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DEBT CEILING DEBATING FRANK
BERNHEISEL The news is full of stories about how the House Republicans are going to
bring the functioning of the US Government to a halt by not increasing
the debt limit. To me this is just political theater. The US
Government needs to pay the costs of programs which are the law of the
land.
GO TO DEBT CEILING DEBATE "frank_bernheisel/fb_debtceiling.shtml 02.3.2023 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
GOP REMOVES DEM MUSLIN ILHAM OMAR (D-MN) FROM TOP COMMITTEE SEAT
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted along
party lines to remove Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her seat on
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Republicans voting to remove
her justified their action by pointing to language she used that they
say was antisemitic. She has apologized for that language.
Earlier, House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) used his own discretion to
remove Democratic California representatives Adam Schiff and Eric
Swalwell from the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
While these removals are often portrayed simply as a quest for revenge
after Democrats removed Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie
Taylor Greene (R-GA) from committees when they were in charge, there is
a crucial difference between the cases. The Democrats removed Gosar and
Greene -- both members of the far-right group -- after they threatened
violence against their Democratic colleagues. Republicans removed Schiff
and Swalwell over make-believe dangers and now have removed Omar
allegedly over policy differences. At the same time, McCarthy reinstated
Gosar and Greene to prime committee assignments.
The Republicans have accepted violence among Congress members.
Today's vote is a window into a larger story. It appears the Republican
Party has split, and the far-right wing is making a play to become what
amounts to a third party. Its members demanded the removal of Schiff and
Swalwell from the intelligence committee and Omar from foreign affairs:
Schiff and Swalwell apparently because they have gone after former
president Donald Trump, and Omar because she is Muslim and a woman of
color.
Removing Schiff and Swalwell was relatively easy, since the speaker can
determine the make-up of select committees himself. Removing Omar was
dicier, since it required a vote of the House. Today, McCarthy gave the
far right what they wanted, getting rid of Omar.
In order to justify it on grounds other than racism, though, he had to
pretend the issue was antisemitic words. It's a hard sell to convince
people that the Republican Party cares much about antisemitism when it
has embraced the openly antisemitic Ye, also known as Kanye West, and
when Trump recently warned Jews that they must "get their act
together...before it is too late." Kevin McCarthy himself in November 2022
indulged in antisemitic tropes when he tweeted: "We cannot allow Soros,
Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election! Get out and vote
Republican...."
McCarthy catered to far-right members in order to get the votes to
become speaker; now he is giving those members what they want in order
to keep them from ousting him and to get them on board for imperative
legislation like a bill to raise the debt ceiling.
The power the far-right representatives are getting is making them a
force distinct from the rest of the Republican Party. They demanded, and
got, extraordinary representation on committees apart from the normal
party apparatus, power over the Speaker and the introduction of bills,
and now have normalized violent rhetoric within the party.
Their rise is a logical outcome of the history of the Republican Party.
Back in the 1980s, those Republicans determined to get rid of government
regulation of business and social programs did two things.
First, they insisted that any government regulation of business or
provision of a basic social safety net was "socialism" because, they
claimed, the tax dollars that such government action cost would come
from those with money -- who they implied would be white people -- and thus
would redistribute wealth from hardworking white men to those who
benefited from such programs. This idea has nothing to do with the
modern definition of socialism, which means government ownership of the
means of production. Instead, it is a holdover from the Reconstruction
years in the United States, when white supremacists insisted that Black
voting would mean a redistribution of wealth as formerly enslaved people
voted for lawmakers who promised to fix roads, and build schools and
hospitals.
Second, Republicans in the 1980s made a deliberate decision to court
voters with religion, racism, and sexism in order to hold onto power.
Antitax crusader Grover Norquist brought business leaders, evangelicals,
and social conservatives into a coalition to win elections in 1985.
"Traditional Republican business groups can provide the resources," he
said, "but these groups can provide the votes." Over the decades their
focus on religion, race, and sex ramped up until it took on a power of
its own, stronger than the pro-business ideology of those who fed it.
Now, a generation later, that rhetoric has led to its logical
conclusion: the Republicans have created a group of voters and their
representatives who are openly white supremacists and who believe that
any attempt to use the government to hold the economic playing field
level is socialism. They are overwhelmingly evangelicals. They back
former president Trump or someone like him and are eager to break the
power of the current government even if it means defaulting on our debt.
They threaten violence.
With the Republican Party just barely in control of the House, that
group now wields enough power that it divides the House into three
groups: the Democrats, the Republicans who want to cut taxes and gut
regulation, and the Republicans who want to destroy the "socialist"
government, want to keep white people in charge, support Trump or
someone similar, are fervently Christian, and openly court violence.
Today, the House voted to condemn socialism -- another attempt to appease
that far right -- while Republicans then chided those Democrats who refused
to vote in favor of that condemnation because they said they thought it
was a setup to cut Social Security and Medicare as socialism. (They are
not socialism.)
Also today, former president Trump "retruthed" the words of a person who
warned that he and "80,000,000" were willing to fight for Trump and were
"Locked and LOADED." In the House, some of the far-right group are
wearing AR-15 pins, but when Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo asked
Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) why she was wearing one, her
office answered that it was "about sponsoring a gun bill and has nothing
to do with whatever blueanon conspiracy theories are being floated on
Capitol Hill," a reference to the idea that Democrats -- rather than the
Republicans like Greene who were QAnon adherents -- are embracing
conspiracy theories. The members wearing the pins have not, so far,
introduced any gun bills.
This is alarming, but it is not the first time an extremist minority in
Congress has organized, determined to control the country. In 1879, for
example, before the parties switched into their current arrangement,
Democratic former Confederates banded together, demanded the leadership
of key committees -- which the exceedingly weak speaker gave them -- and set
out to make the Republican president, Rutherford B. Hayes, get rid of
key Republican policies by refusing to fund the government until he
caved.
With the support of House minority leader James A. Garfield, Hayes stood
firm, recognizing that allowing a minority of the opposition party to
dictate to the elected government by holding it hostage would undermine
the system set up in the Constitution. The parties fought it out for
months until, in the end, the American people turned against the
Democrats, who backed down. In the next presidential election, which had
been supposed to be a romp for the Democrats, voters put Garfield, the
Republican who had stood against the former Confederates, into the White
House.
COMPLAINING ~ IT'S A CANADIAN THING, EH?
FRED
RYAN SHAWVILLE, QC | Talking about top-ten hits of 2022? Complaining
of, or rather, citing evidence for "government over-reach" has to be
high up on that Canadian list, no matter how it's sung. It was even a
significant topic on a few fishing trips last summer.
GO TO fryan/fred_ryan440.html"
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