The New House Majority Isn’t Even Pretending Any More to Serve Anyone But the Economic Royalists
It's a good thing Democrats were so productive, because the republicans are about to make gridlock great again.
After two years of historic accomplishments while Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, it would have been nice to be optimistic and not succumb to all the gloomy prognostications concerning the current republican majority.
It would have been refreshing to hear the republican party repudiate Donald Trump and commit to delivering what matters most to the American working class.
It would have been encouraging to see republicans acknowledging how the extreme Q-Anon, MAGA base had temporarily hijacked it, and vow to return to sane, rational policies instead of conspiracy theories and personal grievance.
As the old obscure Pink Floyd song goes, “it would be so nice.”
Here’s to hoping, right?
Sadly, though, the reality is just as we suspected.
After finally securing a Speaker — following the longest round of voting since 1856 — the House republican majority wasted no time committing itself to doubling down on a neo-fascist agenda that would make Vladimir Putin, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro proud.
Buckle up.
These next two years are going to be ugly.
It’s a good thing Democrats were so productive, because once the anti-democratic venom from the republican majority hits the Democratically controlled Senate, America is going to make gridlock great again.
Once the rules package was voted on, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wasted no time making its first order of business asking Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for information about the Biden family and its associates’ supposedly “suspicious business transactions.”
But it isn’t all about Hunter Biden and setting up pretexts to impeach the president.
On Wednesday, the majority voted on a pair of anti-abortion measures designed to compel doctors to provide care for infants who survive attempted abortions, and a non-binding resolution condemning attacks against pregnancy crisis centers.
Despite the applause that echoed across on the House floor upon the bills’ passage, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer insisted the bills are “doomed” in the Senate.
What would the republican party be if it didn’t promise more massive tax breaks to the morbidly rich economic royalists?
After all, the a $1.5 trillion-dollar permanent tax cut to corporations and the wealthy Donald Trump signed into law at the end of his first year in office wasn’t nearly enough for them.
Touted as “restoring fiscal sanity,” the newly adopted rules package ends the “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO, rule that requires spending cuts or tax increases to offset new tax cuts or increases for programs not funded annually, known as mandatory programs. In its place will be the “CUTGO” rule, which does not require offset tax cuts. Instead, it requires mandatory program increases to be offset exclusively with program cuts.
In other words, increasing Medicare benefits, Pell grants, or the Child Tax Credit for lower-income families would have to be followed with cuts to other aspects of those programs.
However, an additional tax loophole or new high-income tax cut, or raising the Child Tax Credit for higher-income families, would not have to be offset.
Once again, low-income Americans who need the most help are forced to cede that help to those who don’t need it.
Another detail: no budget reconciliation bill that increases net mandatory spending. Even if, for example, expanding health coverage or child care were met with revenue increase offsets, any bill to increase would be subjected to a Senate filibuster.
Reconciliation bills to massively cut taxes that will increase the deficit, though? Those are just fine.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
It [the rules package] would preclude consideration of House bills in this Congress that expand mandatory programs, such as for Social Security or food assistance, by more than $2.5 billion in any decade over the next 40 years, regardless of whether the expansion is offset by tax increases. Yet there is no such prohibition for tax cuts, regardless of how costly.
It creates new rules that could drive down annual appropriations. For instance, if an amendment is adopted on the House floor that cuts funding for a program, a subsequent amendment would not be allowed to redirect the savings to other priorities within the bill. Another provision would make it harder to set funding at appropriate levels if a program’s authorization is overdue.
It also includes a rule that any bill increasing a federal income tax rate would have to pass by a three-fifths majority, setting up a new, high hurdle to raise revenues while no such hurdle exists for cutting taxes for the wealthy or profitable corporations.
Rhetorically predicated on lies about how funding will be applied, the House majority’s first bill seeks to rescind nearly all of the historic Inflation Reduction Act’s $80 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over a decade.
For months, right-wing hate media has been peddling the fiction that the $80 billion set aside in the bill to ensure Americans making over $400,000 aren’t gaming the system is really for “hiring another 87,000 armed IRS agents just to make sure that you obey.”
They want “hardworking American families and small businesses” to believe those “armed agents” are coming to get them.
The IRA does not mention hiring 87,000 IRS agents.
It does not state anything about arming agents.
No one is going to “spy on your bank accounts”.
Something the IRA seeks to accomplish is replenishing the IRS enforcement staff that has been cut 30% in the last 12 years despite a population increase.
The only armed IRS agents will be ones who have been traditionally responsible for criminal investigations.
Republicans want a starved, ineffective IRS so it won’t be equipped to come after the rich tax cheats bankrolling GOP candidates.
Something else the republican House majority wants to do is investigate “the targeting of conservatives,” including investigations into Donald Trump and the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
The American people of all political loyalties want a government that fights for the issues that most impact their lives, not wastes their money on billionaire-benefiting distractions.
The past two years, the Democratic majority lowered drug costs; passed historic legislation to combat gun violence and climate change; eliminated surprise medical billing practices; forgave $20,000 in federal student loan debt; brought unemployment to a 50-year low; passed an infrastructure bill already rebuilding the country; strengthened domestic manufacturing to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains; amended the Electoral Count Act to help prevent another January 6; and passed legislation to defend same-sex marriages.
These are just a few consequential examples of how government can be a force for good in people’s lives.
The republican party can be part of that good, or continue perpetuating cynicism.
Sadly, it has chosen the latter.
What can we expect?