House speaker has created a nexus of disaster. Biden has 4 days to fix it

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Mark Sumner

Since Republicans took control of the House following the 2022 midterms, the U.S. has faced a crisis of governance. Unable to quit their own petty infighting, caught up in ugly leadership squabbles, and unwilling to move without the blessing of Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson now commands a Congress well past the brink of disaster. After being unable to pass necessary legislation and wasting endless hours on a faux impeachment inquiry of Biden that is going nowhere, Republicans have generated such a maelstrom of incompetence that it’s putting millions of lives and the stability of the planet at risk.

Contrary to what Republicans apparently believe, Congress is expected to do things. It has to meet the challenges of the day, promote policies that assist the nation, and deal with the day-to-day affairs that keep government functional. Since they gained their narrow margin, Republicans have done exactly none of these things.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden summoned Republican congressional leaders to a meeting at the White House. With Ukraine in retreat after running out of critical ammunition and a government shutdown only four days away, this could be the most consequential meeting in decades. Will Republicans wake up for one moment to place the nation and the world ahead of their desire to please Trump and feed their childish egos? Or will they drive the nation, and the world, onto the rocks?

After being selected for speaker on the basis that no one knew who the hell he was so no particular faction was out for his throat, Johnson has shown himself to be singularly inadequate for the role.

As Joan McCarter has reported, Johnson …

Swiftly burned through any honeymoon period and found that his every statement or action was being scrutinized by House members sure that they would do a better job in the big office.
He betrayed other congressional leaders by reneging on a budget deal after everyone thought the issues were settled.
When months of negotiations in the Senate produced a border bill that gave Republicans everything they had been demanding, Johnson refused to even consider it on orders from Trump.
With the clock winding down on the end of the year, Johnson wasted time on a pointless impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
With the stability of the Western world on the line, Johnson has repeatedly dithered and stalled on providing any assistance to Ukraine while Republicans increasingly look to Putin.
And with a government shutdown looming, Johnson sent the House out on a vacation that’s not set to end until three days before the deadline.

Johnson is not just courting disaster, he is a disaster. Either he’s astoundingly ineffectual, or he’s an arsonist set on burning down America. It’s genuinely unclear which of these things is true.

We may find out today.

“Every day that Speaker Johnson causes our national security to deteriorate, America loses,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. “And every day that he puts off a clean vote [on assistance to Ukraine], congressional Republicans’ standing with the American people plunges. Running away for an early vacation only worsens both problems.”

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is tired of the incompetence on the other end of the Capitol. “Shutting down the government is harmful to the country. And it never produces positive outcomes—on policy or politics,” said McConnell.

At the same time everyone is trying to get Johnson to do his job, extremist Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus are doing everything they can to provide more road bumps.

Last week they submitted a list of policy riders to Johnson, including such nonsense items as zeroing out Mayorkas’ salary, blocking military members from traveling out of state to obtain abortions, and defunding environmental and climate policies. In all, there are more than 20 of these poison pills, and the Freedom Caucus is declaring that it will block any attempt to reach an agreement unless America is forced to swallow the whole bottle.

A real speaker, one with respect from the members of their party and the strength to push past fanatics bent on nothing more than causing disruption, would push past this. Unfortunately, America is saddled with Mike Johnson.

That doesn’t make a good outcome impossible, but it certainly makes it almost infinitely more difficult.

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House GOP kicks off a new year of dysfunction with another impeachment

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Trust the Republican House to make a difficult situation exponentially worse. Not content with establishing a new record of dysfunction and ineffectiveness in the first session of the 118th Congress, they’re kicking off the second year with another waste of precious time: a second baseless impeachment, this time against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s basically the first thing on their agenda when they return to work next week, with the first hearing scheduled for Jan. 10.

Never mind that the first deadline for a partial government shutdown is Jan. 19, and the House has made zero progress in meeting it. Instead, Republican leadership has chosen to start impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas for his “decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability,” according to Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee.

Mayorkas’ team at DHS slapped back. “The House majority is wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote,” spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement.

The White House was equally scathing. “Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”

“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl earlier in 2023, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December even as President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate remained to forge ahead on a bipartisan agreement,” Bates said.

That Senate effort—which aims to find a compromise on immigration that will get enough Republican votes to allow aid to Ukraine to continue—is ongoing, though its success is far from certain since the House GOP is working to poison it. Senate Republicans will point to the House GOP’s opposition to justify their refusal to support any agreement. To that end, House Speaker Mike Johnson is spearheading another stunt, leading a delegation of about 60 Republican House members to visit a border facility near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday.

