The House is back to work this week, since Speaker Kevin McCarthy once again capitulated to a dozen extremist lawmakers who had shut the place down last week over a varied list of grievances. They eventually decided that their protest was centered on government spending and the deal McCarthy cut with President Joe Biden to avoid sending the nation into default. So that’s where McCarthy caved: He told them they could have the dramatic cuts they had insisted on in return for avoiding economic catastrophe, and then he reneged on the debt ceiling agreement.
By giving in to their extortion, he also put Congress on a course to government shutdown, months of chaos, and a big boost to the Democrats’ prospects of taking the House back in 2024. The government funding fight is going to be about things like this:
That’s Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, the ringleader in the current circus of chaos who has a history of calling for the Department of Veteran Affairs to be abolished. He told Steve Bannon this week that “areas like Homeland Security, veterans” need “deep vertical cuts.” He would just “get rid of” those programs, he says. About 9 million veterans get health care from the VA alone, not including the millions of others who get educational benefits, community support, housing, and other assistance from the VA. End all that, says Gaetz. Privatize it.
Just a few weeks ago, following a successful campaign from Democrats showing how badly veterans would be hurt by the GOP budget, Republicans reversed course and decided veterans’ care was so important that it had to be exempt from future cuts in the debt ceiling deal. Now McCarthy has handed the reins over to the crowd that doesn’t just want to cut veterans’ care, but abolish it. That’s going to go over well with voters.
While Gaetz will be trying to shut down the government over veterans’ care, he’s also endorsing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s big government shutdown gambit: demanding that special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s various crimes against the nation be defunded. Meanwhile, there’s hot-off-the-presses polling from Civiqs telling us half of American voters think Trump is guilty of crimes that merit imprisonment.
These are the very unpopular demands McCarthy has capitulated to, and which will be rejected by the Senate and Biden. A government shutdown is almost inevitable when the extremists discover they can’t get their way, and the blame will fall entirely on Republican heads.
Meanwhile, Republicans are pursuing the rest of their whack-job agenda: protecting Trump and “investigating” Biden; even more tax cuts for the rich, potentially $1 trillion worth; and more plots to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
They’re going to be grabbing the national headlines while at the state level, the GOP is fighting on every culture war front—abortion, trans people, book bans. And the majority of voters who are looking on with alarm at the erosion of basic rights and humanity at Republican hands. They are already losing on abortion. They’re losing on trans rights and book bans, too.
It’s like they have a political death wish.
The Republicans are diving deeper and deeper in the dystopia they envision for America, and making no bones about it. There isn’t a single candidate in the Republican field with a positive agenda. It’s all about vengeance, retribution, and causing as much pain to the vulnerable as they can.
They’re doing the Democrats’ 2024 work for them and in return, Democrats should hand them a gold-plated, Trump-branded anchor.
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