Kevin's guilt and the Democrats' contribution
On McCarthy's ouster and what it could mean for the Dems (and for Ukraine).
A commentary on the deposition of House speaker Kevin McCarthy from fellow German author and blogger Roger Letsch.
By Roger Letsch, October 4, 2023 – English translation by DeepThought
Lawmaker, that’s the job title given to members of Congress in Washington. Lawmakers. Lawmaking consists for the most part of deciding on which projects to spend the money collected through taxes in the country or which to spend as debt. Many of these government expenditures are passed after resubmission (CR, Continues Resolution) because they are permanent. One of the repeated tasks of the deputies for the last few years has been to raise the debt ceiling, i.e. to soften the budget constraint for the state, which for a long time has not been able to manage with the funds it takes from its citizens as taxes. In other words, for a long time there has been some of the year left at the end of the money and the shutdown looms.
All tasks at the federal level would be put on “hold”, civil servants, would not be paid, schools, administrations, veterans care, the agents in FBI, CIA, NSA and also the army would have to stop their work and would have forced vacations. Right now, the fight to raise the “spending bill” is raging again, the shutdown was averted at the last second and an emergency budget was passed for the next 45 days. A reprieve until November, no more, because the Republican majority’s approval of raising the debt ceiling by another two trillion dollars is now hopeless because a vote of no confidence has bowled Majority Caucus Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of office.
There is now talk of a coup everywhere, and the media are overflowing with shrill tones of blame. The blame for the dilemma lies with a small, radical group of Republicans around Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida. [German weekly magazine] Der Spiegel speaks of “embarrassment and a blockade of the country.” [German news outlet] WELT even speaks of a “foretaste of the destructive power of the right-wing Republicans.” This implies, of course, that there are also left-wing Republicans who are probably not quite so bad. The incident of a speaker being voted out of office is indeed unique in U.S. history, but so was McCarthy’s inauguration in January. That was, in fact, tied to intra-party conditions and given a short rip cord. The group around Gaetz had stipulated that, in the event of broken promises, one vote of no confidence from their own ranks would be enough to force a vote in the House on the Speaker's whereabouts. McCarthy, worn down by a total of 15 ballots, finally relented and also accepted two other conditions set: No more backroom deals with Democrats, and an end to so-called omnibus spending.
Backroom deals are common practice not only in Washington politics, much to the chagrin of the interested electorate who see their interests sold and betrayed – on both sides! Omnibus spending bills are the government’s practice of beating thousands of pages of hodgepodge intended funding through the House of Representatives in tightly scheduled votes. You want to support the troops? Then sign it! You care about veterans? Then say yes to the whole package! And that includes support for gender studies in Pakistan or paying the pensions of Ukrainian civil servants.
All or Nothing
So, for example, if you want to provide funds for the reconstruction of fire-ravaged Lāhainā in Hawaii, you should at the same time approve funds for the war in Ukraine. Anyone who doesn’t want this to happen, or at least doesn’t want it mixed up, can later be accused in the media of wanting to leave the inhabitants of Maui in misery. This borders on blackmail. Putting an end to this practice and returning to honest votes on the matter was the declared goal of Matt Gaetz’s group.
One could vote on every use of tax money and also on debts, but on each use and topic separately, Gaetz said. It is actually inconceivable, but for striving for more transparency in voting, more say of the deputies and thus also for more budget discipline on the part of the government, he is now portrayed as a dangerous right-wing extremist. The refusal to simply wave through the debt ceiling increase yet again initially led to the compromise and the extension of the current budget by 45 days.
However, the Biden administration had some reason to believe that Speaker McCarthy would now quickly initiate the additional expansion of aid to Ukraine, which Gaetz probably suspected, not without reason, was a backroom deal and pulled the aforementioned ripcord. McCarthy clearly lost the vote of confidence, which paralyzes the parliament because of the now pending search for a successor for the speaker’s office. The clock is ticking, however. In 45 days, the compromise ends and if there is no new, legal budget by then, the U.S. federal government will have to shut down.
As always when a government runs out of other people’s money, the question of guilt is in the air and the German press agrees that Matt Gaetz went too far. After all, the parliament needs a speaker in order to be able to act. And something else is certain for the commentariat. There would be many victims in Gaetz’s game of chaos, but only one profiteer: none other than Donald Trump! Too bad it was Trump, of all people, who supported McCarthy and was already very displeased in January because Gaetz had delayed the Speaker’s appointment for so long by insisting on conditions.
But what good are the Republicans’ majority in the House of Representatives if, in the end, they just wave through the debt-making of Joe Biden’s administration and let themselves be led around the ring on every budget issue with the slogan “anyone who doesn’t agree endangers democracy?” Because one thing is obvious here: whenever Republicans vote for Democratic proposals, it’s perfectly fine. Yes, it’s expected of them. No one would think that something like this could also work in the other direction, especially when times are once again “tight”.
How many Democratic votes do you think Kevin McCarthy just received in the no-confidence vote after successfully preventing the shutdown of the Biden administration and promising it the requested funds for Ukraine? It was exactly zero. All of the Dems now lamenting the House’s lost ability to act, along with Matt Gaetz and a handful of other Republicans, voted to remove the Speaker. So if a U.S. government shutdown does indeed occur in November, Democrats can justifiably say they made sure of it themselves. After all, Matt Gaetz can claim to have behaved exactly as he promised his constituents in November 2022 and his colleagues in January 2023. What excuses will the Democrats have?
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This article was first published in German on unbesorgt.de.
»When the U.S. Army saw “light at the end of the tunnel” in the Vietnam War, it ended up being just the Viet Cong’s headlamp.« ~Roger Letsch
Nobody is going to fight a war for Biden because he is dumber than Bush.
The banksters need a war desperately right now. They’ve tried so hard in Syria, and it just hasn’t worked. Then they got crazy Trump actually saying we should stay out of the Middle East and focus on our own problems, and people were listening . . .
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“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush.” — Donald Trump
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What’s a self-respecting globalist financier to do?
So, they sent their puppets like McCain, Romney, Clinton, and Biden out to talk up the fight against “evil” and threaten Russia, hoping to fool those dumb white ‘Murkins one more time into sending their sons off to die for God and Country and Goldman Sachs.
The recently ousted Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, who took at least a dozen votes to get elected speaker, traveled to Israel immediately upon his election, declaring to the Israeli Knesset that the USA is steadfastly committed to supporting Ukraine in their war against Russia.
It has become so painfully obvious, especially where you have someone like Nikki Haley wagging her finger and shouting down Vivek Ramaswamy in a presidential debate on live national television when the questions of this Ukrainian war against Russia and any mention of Israel are concerned, that the United States government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Israeli Political Action Committee.