Johnson’s trip is fueling the hard-line stance on immigration, but he’s also painting himself into a corner with the House extremists. Catering to the hard right on immigration is extremely unlikely to help him avert a government shutdown—since a government shutdown is what the Freedom Caucus wants.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a prominent member of the caucus, made that clear enough in a letter Tuesday, writing that he was skipping this trip to the border because it is not enough. "Our people—law enforcement, ranchers, local leaders—are tired of meetings, speeches, and press conferences,” he said, adding that the House should be “withholding funding for the vast majority of the federal government until it performs its basic duty to defend the borders of a supposedly sovereign nation."

The more Johnson bends to extremists on immigration, the more emboldened they will be to force a shutdown over the issue. He’s setting himself up for failure, for the very same trap that every Republican speaker since John Boehner has fallen into. Either Johnson bucks the Freedom Caucus and risks being ousted like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or he allows a disastrous shutdown.

Meanwhile, there’s reality: In the past week, illegal border crossings have decreased. But reality isn’t likely to make any difference to Republicans; it rarely does.

It's official: GOP House did a whole lot of nothing this year

White House engages on Ukraine/immigration stalemate

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Speaker Mike Johnson faces same old GOP dysfunction in the new year

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Joan McCarter

There’s a big backlog of critical business facing Congress when members return in January, thanks to all those issues they put off dealing with in 2023. The House will reconvene with an ever-slimmer Republican majority that is somehow even more dysfunctional than the one that kicked off this year. An ousted speaker, an expelled member, a simmering civil war, and midterm retirements made for a bitter end to the first session of the 118th Congress and set Speaker Mike Johnson up for a potentially catastrophic second half in 2024.

Congress left for its holiday break in mid-December, one-quarter of the way into the 2024 fiscal year, with no agreement between the House and Senate on overall funding levels after House Republicans reneged on the agreement they made with President Joe Biden to resolve the last big crisis over the debt ceiling. That deal was brokered under the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in one of his desperate attempts to keep his job. The current speaker is showing little inclination to reverse course.

“We all shook hands, we passed it,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, told Politico earlier this month. “And now the speaker is saying: ‘Never mind, we’re going to go backwards.’”

The continued stalemate is going to make meeting the Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 deadlines to fund the government for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year challenging, to say the least, even while Congress is supposed to be putting together its budget for the 2025 fiscal year. As if.

Though still a newbie speaker, Johnson is already stymied by the extremist Freedom Caucus, whose far-right members keep holding the threat of what happened to McCarthy over him. One of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, Eli Crane of Arizona, is making that abundantly clear.

“One of the positives is that the precedent has now been set for the first time in history that at least with this group, and this slim majority: If you make repeated promises that you do not keep, you will be held accountable,” Crane told The Hill.

A bunch of less extreme House Republicans took a stab at changing the rules so that one chaos agent—aka Matt Gaetz—no longer has the individual power to get the ball rolling on ending a speakership. The push to overhaul the “motion to vacate” rule went nowhere, and is still causing tension in the conference.

“We looked like a bunch of idiots. We looked like a banana republic a few months ago,” McCarthy ally Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana told The Messenger. “I don't think you should have one moron that should be able to trigger that vote.”

Speaking for the “morons,” new Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good of Virginia is happy with the status quo—and happy to wield the threat against Johnson.

“I think most of us hope it would never need to be filed again,” Good said, but added, “you can’t control the future.”

While that internecine war is bubbling away, Johnson also faces the reality of an even slimmer majority than his predecessor wrestled with. With said predecessor deciding to jump ship early, New York’s George Santos expelled, and Ohio’s Bill Johnson on his way out the door early next year, the new speaker is only going to have two Republican votes to spare—that is, as long as Democrats remain unified, something they’ve become remarkably good at.

Johnson has already had to rely on Democrats to keep the government running and pass the big defense authorization bill his party’s hard-liners hated, moves that made him even less popular with the maniacs running roughshod over his conference. Any way you slice it, the first few weeks of January are going to be pretty darned miserable for Johnson, and he’s finally going to be forced to make decisions about how to deal with his fractious caucus.

Hey, Kev—Don’t let the door hit you on the way out

GOP infighting intensifies as Matt Gaetz targets Republicans

It's official: GOP House did a whole lot of nothing this year

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Sunday Four-Play: Matt Gaetz vows to shiv Kevin McCarthy, and AOC says she may help

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Wait, so Congress actually managed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open for another 45 days? And here two of the Sunday shows had already booked Matt Gaetz. This should be fun.

Will Gaetz 1) complain that this is brutally unfair to hardworking American taxpayers like Donald Trump and his next-door neighbor Vladimir, erm, Peterson, 2) introduce the world to his next wife, whose ultrasound photo he recently favorited on OkCupid, 3) slurp Jonathan Karl up like a hunk of Fazoli’s linguine while pugnaciously humming “Flight of the Valkyries,” or 4) promise to take another go at ruining the lives of millions of Americans who depend on government paychecks?

