Together, More Or Less In Line
House Republicans have a strategy for holding the debt limit hostage. On a related note, House Republicans are intent on committing political hari-kari.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.
As some of you might have gleaned from my Twitter feed, I’m on vacation nurturing one of my obsessions … attending the Playing in the Sand festival featuring Dead and Company in Cancun, Mexico.
But the news never stops …
So You’re Saying There’s A Chance
This weekend, I had a piece up for MSNBC on the GOP’s insane debt limit strategy. As I note in the article, “a weird thing has happened since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives — they’ve started talking incessantly about government spending and the national debt.”
During the Fall campaign, Republicans didn’t talk much about the national debt. “When Republicans unveiled their policy agenda if they won control of the House, debt reduction was all but absent, and it certainly wasn’t portrayed as a top legislative priority … There was no mention of the deficit, no talk about balancing the budget, and certainly no proposals for cutting social insurance programs. In individual House races, Republicans were far more likely to talk about immigration, crime, and the scourge of “wokeness” and/or socialism.”
What changed? “Republicans want to hold the debt limit hostage to force the Biden administration to agree to spending cuts. The only way they can justify that position is to harp on the deficit as the greatest threat to America’s future.”
So Republicans are expending a great deal of political capital on an issue they didn’t run on. To make matters worse, cutting spending to significantly reduce the deficit would mean taking an ax to Social Security and Medicare … and Americans really like those two social insurance programs. As for forcing the Pentagon to take a haircut, some Republican legislators are already pushing back on the idea. “There’s always the approximately 30% of the budget that is discretionary spending. Yet there is not enough money there to take a real bite out of the national debt. Also, that 30% includes plenty of government programs Americans like — such as money for schools and student loans, infrastructure and transportation, anti-poverty and environmental programs, national parks, and public television.” As plenty of Republican politicians have learned the hard way over the years, in the abstract, cutting government spending is a politically popular idea. When you get to the concrete details, not so much.
But there’s an even bigger problem for House Republicans, as exemplified by the tweet below.
Democrats simply are not going to negotiate on any of these demands. Not Senate Democrats and not the White House. The Democratic position on the debt limit for the past decade — after President Obama's disastrous budget deal with Republicans in 2011 — is to simply not seriously engage Republicans on the debt limit. I have little doubt that this time will be no different.
So to recap, the GOP is pushing for spending cuts that are deeply unpopular (and they likely can’t agree among themselves on what to cut). The GOP is demanding these cuts in return for raising the debt limit, but the White House will not negotiate with them. If Republicans kill their proverbial hostage and refuse to raise the debt limit, it could create an economic catastrophe that could plunge the US economy into a recession.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
This isn’t just a bad strategy; it’s an insane one. And if it doesn’t work (and it almost certainly will not), then what’s Plan B? If you take a hostage and no one wants to negotiate with you about freeing them, you have two choices — let the hostage go free or let the hostage go … permanently.
This crop of Republicans is perhaps dumb enough to kill the hostage and default on the nation’s debt, which would undoubtedly cause a massive political backlash. The other option, a humiliating policy retreat, will no doubt lead to primary challenges from even crazier Republicans who will argue that the GOP should have rolled up the hostage’s dead body in an old rug and dumped it outside the entrance to the White House. Republicans have painted themselves into a corner on the debt limit. While I still think they will try to find some way out of the trap they’ve created, the chances that they default on the nation’s debt rather than backing down is a disturbing but real possibility. It reminds me of this wonderful/depressing joke from British MP Rory Stewart about being consulted by US officials over the right strategy for the war in Afghanistan.
“I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks. “It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says …’”
What’s Going On
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the host of classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home and officer in Washington DC. This situation is not remotely comparable to Donald Trump’s classified documents investigation. In that case, Trump refused repeated demands to return the documents, actively hid them from investigators, and forced the FBI to get a search warrant to secure them. In Biden’s case, his staff voluntarily turned over the documents and made no effort to impede their return. This is an oversight, not a purposeful crime. Still, Garland absolutely made the right move here. The Attorney General cannot be expected to investigate the president who appointed him to the job and not raise a huge conflict of interest issue. That’s especially true when the DOJ is investigating the previous president for a similar offense. The optics of the situation demanded that Garland act quickly and prevent any hint that his department was providing political cover to the White House. Republicans will still complain, and some liberals have said Garland should have ignored what amounts to a fake scandal, but that’s to be expected. I have little doubt that Biden did nothing wrong, and no one will be prosecuted for this mishandling of classified material. As for Trump … only time will tell.
Back in December and January, there was a spate of shootings at the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico. It turns out the “mastermind” was a Republican state legislative candidate who lost his race in November and claimed the election was rigged. So thanks for that, Donald Trump.
BTW, according to the New York Times, Pena “paid four men cash and ‘sent text messages with addresses where he wanted them to shoot at the homes.’” It’s a helpful reminder that most criminals are morons.
So if I correctly understand the latest revelations about George Santos, an investor linked to a Russian oligarch deposited $625,000 in a business that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme where Santos worked (presumably losing his money). Yet afterward, he maxed out donations to Santos’s campaign. Hmm. This sounds, maybe just a little, like money laundering.
Also, it turns out that members of Santos’s staff knew he was lying about his background, as did some of his donors and supporters … yet somehow none of it came out before the November election.
Russia continues to commit war crimes in Ukraine. The latest atrocity: the bombing of an apartment building in Dnipro.
I’m not a fan of the British Royal Family, and I’m even less a fan of Prince Harry, who unfortunately has no one in his life who can suggest that he stop talking. But this review of his new book by Rebecca Mead is wonderful.
The new Israeli government is really, really bad. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Israeli democracy is hanging by a thread.
Musical Interlude
(“Together, more or less in line” is from the band’s song “Truckin,” and it might be my favorite underrated Dead lyric … whether intentional or not, it’s a fitting encapsulation of the ethos of the band and its fans).
Over the weekend, my daughter mentioned that she is a big fan of Lana Del Rey. When I told her that I, too, like Lana Del Rey and even own one of her records, it was a revelatory, dare I say, life-changing moment for her. She suddenly realized that her father’s musical tastes occasionally overlap with the world of coolness.
Last night’s opener.