Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s House is in recess again this week, no doubt in need of recovering from the grueling seven days of business they put in in the past four weeks. They’re pacing themselves, definitely, with only seven legislative work days scheduled for the next month. This might be part of a plot from McCarthy to stave off a congressional maneuver called a discharge petition Democrats and a few Republicans could use to pass a clean debt ceiling hike—it requires a lot of legislative days to pass.
Or maybe he just thinks it’s safer to his speakership to avoid the place, give the maniacs less ammunition and opportunity to pull the inevitable “motion to vacate,” no-confidence vote on him.
It certainly means that the House GOP won’t be responding to President Joe Biden’s newly released budget with one of their own any time soon.
It also blows up McCarthy’s primary talking point, that Biden’s budget and debt ceiling bargaining position is not “serious.” If you’re going to be serious about governing you kind of have to be around to do it.
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McCarthy was at it again on Sunday, going on Fox Business to tell Maria Bartiromo that Biden’s proposal is “not serious” and warning Biden not to “play games with the debt ceiling.”
Why yes, it is projection all the time from the GOP. But the guy who took the debt ceiling hostage and then fell into Biden’s trap of pledging no cuts to Social Security and Medicare with absolutely no plan what he would counter with? That’s extra special. “To have a nonserious budget and for a president not to show the leadership to sit down and solve this problem early only weakens America,” McCarthy added.
Right, he’s exactly who Biden should be taking leadership advice from. The guy who set a 20th and 21st century record for how many ballots it took to get the speakership. The last time it took more than a dozen rounds of voting was before the Civil War. This time it took 15 votes and every remaining shred of McCarthy’s dignity.
“Don’t play games with the debt ceiling. I’ve sat with this president. I want to negotiate with this president. This is [what] we’ve done every time before an American public wants us to,” McCarthy said, and of course seen he was on Fox, there wasn’t anyone there to remind him that he started all this and also that he still hasn’t produced a budget.
Hell, he hasn’t even produced a plan for how to get to a budget, much less a plan to not default on the nation’s debt. In fact, the only thing his crew is planning for is about what happens after they force a default. That sure blows up his pretense that he really wants to negotiate the debt ceiling hike.
Right now, the only GOP “plan” out there is the Freedom Caucus’s ransom demands, that Biden roll back everything he and congressional Democrats have accomplished in the past two years and basically restore the Trump presidency. That’s what McCarthy is allowing to stand as the GOP response to Biden’s budget.
Who exactly is not acting like serious leader?
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