Republicans in the US House of Representatives will soon be voting on a series of bills that offer a chance to monkey wrench their rhetoric.
We don’t know the exact order that these will be voted on, so I’m going to just describe what the hopeful result is in each case.
Raising the Federal Debt Ceiling — the best policy would be to repeal it entirely, but that’s not under discussion, so we get the mediocre fallback. McConnell and Mnuchin are already on record supporting raising this, but they aren’t necessarily the primary players. It might be worth organizing a push to call House members and get them on the record.
Tax Reform / Budget bills. Here’s where the real meat is. The House and Senate elected officials clearly want to give tax breaks to rich people. However, this offers a chance to use the Balanced Budget rhetoric against them. It’s definitely worth having anyone represented by a Republican to call in and demand a balanced budget. There is a core or Republican voters who take this result much more seriously than their elected officials do.
If the Federal budget is balanced, there is no room for much if any tax cuts. If the Federal budget passes unbalanced, then that itself becomes an election issue. We can point out that with control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, Republicans still did not balance the budget.