophe.
In the end, the dissidents won some serious concessions from the establishment Republicans. We don’t like all of them, but most are improvements over the status quo. Here is what we like:
A commitment by House Republicans to adopt an FY24 budget resolution that balances w/in 10 years, includes long-term reforms to the budget process and mandatory spending programs.
A cap on FY24 discretionary spending at enacted FY22 levels or lower. This could save $85 billion from social programs and the bloated Pentagon budget
A House floor vote on six-year term limits for Congress. eighty percent of GOP voters support this – as do we.
A rejection of any budget negotiations with the Senate unless and until they pass appropriations bills of their own—and will reject any Senate-passed appropriations bills that do not comply with the House-passed budget resolution and reduce
No debt limit increase absent a discretionary budgetary agreement in line with the House-passed budget resolution or other commensurate fiscal reforms to reduce and cap the growth of spending.
These are symbolic but also significant victories for financial common sense. And if it takes a little chaos to get these kinds of reforms – we need a lot more of it.
2) Washington’s Debt Limit Hyperventilation – Yet Again
Of all the promises that the rabblerousers won from new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, the one we applaud the loudest is the announcement that Republicans will not pass a debt ceiling UNTIL substantial budget process reforms and spending cuts are secured.
But once again we have the inside-the-beltway crowd making the absurd argument that defaulting on the debt (which isn’t going to happen) is more dangerous than continuously running up the debt into the stratosphere.
This is like blaming a bank that won’t give a loan to someone who’s millions of dollars in debt with no plan to repay it, for the deadbeat’s financial problems.
So we laughed out loud when we read this commentary from the New York Times: “Economists, Wall Street analysts and political observers are warning that the concessions he made to fiscal conservatives could make it very difficult for Mr. McCarthy to muster the votes to raise the debt limit."
But these yoyos don’t seem to understand that what the conservatives in the House are demanding is spending reduction reforms so we don’t have to raise the debt ceiling by ever larger amounts over and over and over.
House Republicans are being smart and strategic by letting the White House and the Senate Democrats know there will be no budget deal and no debt ceiling expansion UNTIL the spending cuts are implemented. If not, here is the fiscal future we face…
Speaking of wasting money, Biden spent $5 billion of your tax dollars to buy 171 million bivalent COVID booster shots.
Less than 50 million have been administered.
And uptake in the six weeks after Biden announced a "six-week sprint" to the end of the year was anemic:
It's long past time to end the experiment in federal purchasing and distribution of COVID vaccines and treatments and allow them to be distributed through normal commercial channels.
We are generally supportive of shorter prison sentences for nonviolent criminals.
But those convicted of MURDER????
Washington, DC has gone soft on murder – despite being one of the murder capitals of the world. By the way, most of those murdered inside the nation’s capital are … black.
We found that chart on the Twitter account of reporter Alen Henney (https://twitter.com/alanhenney/), who has been reporting on a relentless and ongoing Washington, DC crime spree. Incentives matter.
