Image via C-Span
Biden June 2, 2023 Oval Office address
My favorite cartoon on the debt ceiling negotiations was Mike Luckovich’s in the Atlanta Journal Constitution showing Joe Biden in a suit at a poker table with stacks of chips opposite a naked guy with his clothes scattered on the floor who’s saying: “He’s not a bad card player despite the severe cognitive decline. . .”
Don’t tell anybody but President Biden mopped the floor with Kevin McCarthy and the House Republican crazies. Biden’s never been a senile old man babbling nonsense as Republicans claim. That’s their own former president.
In his televised address to the nation, Biden simply recited his usual mantra about the value of passing bipartisan legislation: “The stakes could not have been higher. No one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed. We averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse.”
Biden made all the right moves. When MAGA House Republicans threatened to default on America’s debt by refusing to pay the bills both Republicans and Democrats have been running up for decades, no one knew how many House Republicans might be crazy enough to do it.
Reckless, Job-Killing Republicans
Economists agreed it would be catastrophic not only for America but worldwide. Default would quickly create a recession killing millions of jobs and preventing government from funding its basic services—Social Security payments, health care benefits, veterans’ services, defense spending, everything. The House lunatic fringe—you know who they are—didn’t care. They demanded Biden roll back his entire agenda or else.
Biden’s first reaction was the right one. America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. First, release the hostages. In this case, the hostages were the American people.
Lifting the debt ceiling was non-negotiable, but Biden was willing to discuss spending priorities. Biden then went silent during talks until a budget agreement was reached. That’s when America learned the reckless threat by extreme Republicans was a paper tiger and Biden had cleaned up in negotiations.
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A supermajority of 68% of House Republicans and 78% of House Democrats approved the deal while 71 MAGA Republicans denounced their own party for keeping Biden’s spending and policies intact.
Trump and Ron DeSantis, the only serious candidates so far for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, were totally ignored urging Republicans to reject the deal. Only the nuttiest House members were suicidal enough to listen to them going into an election year.
MAGA vs. Common Sense
The negotiations began with the House Freedom Caucus demanding repeal of most of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act including hundreds of billions to battle climate change, lower the cost of prescription drugs and create a minimum tax for billion-dollar corporations that pay nothing. Republicans walked away with, well, their shirts.
One of the largest cuts was $10 billion in 2024 and 2025 from the Internal Revenue Service that will be used to reduce cuts to other Biden programs. That still leaves IRS with an enormous budget increase needed to audit wealthier taxpayers with complicated returns that tax experts say could produce hundreds of millions in additional tax revenue.
Biden’s negotiators even reversed the effect of ugly Republican work requirements for some recipients of food assistance. New exemptions for veterans, the homeless and families with children will result in more hungry Americans receiving food assistance than ever before.
When reporters realized how much Biden had won, they wanted to know why he wasn’t boasting about it. “Why would Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote?” he asked them. “You think that’s going to help me get it passed? No. That’s why you guys don’t bargain very well.”
Biden feels comfortable going into the next election with another major victory for the American people. They heard enough bragging from the last president about totally imaginary achievements.
After the agreement sailed through the House and Senate, California Democratic congressman Brad Sherman wasn’t at all reluctant to tell Bloomberg News: “Now we’re allowed to say it. We rolled them.”
McCarthy, who usually talks about Democrats as if they’re an enemy species, was happy to get their help when Republicans opposing the bill invoked an obscure rule that nearly prevented the House from voting on it.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries held up a green card that was a signal for 52 Democrats to cast votes supporting McCarthy to defeat the threat. Jeffries later explained: “Extreme MAGA Republicans attempted to take control of the House floor. Democrats took it back for the American people, and we will continue to do so.”
We now know fewer than 30% of elected Republicans in the House and Senate are crazy enough to destroy the U.S. economy in hopes of turning Biden into a failed president in 2024. They should consider ridding themselves of Trump and his violent insurrectionists to become a legitimate, conservative, American political party again. But first, they’re going to have to find some new presidential candidates.
