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- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), who we assume is talking about how the House is no longer functional
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For some time now, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been warning that the United States would hit its statutory debt limit on Thursday, January 19. Well, here we are.
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The deadline prompted the Treasury Department to begin taking “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its debts, which would cause an international financial crisis. In a letter to congressional leaders, the Treasury outlined this plan as the government runs up against its artificially-imposed borrowing capacity because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a sniveling little weasel who would burn the entire country to the ground so long as he and his buddies got to collect the insurance money. The “good” news is that Republican debt-limit threats have become so routine that Treasury now has a lot of experience with these “extraordinary measures.”
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McCarthy will now have several months to decide whether to be sane or whether to wreck the country out of spite as the Treasury Department pulls its emergency lever to keep the government operating until at least June. He’ll need as much time as possible, considering it took him 15 rounds of votes just to get the Speaker’s gavel in hand. It doesn’t matter that this is, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre put it, a basic “constitutional responsibility,” House Republicans have signaled from day one that they would make this process as ludicrously cumbersome as possible.
- So what kinds of ransoms might Republicans want in exchange for not wrecking the country out of spite? McCarthy has called for a vote on a House GOP proposal called the Fair Tax Act (hmmm why do I think this won’t actually be “fair”?) which would abolish the current federal income tax(!) and replace it with a 30 percent, highly regressive national sales tax. Payroll taxes, which finance Social Security and Medicare, would also be abolished. The IRS? Also gone. Wow! Which demographic would this policy disproportionately benefit at the expense of all others? Could it be…the rich? Funny how that always seems to be the case with GOP fiscal policy!
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The House GOP shows no signs of stopping their Bad Ideas train.
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In her letter, Yellen stressed, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” and while many new outlets have reported that “neither Republicans or Biden’s Democrats seem willing to budge,” that’s just wholly disingenuous. Only one party stands in opposition to the country paying the debts it already owes. The other party, to quote Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), is simply saying, “In exchange for not crashing the United States economy, you get nothing.”
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Even with such a shallow mandate, emboldened House Republicans have already turned their eyes towards intervening in Washington, DC, local government. They have vowed to block DC legislation allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections; they've singled out the city in an abortion bill that would permanently prohibit the District and the federal government from using taxpayer money to subsidize abortions. Tuesday, they also took aim at DC’s historic overhaul of its criminal code. One House Republican, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), even threatened last year to try to repeal DC home rule entirely, and similar attacks will likely intensify with a Republican-led Oversight Committee populated with the likes of batshit crazies like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ).
The narrow Senate Democratic majority makes it less likely that any such stand-alone Republican bills will succeed, but the House GOP is making the strongest possible case for the debt ceiling’s permanent abolition.
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The Dean of the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Douglas Elmendorf, announced this morning that he would name human rights advocate Kenneth Roth to a fellowship position after previously vetoing his appointment. In the announcement, Elmendorf explained that the original decision to block Roth’s appointment was based on the “evaluation of the potential contributions to the School” and not a reaction to donor influence, but many in the community are not so convinced. Earlier this month, allegations surfaced that Elmendorf vetoed Roth’s appointment to HKS’ Carr Center for Human Rights Policy due to accusations of “anti-Israel bias.” Roth, whom the New York Times once described as “the godfather of human rights,” was the head of Human Rights Watch for 29 years, where he was critical of human rights abuses in Israel, yes, but also in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, and even the United States. Reports compiled by one of HKS’ own professors shows that Human Rights Watch’s assessments of Israel were no different than those of Amnesty International, or the U.S. State Department. Criticisms of Roth’s alleged “anti-Israel” bias also failed to mention Human Rights Watch’s frequent reports and statements about abuses and crimes committed by the Palestinian authorities. Dean Elmendorf wrote that he reversed his decision after discussions with faculty members, saying, “I hope that our community will be able to benefit from his deep experience in a wide range of human rights issues.”
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A series of regular and special elections this year will be heavily colored by public sentiment on abortion rights in post-Roe America. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) saw precisely that happen last Tuesday when his plans to enact a 15-week abortion ban, which had already stalled in the narrowly-Democratic State Senate, would be set back even further when what had been identified as a “Republican seat” in Virginia Beach flipped for pro-choice Democrat Aaron Rouse. Similarly-consequential elections this year will determine control of the Virginia General Assembly and Senate, as well as the Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey legislatures. Last year’s midterms saw many swing-state legislative chambers flip to Democrats—like in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota—all states which also elected pro-choice Democratic governors.
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