It’s That Time Of Year Again

Posted: September 16, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

You know it is Fall when the extreme members of the House of Representatives threaten to shut down the government again by failing to do their job and appropriate and authorize the funds needed to keep our country going. Same old tune, but this time with a few different lyrics.

Earlier this year, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (MAGA-CA) reached an agreement with President Joe Biden to raise the debt limit, thus ensuring that the United States would not default on its debts in accordance with the Constitution and that we would keep the U.S. and world economy working. As part of that deal, the two men reached an agreement for the ceiling on the amount of spending that would be authorized for the coming fiscal year, which begins on 1 October. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and was ready to move on to the actual work of the Congress, which is funding the government. Well, almost everyone was ready to move on. All were ready to get on with business except for the MAGA Republicans of the Freedom Caucus. They claim that Speaker McCarthy was duped by the president into agreeing to spending limits higher than they wanted and that they had insisted on having as a condition for making Mr. McCarthy Speaker of the House. They started throwing a conniption fit early this summer and continued to disrupt “regular order” in the House upon returning to Washington this week.

Before going into the details about the House, let us first acknowledge that, so far, the Senate is doing their job. Under the leadership of Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) as chair, and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) as vice-chair, the Appropriations Committee has all twelve of the necessary bills to fund the federal government ready to go for a full Senate vote. All are within the guidelines of the agreement with the president, with a few minor changes such as increasing the defense budget, and all have bipartisan support and will garner roughly two-thirds of the Senate voting in favor. There are no “poison pill” provisions included in it (amendments generally having to do with culture war issues to assuage some politician’s donors but that could keep the bill from passing). Effective leadership, cooperation, compromise and negotiation. What a concept!

Contrast that with the House where Speaker McCarthy, probably the weakest Speaker in my lifetime, cannot get his caucus to agree to the time of day. He has had to postpone several key votes because he does not have enough votes in his own party to pass them. Since most of the bills do include amendments that have draconian provisions that have nothing to do with spending, Democrats will not vote for them either. As the deadline approaches, the Speaker is contemplating a continuing resolution (CR) to temporarily keep the government functioning while negotiations continue. This means keeping spending levels at their current rate until new budgets are approved, as has often been the case over the last two decades. It is a very inefficient way to run things and serves mostly to keep the drama at a fever pitch while the various parties vie with each other to see who chickens out first and gives up on all or some of their demands. The proposed CR is a “clean” bill which means it only pertains to spending and does not include extraneous amendments that probably would not pass on their own, but get included as the best chance to see them pass.

Right now, the Freedom Caucus (made up of most of the members of the Sedition Caucus that voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results) is refusing to vote for such a CR as a temporary solution. Many of them publicly and dare I say, joyously, anticipate the government having to shut down. This puts the Speaker in a real bind.

The House could pass a clean CR with moderate Republicans (there aren’t that many left) and Democrats voting for it. But the hard line right wingers in the House declared that if the Speaker did that, they would put forth a motion to “vacate” the Speaker’s chair. In other words, they would vote to “fire” Mr. McCarthy as the Speaker. (A key question relevant to their threat is who would take his place that could get enough votes to win? It took Mr. McCarthy 15 ballots over multiple days to secure the speakership.) Depending on the day, Mr. McCarthy only has a four or five person majority to pass anything on purely party lines. As MAGA loud mouth Representative Matt Gaetz (MAGA-FL) on Tuesday put it, “Continuing Resolution, motion to vacate.” Representative Bob Good (MAGA-VA) said, “We should not fear a government shutdown. Most of the American people won’t even miss it if the government is shut down temporarily.” The last shutdown was in 2018-2019 and lasted five weeks. The dispute then was funding the border wall that Trump (aka Inmate PO1135809) wanted. (Somehow, Mexico was not involved.)

The hard right wingers always claim that they want to save the taxpayers money when they shut down the government. In fact, the country loses money. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates, the last shutdown cost the economy 11 billion dollars over the first two quarters, of which three billion dollars was never recovered. The secondary and tertiary impacts of such shutdowns impact the entire economy, not just the government.

