House GOP Might Consider Funding Government If You'll Let Them Watch Some Poor Kids Starve
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House GOP Might Consider Funding Government If You'll Let Them Watch Some Poor Kids Starve
These people are terrible.
Even if you’re someone who might enjoy taking candy from a baby, you’re probably not low enough to take actual food from children’s mouths to keep your crappy, ulcer-ridden job. But that’s our Kevin McCarthy, who is willing to sink to all the lows so he can remain speaker of the MAGA Horror House.
The government is running out of time to pay its damn bills, an otherwise routine task that Nancy Pelosi was able to manage without a major meltdown. McCarthy needs to cobble together enough votes from his ragamuffin majority to pass a continuing resolution — a “resolution” “continuing” the government’s spending at current levels, because you wouldn’t want to get crazy and actually do the work to pass a budget or 12 from scratch — and that requires appeasing his party’s nihilist wing. They want drastic spending cuts across the board. Everything must go, including most of our social safety net! They’re CRAZY! No, seriously, these people are not well.
Rep. Garret Graves from Louisiana told reporters that House leadership plans to gut spending on so-called “discretionary” programs, which is how Republicans usually refer to any program that helps poor people or the otherwise marginalized. The category excludes Social Security and Medicare because Republicans understand that most of their voters are old and live in Florida. They’re also not going after the military budget because there’s always something or someone to blow up. And you have to fund border security for the impending war on Mexico.
Here’s what McCarthy has agreed to put on the table, where poor people aren’t allowed to eat.
From The Washington Post:
Cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33 percent as soaring rents drive a national affordability crisis. Forcing more than 1 million women and children onto the waitlist of a nutritional assistance program for poor mothers with young children. Reducing federal spending on home heating assistance for low-income families by more than 70 percent with energy prices high heading into the winter months.
House Republicans want to cut Title I education grants that fund low-income schools by almost 80 percent, saving $14.7 billion — presumably for drag queen defense spending. The cuts are steeper than the pre-pandemic education funding reductions that the right-wing think tank Center for Renewing America proposed during the Trump administration.
According to those familiar with what passes for McCarthy’s thought process, the barely speaker believes if he can pacify the most extreme (and heartless) members of his caucus and finally pass legislation that funds the government, Republicans will have more leverage in negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.
That’s absolutely nonsense, of course. Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein posted on social media that House Republicans were “making enormous cuts to safety net price to avert shutdown.” Not even their own mothers would buy that spin. Political consultant Dana Houle correctly noted that the burn-it-down caucus isn’t proposing these cuts to prevent a shutdown. The goal is to force a shutdown.
Even the most moronic House Republicans understand that the Democratic-controlled Senate isn’t going to approve vulnerable Americans — hundreds of thousands! —losing housing support; greatly reduced Pell Grants for millions of students; and Meals on Wheels cuts impacting tens of thousands of food-insecure people.
So, McCarthy will perhaps keep his job by failing to do it. He’ll willingly screw over millions of Americans but probably reassure his faux-moderate members from Biden districts that Democrats will take the bullet and not let this abomination pass. Then they can blame Joe Biden and Democrats for a resulting shutdown.
When reporters asked McCarthy if he could pull this off, he said, “This is the same place you were all asking me during the debt ceiling.”
McCarthy is referring to the debt ceiling deal he made in good faith with the president and is now reneging on.
“So you know what, it might take us a little longer,” he added. “But this is important. We want to make sure that we can end the wasteful spending that the Democrats have put forth.”
We’re not talking about cutting back on cocaine and hookers. Republicans want other people’s children to go the bed hungry and cold. That’s what these cuts will do, and there’s nothing “wasteful” about protecting the least among us.
Feel like leaving you with a little Jed Bartlet while I wash the Republican stench off me.
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House GOP Might Consider Funding Government If You'll Let Them Watch Some Poor Kids Starve
Ta, Stephen. If I said what I feel, I'd earn the Banhammer of Loving Correction. Thus, I'll shut up.
I have spent the last 3 workdays with multiple GS15s and SES planning for shutdown. Me alone it's ~$1.5k. That doesn't count the time I've spent with my team tamping down anxiety. Or future costs of not rolling out next phase of loss mitigation for Veterans. It's typical Congress, headlines and acting opportunities. Fuck those fucking fucks.