Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave a prebuttal to Tuesday’s State of the Union Monday evening, in a short speech conveying pretty much nothing. The national debt, he said, is “the greatest threat” to the nation’s future. What he’s going to do about that? He didn’t tell us.
That’s because the GOP has no plan. Any kidnapper could have told the House GOP that before they took a hostage—in this case, the debt ceiling—they needed to have a plan starting with what they were going to demand in return for the hostage’s release. Somehow the Republicans assumed that their tiny majority in the House was all they needed, that the Democratic Senate and White House would simply fold to the likes of Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene, and to McCarthy, the guy who had to hand the keys of the House to the Freedom Caucus in order to be called their figurehead.
What McCarthy did say was this: “Cuts to Medicare and Social Security, they’re off the table.” Which is a far cry from what he was saying last fall, before the election, when he was saying he wasn’t going to “predetermine” cuts to those programs, but the team of Republicans he was endorsing made it clear: “Our main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary—it’s got to be on entitlements.”
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Because the White House and the Senate are not rolling over for McCarthy, he’s scrapped that idea and is left with ... cutting “wasteful Washington spending.” He said that three times in his little speech Tuesday. Exactly what those cuts will be, he didn’t say. He did say that “defaulting on our debt is not an option,” but he also said, “neither is a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates, and an economy that doesn’t work for working Americans.”
He reiterated that tax part in a conference meeting Tuesday morning: “We are not going to raise taxes and we are not going to pass a clean debt ceiling.”
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“We must move towards a balanced budget that insists on genuine accountability for every dollar we spend. Future generations deserve nothing less,” McCarthy said in his little speech. “A responsible debt limit increase that begins to eliminate wasteful Washington spending and puts us on a path towards a balanced budget is not only the right place to start, it’s the only place to start.”
Ok, so let’s talk about a balanced budget, given they’ve ruled out cuts to social insurance programs, the Pentagon, and veterans, while at the same time refusing to raise taxes. Where is that “wasteful” spending that’s going to close the roughly $20 trillion budget hole over the next decade?
It sure isn’t going to be found in “eliminat[ing] all the money spent on ‘wokeism,’” as McCarthy proposed.
It would mean getting rid of pretty much every other domestic spending program. Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman laid it out recently. That “wasteful” spending McCarthy is calling out includes “programs dear to [Republican] voters, such as farm subsidies, western water projects, border security, and the air traffic control system.” And food safety and environmental protection and heating assistance to low-income seniors and supplemental nutrition to children and, well, pretty much everything.
Hence having no plan for ransoming the hostage of the debt ceiling. Because no one wants their fingerprints on any proposal that cuts stuff that matters to their voters back home. So far what they’ve got in “wasteful” spending to be cut is all that “unspent COVID money,” (about $157 billion that remains unobligated) and repealing the $80 billion Congress passed last year to fund the IRS, which would actually cost the nation $114 billion in uncollected taxes over the next decade.
That would mean their big ideas for cutting spending would net about $123 billion for the next decade. The budget for this fiscal year is $1.7 trillion. So, yeah, great plan, guys.
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