The situation is complicated by Mr. McCarthy’s Tuesday announcement of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. This action is simply and purely a political gambit. Other Republicans have publicly expressed their view that there are no actions by the president that may be characterized as “high crimes and misdemeanors” as delineated in the Constitution Article II, Section 4. There are also significant legal questions as to whether there can be an inquiry without a vote authorizing it by the full membership of the House.

There are two political factors relevant to the inquiry. Primarily, Mr. McCarthy hoped to throw the Freedom Caucus a bone to chew on so that he could distract them while trying to finesse a solution for avoiding a government shutdown. It did not work. The Freedom Caucus has been focused on impeaching President Biden since the day he took office. In their view, the Speaker is late to the party and is only doing what they thought would happen earlier this year.

The second political reason is an attempt by the Freedom Caucus and other supporters of the ex-president and indicted criminal currently out on bail to mitigate the legal dilemmas he faces as well as his two impeachments. Trump himself was working hard to push his fellow MAGA Republicans to open impeachment proceedings. They want to create an atmosphere where they can demonstrate that all politicians are corrupt, not just Trump and thereby damage Mr. Biden while helping Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Their actions are one more attempt at blowing up the rule of law and seeking retribution for holding Trump accountable.

Speaker McCarthy knows that he cannot deliver on all of the demands made by the Freedom Caucus. His problem is complicated by the fact that the Freedom Caucus itself is not unified in expressing what will satisfy them. Every time Mr. McCarthy gives into one demand, the goal posts move as additional demands are made. Here are examples of their key demands: that the final budget be considerably below the agreement between Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden and no more than pre-pandemic levels; defunding or significantly cutting funds for the “weaponized” Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI; defunding the federal prosecutors that are pursuing cases against the indicted ex-president (end “political witch hunts”) ; funding to renew building the wall on the southern border; significant changes to immigration laws including eliminating or restricting legal asylum; cutting funds for Ukraine in its war with Russia (“no blank checks”); eliminating “woke” policies in the Department of Defense (DOD); cutting down or eliminating funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and on and on. None of these demands will be met in the Senate or signed into law by the president.

Mr. McCarthy will feel mounting pressure as the Senate completes its work and the president announces he would sign their appropriations bills into law. He will find himself in the politically uncomfortable position of being the sole obstacle to the normal functioning of the government and for the resulting shutdown. History shows that such shutdowns go badly for the party causing the shutdown when voters go to the polls. Mr. McCarthy would be well advised to look at what happened to his Republican predecessors. The Freedom Caucus is the successor to the Tea Party. The Tea Party caused similar headaches for Speaker John Boehner (who resigned) and Speaker Paul Ryan (who retired at the end of his term). The Freedom Caucus makes the old Tea Party look like a bunch of pushovers. The current iteration is out for revenge and feels like they are on a mission from which they will not be deterred. They want to burn it all down and bring in their cult leader from his beach club to take over.

The context and atmosphere today is dangerous. The next one to three months will be a real political roller coaster. I have no idea as to how it will unfold or be resolved.

We will get there, but it is going to be ugly.

MAGA Republicans Are Anti-Military

Posted: September 5, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Since February of this year, Senator Tommy Tuberville (MAGA-Ala) has been holding up the confirmation process in the Senate for over 300 senior military officers. Originally, he claimed his “hold” on the nominations would last until the Department of Defense (DOD) changes its policy on women’s reproductive health care. Specifically, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that pushed laws concerning abortion to the states, he objects to the military paying for women to leave states where abortion is illegal or restricted to go to states where it is legal. Lately, he expanded his argument for freezing military promotions by saying that the military is “top heavy” and has too many generals and admirals.

