I don’t know the answer, TreeTard.
The fine GOP House majority
- Thread starter gwb-trading
- Start date
I don’t know the answer, TreeTard.
This is incorrect. Congreff authorizes new spending. They have nothing to do with authorizing debt payments. The Constitution mandates that debt payments occur. When Congreff raises the debt ceiling, they are only doing so to incur new debt for their new spending.
https://democrats-budget.house.gov/publications/fact-sheet/debt-ceiling-explainer
The debt ceiling does not constrain federal spending or the amount we need to borrow; it simply restricts the Treasury Department’s ability to honor financial commitments previously made by Congress and the President. Failure to set the debt ceiling at the level necessary to meet borrowing needs could jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States by preventing the Treasury from paying the government’s bills. This could take the form of failing to pay interest on, or redeem, Treasury Bonds when due, or failing to make scheduled payments for vital programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or veterans benefits.
It comes down to three primary issues with McCarthy:
1. McCarthy lacks situational awareness. For example, where was he on changing the status quo of Roe vs Wade? What about predictions of gaining 30 to 40 house and 3 Senate seats, only to fall short and actually lose a Senate seat and a Governorship? If that wasn't enough, instead of explaining why he grossly underachieved predictions, McCarthy gives a press conference trying to spin Republican performance as a victory. This, after the Democrats giving the Republicans so much to work with, other than that "Other issue", of course.
2. McCarthy represents the establishment on the Republican side. Sure, lots of political experience can be beneficial for a House leader, but when major reforms are needed, a career politician may feel they have too much at risk. Besides, McCarthy's experience has been during a time of consolidation of Congressional power through rules changes that effectively forced legislation through without adequate ability to review or forcing legislation to be tied in with other, often controversial legislation such as spending. In other words, where was McCarthy when these rules were implemented? What did his website show? What did his Tweets mostly focus on?
3. Flow of power. It seems to me, an appropriate framework to view legislation and House rules is to visualize the changes in the flow of power. Do proposed changes cause power flow to fewer people or does power flow towards more people? Is a check and balance created or removed? Put in another way, consolidation of power leads us towards increasing authoritarianism, desemination of power leads us towards increasing Democracy. For decades, the Federal Government has been consolidating power. This consolidation of power has resulted in the reduction of qualified political candidates from an ethical and competence standpoint. Further, we have become a surveilance state that effectively represses political expression. It is my understanding the Freedom caucus is proposing rule changes that put power in the hands of more people rather than fewer.
There are huge geopolitical, environmental, energy infrastructure, and artificial intelligence issues, some of which represent a potential existential threat to the status quo. Our economic, political, and social systems seem inadequately prepared for upcoming challenges. We need all ideas to be heard, especially since the more familiar voices have gotten us to our current situation. The best way to ensure ideas see the light of day is to give authority to more people. Reforms are necessary, if seemingly inconvenient, and anything less is insubordination of the interests of our country and the American people.
We must support the Freedom Caucus efforts to reform Congressional rules, including changing some rules back before a selve-serving politicial party of the prior Congress decided to accelerate their efforts to consolidate power.
Edit: At the very least, the Freedom Caucus should hold firm, if not expand their demands for reforms. At most, should McCarthy as speaker be reconsidered?
1. McCarthy lacks situational awareness. For example, where was he on changing the status quo of Roe vs Wade? What about predictions of gaining 30 to 40 house and 3 Senate seats, only to fall short and actually lose a Senate seat and a Governorship? If that wasn't enough, instead of explaining why he grossly underachieved predictions, McCarthy gives a press conference trying to spin Republican performance as a victory. This, after the Democrats giving the Republicans so much to work with, other than that "Other issue", of course.
2. McCarthy represents the establishment on the Republican side. Sure, lots of political experience can be beneficial for a House leader, but when major reforms are needed, a career politician may feel they have too much at risk. Besides, McCarthy's experience has been during a time of consolidation of Congressional power through rules changes that effectively forced legislation through without adequate ability to review or forcing legislation to be tied in with other, often controversial legislation such as spending. In other words, where was McCarthy when these rules were implemented? What did his website show? What did his Tweets mostly focus on?
3. Flow of power. It seems to me, an appropriate framework to view legislation and House rules is to visualize the changes in the flow of power. Do proposed changes cause power flow to fewer people or does power flow towards more people? Is a check and balance created or removed? Put in another way, consolidation of power leads us towards increasing authoritarianism, desemination of power leads us towards increasing Democracy. For decades, the Federal Government has been consolidating power. This consolidation of power has resulted in the reduction of qualified political candidates from an ethical and competence standpoint. Further, we have become a surveilance state that effectively represses political expression. It is my understanding the Freedom caucus is proposing rule changes that put power in the hands of more people rather than fewer.
There are huge geopolitical, environmental, energy infrastructure, and artificial intelligence issues, some of which represent a potential existential threat to the status quo. Our economic, political, and social systems seem inadequately prepared for upcoming challenges. We need all ideas to be heard, especially since the more familiar voices have gotten us to our current situation. The best way to ensure ideas see the light of day is to give authority to more people. Reforms are necessary, if seemingly inconvenient, and anything less is insubordination of the interests of our country and the American people.
We must support the Freedom Caucus efforts to reform Congressional rules, including changing some rules back before a selve-serving politicial party of the prior Congress decided to accelerate their efforts to consolidate power.
Edit: At the very least, the Freedom Caucus should hold firm, if not expand their demands for reforms. At most, should McCarthy as speaker be reconsidered?
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It's ugly to say out loud but McCarthy may go to democrats for a handful of votes or those votes may come to him from democrats even if he does not try to recruit them. That is one of the reasons why people should not think that just because he cannot move the holdouts that he should withdraw (I mean from his perspective. I am not supporting McCarthy).
Most dems will stay out of it of course upon orders from the dems but some of them are in purple states and only won by a pubic hair and would love to be able to crow to others in the state that they worked bipartisan to help keep the congress functioning, blah, blah, blah.
Not correct. The debt ceiling is raised to pay for new spending. If the debt ceiling is not raised then spending appropriated by Congreff may not get paid. However, payments on the debt will always be paid----even if at the expense of other government spending that Congreff has voted for. So, in my view, we should not be raising the debt ceiling----rather we should be reducing the growth of, or actually cutting government spending with defense not being an area to be cut.
Any Democrat that votes for McCarthy will be stripped of their seat on any committee going forward and will not receive any favorable treatment for their constituents interests.