Or maybe he’ll be grilled about the Republicans’ fake impeachment of President Biden. In case you missed it, they held a hearing on Thursday that proved Joe Biden unconditionally loves his son. Republicans also called a witness who admitted there was no basis for impeachment. In other words, it was the shittiest shitshow you’ll ever see, even if you survive past the heat death of the universe. But hey, this is a resilient bunch. They can restart their impeachment crusade at another time. Maybe they’ll launch seven separate impeachment weeks before they eventually get bored and forget any of this ever happened.

Also, Kristen Welker is taking some time away from the 24/7 grind of undermining Western democracy. She’ll have to both-sides Donald Trump’s backyard orphans vs. puppies fight club some other time. “Meet the Press” has been preempted by NBC’s Ryder Cup coverage.

And as the House Judiciary GOP knows, if you can’t make up impeachable crimes, at the very least you can blame Joe Biden for our nation’s increasingly concerning golf gap.

Joe Biden's America. https://t.co/hceMGeqgoq
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) September 29, 2023

Finally, will any of the shows mention that Donald Trump gave a speech on Friday that made Ozzy Osborne biting the head off a bat look like Demosthenes' Third Philippic?

Oh, yeah. It was bonkers, yo. Here’s just one excerpt of the team coverage from “The Weekly What in the Ever-Living Fuck Is This Now, Gladys?”

“All the currently dry canals will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything,” Trump promised drought-beleaguered Californians as trillions of Filet-O-Fish particles from past lunches circled his head in a state of superposition waiting to be observed and become a sandwich. “You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast.”

When asked for clarification, a Trump campaign spokesperson said the former president’s comprehensive 10-point plan for irrigating your bathroom will be released in two weeks.

And now on to the (un)usual nonsense.

1.

Speak of the devil! No, really. Please speak of the devil. Summoning Satan to feast on my steaming viscera as I claw my gobsmacked face off with my newly gargoylish Howard Hughes hands for the rest of eternity might be preferable to transcribing this clip.

Gaetz broke news on the Sunday shows this week, announcing that he plans to punish House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for working with Democrats to ensure that 1.5 million hardworking Americans don’t immediately lose their paychecks for no reason.

ABC News:

Hard-line Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz plans a vote this week to try and remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his role as punishment for McCarthy orchestrating a bipartisan stopgap government funding bill to stave off a shutdown, Gaetz said Sunday.

…

Removing McCarthy would essentially halt all legislative business in the House until a replacement is picked. It remains unclear if Gaetz currently has more than a handful of votes for such a dramatic move. McCarthy has dismissed the risk of a vacate motion.

"Bring it," he has said.

On Sunday, Gaetz responded, "Kevin McCarthy's going to get his wish."

Here’s Matt talking with Jonathan Karl of ABC’s “This Week” about his plans to shut down the House because Kevin didn’t agree to shut down the government:

“I am relentless and I will continue pursue this objective,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz tells @JonKarl of his push to vacate Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. https://t.co/KInxWHwCkT pic.twitter.com/NOWDqfFwvA
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 1, 2023

KARL: “So you’re not accomplishing anything here.”

GAETZ: “That’s not true.”

KARL: “Well, you don’t have the votes to remove him.”

GAETZ: “Well, I—by the way, I don’t know until we have him, and by the way, I might not have him the first time, but I might have him before the 15th ballot. That’s the number of ballots Kevin McCarthy needed.”

KARL: “So are you going to do this every day like you suggested? Are you going to go through this process of voting over and over and over again?”

GAETZ: “I am relentless, and I will continue to pursue this objective. And if all the American people see is that it is a uniparty that governs them and that it is always the Biden-McCarthy-Jeffries government that makes dispositive decisions on spending, then I am seeding the fields of future primary contests to get better Republicans in Washington who will actually tackle these deficits and debts.”

First of all, Matt Gaetz is pretty much the last person I want to hear say “seeding the fields.” Coming from him it just sounds gross. I can’t put my finger on it—it just does. It’s not the phrase itself necessarily. It’s his association with it. It might sound marginally less gross coming from a farmer, of course—even if that farmer was Ed Gein.

Secondly, accomplishing nothing is kind of the whole point of Republicans, isn’t it? Matt is determined to hold the line on deficits when a Democrat is in the White House so he can choke the life out of the economy and return Dear Leader to his gilded throne. If he has to create unprecedented chaos to do so, that’s just gravy.

2.

Speak of this other devil! House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appeared on “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan to respond to Gaetz’s perduring and performative Trump-humping. Brennan asked Evil Opie what he thought of Gaetz’s shoving-nerds-into-gym-lockers style of governing, and McCarthy did his best to project a sense of calm.

