The House returns to work Wednesday afternoon following an undeserved five-day weekend. The schedule for the shortened work week, which is slated to end Friday afternoon, is dominated by appropriations bills and the various bipartisan censure and expulsion resolutions brought against three members. But the topic that’s sucking up all the energy on Capitol Hill is Speaker Mike Johnson’s poisoned Israel funding bill.
Johnson is trying to put Democrats in a vise by offering a $14.6 billion funding bill for Israel that offsets the funds by stealing from a Democratic priority: the funding increase they passed for the Internal Revenue Service in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The White House is providing all the cover it can for Democrats to oppose the bill, starting with a veto threat issued from the Office of Management and Budget.
Johnson’s bill “inserts partisanship into support for Israel,” OMB said. It leaves out humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza as well as aid for Ukraine and Taiwan and thus is “bad for Israel, for the Middle East region, and for our own national security,” the OMB said. The statement goes on to blast Johnson’s partisanship: “Congress has consistently worked in a bipartisan manner to provide security assistance to Israel, and this bill threatens to unnecessarily undermine that longstanding approach.”
The IRS piled on to the criticism. Commissioner Daniel Werfel estimated that taking that funding away from the IRS for its enforcement activities would increase the deficit by as much as $90 billion over the next decade, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates from last year. “This type of the cut, over the cost of the Inflation Reduction Act, would actually cost taxpayers $90 billion — that’s with a ‘B,’” Werfel told The Washington Post.
The CBO just released its own estimate for the cost of the bill, determining that it will add a more modest $12.5 billion to the deficit, but still increase the deficit. The CBO estimates a $26.8 billion reduction in revenue. The CBO is working on the basis of what’s known right now, so it’s basing its calculations on recent revenue collection by the IRS. The IRS projections for new revenue are a lot rosier as it is ramping up its efforts to collect taxes owed by people with more than $1 million in income and $250,000 in outstanding tax debt.
For his part, Johnson is blowing off the CBO analysis, telling Fox News’ Chad Pergram, “Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,” and that he does not put any credence in the CBO. Republicanism in a nutshell: Tax collections shouldn’t count as revenue against the deficit and shouldn’t be happening at all to the rich people they like.
However you calculate it, Johnson’s bill would cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars. It’s also never going to pass in the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer just issued his assessment: "What a joke.”
Johnson is lunching with Senate Republicans Wednesday, and the lack of Ukraine assistance in Johnson’s bill is likely to be the main topic. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been working hard to keep his conference together on funding for Ukraine, and is gearing up for what is likely to be the last chance to secure that funding. Support for Ukraine among his Republicans is softening, and this might be the last chance to get a substantial package—Biden is asking for $61 billion—before the 2024 election.
Johnson’s decision to not just cut out Ukraine and Taiwan from the funding bill but also to insist on offsetting with cuts that will increase the deficit—but enrage Democrats—is hard to explain. He could have just done a simple supplemental funding bill for Israel and jammed House Democrats and the Senate into supporting it. But adding in the twist of attacking a Democratic priority as a gift to wealthy tax cheats makes it very easy for Democrats to oppose, and the bill to fail. It also needlessly antagonizes Senate Republicans.
It’s hard to know what Johnson was calculating with this one. It could either be his inexperience showing—a massive overstep of his position—or it could be a reflection of his go-for-the-jugular partisan nihilism. That picture is likely to become more clear as we see how he navigates the looming government shutdown. He hasn’t really shown his hand, if he’s got one, on that issue yet.
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