Texas Republican Chip Roy isn’t even close to finishing extorting Speaker-for-now Kevin McCarthy. Roy is currently on a mission to gut U.S. asylum law through the House GOP’s first immigration-related bill. It’s a truly vile piece of crap, basically stripping unaccompanied migrant children of critical provisions enacted under anti-trafficking laws in order to expel them quickly.
It’s so extreme that his own his caucus just axed a plan that would’ve fast-tracked it to a floor vote this week. That expedited plan was part of the corrupt bargaining that finally got Roy to side with McCarthy. So Roy’s not about to let go of this fight, now claiming that he’ll hold the debt ceiling hostage until he gets his precious bill.
RELATED STORY: 'It’s very anti-American': House GOP fractures on first immigration-related proposal
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Roy “said he will employ brinkmanship over the federal debt ceiling debate,” including “threatening to allow the U.S. to default on its loans,” in order to push through his unpopular proposal, The Texas Tribune reported. The outlet said that Roy went onto the Fox propaganda network to say Republicans “have to use the debt ceiling and the spending fight to demand that Biden do the right thing.”
Only in Roy’s twisted mind is stomping on U.S. asylum law and tearing up provisions for vulnerable kids “the right thing.” But not even his own party is fully onboard with him either. While the “Border Safety and Security Act” does have dozens of GOP sponsors, enough were rattled by it to send it back to committee. Now, whether they were opposed because they’re privately sickened over its draconian nature or just because of the optics, we don’t know (one GOP member from Texas did publicly call it “not Christian” and “very anti-American”). We do know that, at least right now, it doesn’t have the votes.
Roy could just be bluffing, but remember, he is publicly saying that he’d be more than willing to have our nation default on its obligations so he can send vulnerable children back to danger. It’s legislative domestic terrorism, and it couldn’t be falling on the lap of a worse speaker-for-now. McCarthy is already feeling debt ceiling pressure from the Freedom Caucus, which supported the push for the anti-asylum bill’s expedited vote.
“Here’s another problem for McCarthy,” Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter recently wrote about his self-imposed debt ceiling crisis. “So far, the Senate Republicans who normally help solve these kinds of crises are leaving it all on his head,” including Susan “I’m concerned” Collins, who said that McCarthy and the president need to figure it out for themselves. Should Roy’s bill somehow make it to the Senate, it’s a dead-ender. Senate Democrats last summer united to unanimously crush a GOP-led effort that would’ve continued noted white supremacist Stephen Miller’s debunked public health order indefinitely.
So why even bother giving Roy’s bill any air if it’s likely to fail? Because it’s the House GOP agenda on immigration. It’s their very first proposal on immigration after taking the chamber, and that proposal is to say that not even children who arrive to the U.S. by themselves should be able to access the U.S. asylum system. Not stating exactly what Republicans want to do also gives them space to mislead and lie about what they want to do.
Just as importantly, advocates pushing back on Roy has majorly got him on the defensive now, too. While I won’t link to it, a quick Google search reveals that he’s now claimed to a conspiracy theory-pushing website that his plan “absolutely doesn’t ban asylum,” expressed outrage that anyone would consider his plan unchristian, and insinuates that we’re all a pack of liars. Snort. Sure, Chip, your bill’s just so popular that you’re now threatening to hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to get it passed.
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