McCarthy: Gaetz is more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something. He wanted to push us into a shutdown… only because he wants to take this motion. Bring it on, let's get over with it pic.twitter.com/XtCxh2PKrO
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2023

BRENNAN: “There is a lot to get to with you. I want to start, though, on the news this morning from Congressman Matt Gaetz who says he is going to seek a motion to vacate. He’s going to try to oust you as speaker of the House.”

MCCARTHY: “That’s nothing new, he’s tried to do that from the moment I ran for office.”

BRENNAN: “Well, this time he says he’s going to keep going. May not get there before the 15th ballot, but it took 15 for Kevin McCarthy. He says he’s coming for you. Can you survive?”

MCCARTHY: “Yes, I’ll survive. This is personal with Matt. Matt voted against the most conservative ability to protect our border, secure our border. He’s more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something. He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid, only because he wants to take this motion. So be it, bring it on, let’s get over with it [sic], and let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us in a shutdown and I made sure government didn’t shut down, then let’s have that fight.”

Oh, boy! This should be fun. I’m sure y’all remember January’s protracted House speaker vote. It was like watching two greased hippos trying to screw on an elevator. Well, now we get to watch two hippos trying to screw on an elevator in reverse!

BONUS CLIP!

McCarthy is still trying to blame Democrats for this 100% Republican-manufactured crisis.

McCARTHY: I wasn't sure it was gonna pass. You know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass. BRENNAN: Democrats were the ones who voted for this! pic.twitter.com/kCLKW9WSJK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

BRENNAN: “Were you confident we wouldn’t shut down?”

MCCARTHY: “I was confident I could get something on the floor to make sure the option that we would not ...”

BRENNAN: “But you weren’t sure it was going to pass.”

MCCARTHY: “Well, I wasn’t sure it was going to pass. You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass.”

BRENNAN: “Democrats were the ones who voted for this in a larger number than Republicans to keep the continuing resolution alive.”

MCCARTHY: “Did you watch the floor yesterday?”

BRENNAN: “Oh, yes, 90 Republicans voted against it.”

And … scene.

Thanks, Speaker McCarthy, and good luck. You’ll need it because …

3.

Gee willikers, Aunt Bee! Looks like Kevin isn’t going to get much help from Democrats! At least without having to give them something in return.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” and said she absolutely would vote to vacate the speaker’s chair. Because, you know, McCarthy really, really sucks.

AOC on CNN says she'd "absolutely" vote to oust McCarthy as speaker pic.twitter.com/Cl2ECx99jt
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

TAPPER: “So you just heard Congressman Matt Gaetz say he’s going to move to oust McCarthy as speaker this week. If a motion to vacate the chair comes to the floor, how would you vote?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Well, my vote beginning this term for speaker of the House was for Hakeem Jeffries. And I do not intend on voting for a Republican speaker of the House, but I believe that it’s up to the Republican conference to determine their own leadership and deal with their own problems. But it’s not up to Democrats to save Republicans—from themselves, especially.”

TAPPER: “Do you think that there will be any Democrats that might vote to save McCarthy?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “I mean, I certainly don’t think that we would expect to see that unless there’s a real conversation between Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican and Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don’t think we’d give up votes for free.”

TAPPER: “But would you vote to vacate? Would you vote to get rid of McCarthy as speaker?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Would I cast that vote? Absolutely. I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak speaker. He clearly has lost control of his caucus. He has brought the United States and millions of Americans to the brink waiting until the final hour to keep the government open, and even then only issuing a 45-day extension, so we’re going to be right back in this place in November. And, you know, I think that our main priority has to be the American people and we’re going to keep our governance in a cohesive and strong place, but unless Kevin McCarthy asks for a vote, again, I don’t think we give something away for free.”

McCarthy should have learned this universal maxim long ago: If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And now everyone hates him. And he might lose his job. And likely go down as one of the worst and weakest House leaders in U.S. history.

But hey, at least he got to be speaker! Much like Anne Boleyn got to be queen and Eva Braun eventually managed to wrangle a marriage proposal out of Hitler.

4.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo, whose show is roughly the journalistic equivalent of drinking from a firehose of curdled Yoo-hoo.

But even Fox News journalists are starting to wonder WTF Republicans are trying to accomplish with their Biden impeachment push, and so Bartiromo must have felt empowered to ask a legitimate question for once.

Of course, no matter how many different ways Republicans try to answer the question at the heart of their efforts—i.e., what did President Biden actually do that’s even remotely impeachable?—they still whiff every time.

BARTIROMO: Have you been able to identify specific policy decisions Joe Biden made that he was paid for? NANCY MACE: I have not had the ability to research that pic.twitter.com/HXnXNrGyNp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

BARTIROMO: “Have you been able to identify specific policy decisions that Joe Biden made that he was paid for?”