His position may be a legitimate policy discussion to have, but the Senator from Alabama (or is he the third senator from Florida where he lives and his wife works?) does not want a policy discussion. He wants to single-handedly decide for himself what the military may or may not do. Both Republicans and Democrats have offered him a chance to bring an amendment to the floor to implement his desired changes. He refuses because he knows that his amendment will be defeated. There are Senate rules that can overcome his obstinate strangle-hold on our military, but they are laborious and time consuming requiring hours of work on the Senate floor for each nominee. A quick back of the envelope math problem shows that all other Senate work will be stalled for months while doing so. The Senator from Florida, oops, Alabama is also violating the spirit of cooperation and negotiation that gets things done in the Senate and is using the “hold” process in an unprecedented and harmful way. But, as we are finding, everything surrounding MAGA Republicans is “unprecedented” because they are there to break the system. In truth, this is one more example of their efforts to destroy our democracy and yet another anti-American stand.

The Senator has no personal military experience and is the same man that opined earlier this summer that white nationalists are not racists, they are “Americans.” In an answer to a question as to whether white nationalists should be allowed in the military, he said “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.” He went on to say that “I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican.” Months later he finally conceded that perhaps white nationalists were possibly racist. This who he is. As a U.S. Senator, he may also need to take a civics class as after his election he proclaimed, “Our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three branches of government — wasn’t set up that way. You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive.”

In todays Washington Post the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force wrote a piece about the tremendous harm Senator Tuberville is causing to the military organization, the officers, their families and those who they would lead in dangerous situations. They explain why the senator is wrong on the facts, the damage being done, and that he “is putting national security at risk.”

Among the officers that have been nominated but not confirmed are the Chief of Naval Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of Staff of the Army, three of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for advising our civilian leaders on areas of great responsibility. Their predecessors all were required to retire under U.S. law, so the positions are technically empty. Other officers are filling those spots on an “acting” basis, while still doing their primary jobs. More importantly, under the law, only Senate confirmed officers in those positions can carry out most of the duties of the offices. At the end of this month, General Mark Milley will, in accordance with the law, retire, thus leaving the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff empty. At least twenty-five two and three star officers have had their retirement put on hold until the end of the year or until the hold is released. This impacts their future livelihoods as many had civilian jobs ready to go after their retirement, bought homes in the new locations and endured significant disruption to their spouses and children as they have their own jobs and schools to figure out while in limbo.

Other top positions held hostage to assuage one man’s ego include the Commander, Pacific Air Forces, Commander, Northern Command, Commanding General Marine Forces Japan, Commander Indo-Pacific Command, and Commander U.S. Pacific Fleet. All are critical to our nation’s security and to counter Chinese mischief in the Far East and to keep our country protected.

To defer to Senator Tuberville’s desires is to seriously impact the readiness of our nation’s fighting forces by lowering morale, imperiling individuals’ health and undermining recruitment and retention. Not all military bases are able to handle all health issues. It is common practice to move personnel to receive proper healthcare as needed. Service members cannot choose where they are stationed or live. In this particular case, DOD complies with the Hyde Amendment which forbids the use of federal funds for abortions except to save a woman’s life or in the case of rape or incest. The DOD policy as it is to pay for transportation and to allow time off with pay. To the Senator, this is not acceptable.

There are further impacts on unit morale, and in retention among the ranks. For example, the current officers at the Colonel, Lt. Colonel, Captain or Commander levels, the battle hardened core of our day-to-day leadership will look at the way a politician is willing to use them as pawns in his political games. There will surely be a calculus in their minds to take their vast leadership and technical experience to the civilian sector if they feel they will be mistreated in uniform. The next generation of generals and admirals taking up leadership positions in the next decade may not be there as they vote with their feet to leave.

Senator Tuberville claims that the DOD leadership and the Biden Administration refuse to compromise with him. What he really means is that they will not give in to him, and he seems quite happy about that. I suppose he enjoys the attention. Given the total context of his six month and counting hold, what it really means is that he could care less about the health, readiness, leadership or strength of our American fighting forces. Meanwhile our adversaries in Russia, China and North Korea are loving it.