MACE: “I have not had the ability to research that. I’ve been looking more at the LLCs, the bank records, all of the lies that Joe Biden has told, and what evidence we have so far in meetings, dinners, appointments, White House records, etc., phone messages, text messages, emails, etc., connecting the dots with Joe Biden.”

Oh, look! More nothing! Wait, this is the same nothing we’ve already reported on. Let’s find a fresh angle on this old pile of nothing and reintroduce it as a new pile of nothing! But don't rush us! It took us more than two years to dig up all this nothing, and nothing doesn’t grow on trees. You’ll just have to be patient. Like Job, that nice man from the Bible who did nothing wrong but was relentlessly harassed by Satan anyway.

For some reason that Bible story seems relevant right now. Much like the one where Jesus cast a legion of demons out of Donald Trump and into a nearby herd of pigs. Or maybe it was the other way around. I forget. It’s been a while since I darkened the door of a church, to be completely honest with you.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s all for now. Have a great, productive, and shutdown-free week!

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Live coverage: The government shutdown clock is ticking

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy blinked Saturday morning, doing an about-face on government funding. He abandoned the hard-right provisions in his last government funding bill and offered a stripped-down version of the Senate’s proposed continuing resolution. The new CR includes 45 days of continued funding, but strips out Ukraine funding.

That all sounds fine, except that McCarthy dropped this bill on House Democrats and told them the vote would be held immediately, and Democrats have found multiple issues in the short bill during a delay they created by asking for the House to adjourn. Democrats continue to object to being jammed by McCarthy, and the House is now delaying a vote, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holding the floor using his “magic minute,” the unlimited debate time afforded to leadership. The Senate was supposed to have started work on its CR at 1 p.m. ET, but is also in a holding pattern, waiting to see what the House does.

As a matter of tactics, Senate and House Democrats should defeat this continuing resolution. McCarthy has already blinked, deciding a government shutdown is more damaging than a vote on his leadership. They should push their advantage.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 7:00:13 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Democrats just saved McCarthy’s butt, by the way. The vote was 335-91, with 209 Dems and 126 Republicans voting for it, 90 GOP noes. Now comes the fight over McCarthy’s speakership, and Democrats need to use this to get some concessions from him before they help. First, he has abide by the debt ceiling agreement on appropriations and a mechanism to avoid another shutdown fight next year. Second, no more impeachment crap.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:47:44 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The emerging Dem narrative. It’s true as far as it goes, and the defeat of the draconian cuts and racist border policies the GOP pushed yesterday is significant. The Senate could still fight for Ukraine.

MAGA Republicans have surrendered. All extreme right-wing policies have been removed from the House spending bill. The American people have won.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) September 30, 2023

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:43:50 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Smattering of applause on the floor as it hit the 2/3rds threshold of 290. So the question now is whether the Senate will prioritize Ukraine over having the rest of their weekend free, and swallow it. Judging by the response there so far, they’ll vote for their weekend. We’ll see if they have any objections to the other stuff the House stripped out from/snuck into their bill.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:35:03 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

And that’s that. This is bad news for Ukraine.

NEWS: Jeffries telling Dems to vote for the CR
— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) September 30, 2023

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:33:32 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

McConnell reportedly pushed his conference to hold out for their bill, with Ukraine aid. He was overruled.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:31:15 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The House is voting now on the new funding bill. It needs 2/3rds to pass. Expect the majority of Dems to hold out on voting until they see how many Republicans oppose it.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:25:57 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

One hangup here for everyone, a provision regarding member pay that looks like a really sneaky move by the GOP to get a raise.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:23:02 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Senate GOP is now saying they won’t vote for the CR they negotiated, because they want to give McCarthy a chance to get this through. Majority Leader Schumer is reportedly postponing the next procedural vote to see what happens in the House.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 30, 2023 · 6:19:01 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Jeffries wrapped, after an impassioned speech. “You dropped this bill at the eleventh hour today and gave the American people minutes to evaluate it. That's unacceptable,” he told Republicans. General debate is now continuing. It’s under suspension of the rules, so it needs 2/3rds to pass. It’s not at all clear right now what the majority of Democrats will do.

Democrats could bail out flailing McCarthy, for a price

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Joan McCarter

It’s only a matter of time before tensions in the House Republican conference boil over into a physical brawl. For now, they’re just verbal fights, like Freedom Caucus guy Eli Crane of Arizona fundraising by calling his colleagues who don’t want to shut down the government “squishes,” and those other members taking exception to it.

Others have been threatening to help primary members like freshman Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who threatens them back, saying (according to CNN’s chyron) that they’re “stuck on stupid.”

GOP Rep. Mike Lawler on Republicans warning against working with Democrats: “Bring it. Give me a break. I’m in a district that Joe Biden won by 10 points...I was elected to be an adult, to be serious, to be sober and to govern." pic.twitter.com/KxcQv0mPGa
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 27, 2023

Some of these would-be moderates are threatening to work with Democrats. “If you got five to 10 holdouts, you’ve got to have a bipartisan bill, just by definition with a four-seat majority. So, I know we got to reach across the aisle and make this work,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said after a Wednesday conference meeting.

So far, House Democrats appear happy to watch the melee from the sidelines, not feeling any particular need to make life easier for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who reneged on the budget deal he had agreed to with President Joe Biden. “Every Democrat on the [Appropriations] committee felt betrayed” by McCarthy, Rep. David Trone of Maryland said recently.

The Democrats have power, though McCarthy isn’t acknowledging that. He needs them to solve the shutdown impasse because he simply doesn’t have Republican votes to do it. After he surely gets their help rescuing the government, he’ll need help saving his own political skin and fighting off a hard-liner attempt to oust him.

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“The only person concerned about Kevin McCarthy keeping his job is Kevin McCarthy,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts told Politico. “House Democrats are having one conversation: how to deliver for the American people. That means preventing a reckless shutdown and stopping devastating cuts to the programs they rely on.”

Once the nihilist Republicans get what they want and force a shutdown, what should Democrats extract from McCarthy—and from the so-called moderate Republicans who are looking for their help—to fix it? That’s precisely what Democratic leadership should be mulling right now. Especially if Republicans move to oust McCarthy.

Democrats should start with a big ask from those Republicans who want their help: a power-sharing agreement with Democrats that puts Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries in the speaker’s chair. After all, he consistently won more votes for speaker than McCarthy did through the 15-round vote marathon. The Republicans’ tiny margin of just five votes, and at least half a dozen ready to kick McCarthy out at any given moment, make McCarthy’s continued tenure iffy at best. Jeffries in the chair could give the majority of the Republican conference some occasional wins, something they won’t get from McCarthy.

There’s also the question of who else among the Republicans would want the job. The answer is no one. Jeffries is the obvious choice.

Assuming that Jeffries doesn’t want (or get) the job and that McCarthy comes to him for help in saving the government and keeping his speakership, what should Democrats demand then?

An end to the Biden impeachment farce.
McCarthy has to abide by the budget agreement he made with Biden to resolve the debt ceiling.
McCarthy fully funds disaster relief and provides aid to Ukraine.
McCarthy puts legislation in place to prevent another government shutdown next year on the floor.

Those should be the minimum demands. Doing those things would allow Congress and the government to operate at a functional level for the next year. It’s not too much to ask in a rational world. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine McCarthy, still in thrall of the Freedom Caucus, stepping up to that level of basic competence.

Shutdown watch: McCarthy all but hands the gavel to Gaetz

House hard-liners brag about 'chaos' as government shutdown looms

House Republicans vow shutdown won’t stop impeachment inquiry

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are on the brink of shutting down the government. The Senate is moving forward with a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open into November, but House Republicans are busy with a "pissing match" between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and obstructionist Rep. Matt Gaetz. That doesn’t mean the House isn’t doing anything, though. No, Republicans are getting their bogus impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden moving, saying they see no reason it couldn’t continue through a government shutdown.

“We’re going to keep going,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told CNN on Tuesday, saying that a shutdown wouldn’t affect the members or staff involved in the impeachment inquiry. That would be a great look for Republicans—showing voters that they weren’t focused on keeping the government open, and offering a constant reminder that members of Congress were still being paid while government workers weren’t.

Comer has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, which his office told Fox News “will examine the value of an impeachment inquiry.” Apparently, even Comer isn’t confident that he and his fellow Republicans have made that case to the public. The hearing will rehash the findings of Comer’s months of investigations—investigations that notably haven’t turned up any real evidence that Biden has engaged in corruption or profited from his son’s business dealings.

Like Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan told CNN a government shutdown wouldn’t stop him. “Every week there’s a whole roster of folks” scheduled for committee interviews, he said.

The committee staff conducting the interviews wouldn’t be paid in the event of a shutdown, but could be deemed “essential” by Congress members and forced to work. A source told CNN, though, that there was still question about whether a court reporter, necessary for transcribing interviews, would be considered essential, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted that a shutdown could affect the ability of government agencies to respond to subpoenas. (Take note: Greene seems to be more clearheaded about the outcomes of a shutdown than Comer or Jordan.)

Going ahead with a baseless impeachment inquiry while shutting down the government out of sheer spite would be an impressive one-two punch, even by Republican standards. What could they possibly do that would more clearly display how far their priorities are from what voters want Congress to deliver?

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Biden, Schumer are doing what they have to do: Let McCarthy fail

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Joan McCarter

By the end of Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was having a very bad week. He failed on two critical votes that were supposed to serve as a challenge to the chief antagonists in his Republican conference. McCarthy declared defeat for the day, leaving before 5 PM, then dismissed the House early on Wednesday, with no clear plan for steering away from the impending government shutdown.

It’s a trajectory of McCarthy’s own making, and this time around, he’s not going to get help from President Joe Biden or Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to correct it. The White House has a good reason: The last time Biden bailed him out, McCarthy reneged on their deal. “We agreed to the budget deal and a deal is a deal — House GOP should abide by it,” a White House official told Politico. Their “chaos is making the case that they are responsible if there is a shutdown.”

The anonymous official is referring to the budget agreement that Biden and McCarthy reached to end the Republican debt limit hostage-taking earlier this year. Biden accepted cuts to next year’s budget in that agreement with McCarthy, who immediately capitulated to pressure from GOP extremists and reneged on the deal. The White House let him have a win on that one, in the spirit of good governance and saving the global economy, and McCarthy immediately tore up the agreement.

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So instead, the Biden administration is preparing for a shutdown and messaging on it, focusing on how disastrous the additional cuts that McCarthy is pushing would be. In a memo on Tuesday, the White House said, “The continuing resolution [Republicans] introduced this week makes indiscriminate cuts to programs that millions of hardworking Americans count on—violating the agreement the Speaker negotiated with President Biden and rejecting the bipartisan approach of the Senate.”

The White House estimates the results of those cuts becoming permanent would mean, among other things: cutting 800 Customs and Border Protection agents; eliminating 110,000 Head Start positions for children; 60,000 seniors losing access to food services like Meals on Wheels; and 300,000 households, including tens of thousands of veterans and seniors, losing housing vouchers and being put at risk of homelessness. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Focusing on McCarthy as an unreliable (not to mention incompetent) dealmaker is part of the calculus for Democrats in making sure that he and his fellow Republicans own the coming debacle. “I sympathize with the speaker,” Schumer said on the floor Wednesday. ”I know his task isn’t easy. He’s got a lot of very, very difficult members to deal with.” However, Schumer continued, being a leader means accepting a “responsibility to the American people. Real lives would be disrupted in a shutdown." The answer, Schumer said, “is right in front of Speaker McCarthy, and he knows it: bipartisanship.” That puts the onus on McCarthy to reach out to Democrats.

For Democrats, what makes this a different situation than the debt limit is that the stakes aren’t nearly as high with a shutdown as with debt default. As damaging as a shutdown will be, it almost surely won’t be catastrophic. The other consideration is that Republicans will likely be blamed for it, as they were in 1995-96, in 2013, and in 2018. There’s no way around that, since the hard-liners have been cheerleading for a shutdown for weeks.

Isolating McCarthy is the only way to get him—or a critical mass of Republicans who don’t want to take the blame for the fiasco—to come around to working with them.

Freedom Caucus: ‘We don't fear the government shutdown’

Senate Republicans now saying it's up to McCarthy to avoid a shutdown

What does shutdown 2023 look like?

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The House of Representatives blew up again Tuesday afternoon, when leadership had to pull back a procedural vote on their only existing proposal for averting a government shutdown at the end of next week. Compounding that failure, a handful of hard-liners voted against advancing the defense appropriations bill for a floor vote.

Those were two monumental losses for Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He has no control over his conference and no plan for combating the nihilism of the Freedom Caucus and its allies. They want the government to shut down, and are happy to advertise that fact.

Less government isn't a bad thing. pic.twitter.com/r8GdmDeocn
— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) September 19, 2023

Since a shutdown appears to be inevitable, what does it mean for the nation?

Nothing good, other than a pissed off electorate potentially driving Republicans out of office in 2024.

There are more than 2.1 million federal employees, hundreds of thousands of whom would likely be furloughed without pay for the duration of a shutdown. As early as this week, federal agencies will start deciding which employees are “essential” and which will be put on ice for the duration.

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The White House outlined what that could mean for various operations of government in a memo Tuesday. That includes “all active-duty military personnel and many law enforcement officers” being forced to remain at work without being paid until a funding agreement is made. It would increase the “risk that FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund is depleted and would complicate new emergency response efforts if additional catastrophic disasters occur.”

It would mean “10,000 children across the country would immediately lose access to Head Start.” The EPA would mostly stop inspecting drinking water facilities, hazardous waste sites, and chemical facilities. The Food and Drug Administration “could be forced to delay” food inspections. The Small Business Administration wouldn’t approve new loans.

While Medicare would be funded and people would still get their Social Security checks, new enrollees could see delays in getting their applications processed. People receiving food assistance—already threatened by Republican efforts to slash budgets—might have a struggle to get those benefits. Customer service for many of these programs would likely suffer without funding.

Economic analysts are warning that it looks like this stalemate could be a long one. Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, said he projects a “70% chance of a shutdown, perhaps a long one lasting into the winter.” Terry Haines, founder of Pangaea Policy, said this “won’t be at all like the one-off short ‘shutdowns’” that had minimal effect on markets, and believes it “will take months to resolve.”

That’s a worst-case scenario. But Goldman Sachs economists reckon that the nation’s gross domestic product growth would be reduced by about 0.2 percentage point each week it lasts, but would recover at a similar rate once the money was flowing again.

There are also the intangible effects of the damage to the government’s credibility at home and abroad when half of one of its three branches is melting down, burning the rest of the government along with it. The potential damage isn’t of quite the same magnitude as the debt limit fight the House extremists waged on the country earlier this year. That threatened to upend the global economy, which is why McCarthy and team eventually blinked.

This time around, they truly believe that “less government isn’t a bad thing” and that the government should be shut down, as Republican Rep. Andy Ogles tweeted. What Ogles isn’t telling us is that he’ll still be getting paid, with our tax dollars. The silver lining is that he’ll also be getting the blame.

Poll shows how misguided House Republicans are about a government shutdown

Senate Republicans now saying it's up to McCarthy to avoid a shutdown

House hard-liners brag about 'chaos' as government shutdown looms

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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Would impeachment inquiry shut down with the government? Maybe

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tried to quell his raucous caucus by telling them they can’t force a government shutdown while continuing their “Biden crime family” investigations and impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. He previewed that argument a few weeks ago during a Fox News interview. “If we shut down, all of government shuts it down—investigations and everything else—it hurts the American public,” he said.

Maybe that’s why he decided to let his rabid weasels loose in an impeachment inquiry, thinking they would be so caught up in the bloodthirst that they wouldn’t want it to be derailed by a shutdown. The problem is that McCarthy’s argument is not entirely true, and plenty of the Republican “investigators” intend to keep on chasing their tails, no matter what.

Some of them didn’t even connect the two things until reporters asked them about it. “I have no idea, I’m hopeful that we don’t have that scenario,” Rep. James Comer told The Messenger. He’s the Oversight Committee chair who has to keep publicly admitting that he’s got nuthin’ on the president, despite devoting months and months to the quest. So, yes, it’s totally believable that Comer didn’t even bother to think about whether his pet investigations might be affected.

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His counterpart in wild-goose chasing, Rep. Jim Jordan, has thought about it. “We’re gonna do our job no matter what happens,” the Judiciary Committee chair said. He threw in, “We’re not looking to shut down the government.” Seems Jim has some catching up to do with his Freedom Caucus colleagues.

What Jordan isn’t saying is that he would be happy to force his committee staff to continue working during a shutdown, even though they wouldn’t be getting paid. Because that’s how it works. Members of Congress get paid during shutdowns because that’s what the Constitution mandates. Their salaries are not included in the annual appropriations for the legislative branch. Unless that appropriations bill passes before Oct. 1 and a shutdown is averted, the people who work in Congress but aren’t elected members won’t get paid.

Members can deem some of their staff to be “essential” and force them to work without pay during shutdowns. In the case of Comer and Jordan, they could very well decide that their committee staffers have to keep working, which they would have to do without pay until the shutdown gets resolved.

“I’ve never seen a situation where there’s a potential shutdown and this thing running along simultaneously,” Rep. Tom Cole told The Messenger. He’s chair of the Rules Committee. “They certainly couldn’t pay the staffers. At some point, people aren’t coming into work for free, as patriotic as they all are.”

Staffers might not keep coming in, but the impeachment inquiry could keep going, according to one analysis from the last time this threat came up, at the end of 2019. The inquiry likely would continue, because it’s not like the staff would be that essential in “investigating” anyway—there’s no evidence to collect, and no actual crime to probe. Comer and Jordan and their buddies are just making it up as they go along anyway. Paid professionals might just get in their way.

Whether they decide to run with the impeachment inquiry anyway depends on just how self-destructive they’re feeling. Because neither of the two things—impeachment or a government shutdown—are popular with voters. Most Americans don’t think impeachment is warranted, and a large majority are opposed to a shutdown.

If a shutdown happens, Republicans will be blamed. If the only thing Congress is doing while many government services are closed is going after Biden on the basis of unproven and ridiculous conspiracy theories, well, McCarthy might as well just hand the keys to the place over to Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Democrats will have run of the place after 2024.

McCarthy announces formal impeachment inquiry, bypassing House vote

McCarthy is sealing the fate of both House and Senate Republicans

The Republican ‘whistleblower’ hearing had everything … except evidence

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

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