McConnell and budget betrayal
The topic of the budget is a perennial cause of frustration, anger, depression, and general angst for any conservative. The current one is most definitely no exception, and McConnell’s capitulation only adds to the depth of the feeling of betrayal. I’ve avoided the topic till now for the simple reason that I detest it and have no solution. But there’s only so long it can be avoided.
Mollie Hemingway says it well:
A large coalition of conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Partnership Institute, publicly opposed ramming through more Ukraine support during the lame-duck session before Republicans take over control of the House on Jan. 3, 2023. Strong pluralities and majorities of Republicans have told pollsters they want decreases, not increases, in foreign spending and global military involvement.
Many Republican voters support helping Ukraine fight Russia’s unjust invasion, but it is absolutely nowhere near their top issue, contrary to McConnell’s false claim…
Of the $1.7 trillion left-wing spending spree McConnell is working so hard to help Democrats pass, he said, unbelievably, that he was “pretty proud of the fact that with a Democratic president, Democratic House, and Democratic Senate, we were able to achieve through this omnibus spending bill essentially all of our priorities.” As an indication of how deeply sick and broken and unserious the Senate is, no one had even begun to read the lengthy bill, which was put forward just hours before votes began.
The American people voted for Republicans to take over control of the House of Representatives, and House Republicans had begged McConnell to push for a smaller, short-term bill to keep the government funded while also giving them a rare opportunity to weigh in on Biden’s policy goals. McConnell allies dismissed House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and other House members who tried to persuade Republican senators not to support Democrats’ spending frenzy.
It’s easy to blame McConnell, and although I think it’s correct to blame him, I think it’s a lot more than that. The budget is a juggernaut that has grown and grown and grown over the years and seems to have taken on a life of its own. It’s easy to say McConnell has to go, but someone powerful like that tends to become entrenched as well, and few are eager to take on the role. Like so many of our other fossilized “leaders,” McConnell is old – eighty years old, to be exact. And yet he shows no signs of being ready to retire.
To me, he’s a symptom rather than a cause. He’s a symptom of the older group of GOPe Republicans who still cling to power, particularly in the Senate, which is an institution that’s inherently slower to change than some others. If you look around the right side of the blogosphere, you can see plenty of commenters saying the equivalent of “That’s it; I’m done! I’m not voting for Republicans anymore!” – which of course merely makes things worse. The answer is voting for more conservatives. Although there are more of those in office than there used to be, unless and until they reach a critical mass in each body of Congress, we will get more of this sort of thing.
For what it’s worth, I also offer a link to this post from Scott Johnson at Powerline, where he attempts to explain the reasoning behind McConnell’s support for the bill. Here’s an excerpt:
On a comparative basis, Republicans believe this is actually one of the cleaner omnibus bills of its kind in the Senate. Because Democrats wanted it more than Republicans did, they had to give in on spending and policy riders. Most Republican senators feared that wouldn’t be the case in 60 days insofar as a sizable number of Republican representatives have never voted for any spending bill and one wouldn’t expect them to start now. Thus, Kevin McCarthy would have been forced to go to Democrats for votes and they would have demanded ransom in the form of higher domestic spending or more liberal policy riders.
That was the dynamic in 2015, even though Boehner had just been ejected over this kind of thing: Ryan had to give away the store to get Democrat votes. And the disarray over McCarthy’s election itself did nothing to assuage those concerns. Accordingly, even though counterintuitive with a new GOP House majority arriving, the thinking is that this bill is more to the right (or less bad) than a bill would have been in 60 days.
Who knows? I don’t even pretend to understand all the Byzantine machinations behind these things, but I know I don’t like them. Government is messy, nasty, and often corrupt – and seemingly getting more corrupt in this country by the day.
Word has come out that House Republicans are staging a protest of sorts:
More than a dozen House Republicans are demanding their Senate colleagues oppose a wasteful omnibus spending package that would fund the federal government for next year — or risk facing legislative gridlock once the party takes control of the House in January.
In a letter sent to Senate Republicans on Monday, 13 GOP representatives called on the upper chamber to reject the proposed omnibus spending bill, noting that the American people didn’t elect Republicans “to continue the status quo in Washington,” but to “put aside the absurd spending and empowerment of Biden bureaucrats.”
Thirteen doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me, unless they speak for the whole. The letter’s signatories are “Chip Roy of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Matt Gaetz and Byron Donalds of Florida, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia, and Andrew Clyde of Georgia, as well as Rep.-elects Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, and Eli Crane of Arizona.”
A GOP civil war will warm the cockles of Democrats’ hearts, of course.
[NOTE: Here’s an interesting article that blames the trend to huge unwieldy budgets on LBJ. I think that’s way too simplistic, although it’s true that he gave it a big boost. I think it’s been a long slow process of which he was certainly a part.]
“Thus, Kevin McCarthy would have been forced to go to Democrats for votes and they would have demanded ransom in the form of higher domestic spending or more liberal policy riders.”
We are supposed to think that only Democrats are Orwellian. But this quote encapsulates perfectly the idea that Surrender Is Winning Through Strength. Congratulations to the GOPe for joining them instead of beating them.
McConnell isn’t up for re-election until 2026, at which point he’ll be 84 I believe and perhaps OK with retiring anyway. So at this point he really has no skin in the game and no special reason to do anything for regular Republican voters. He can spend the next few years fully enjoying the trappings of power without any concern or accountability. In short, we’re stuck with him for now (as well as others of his reprehensible ilk in the Senate).
And I know, I know… we have to constantly make compromises and it’s damn near impossible to find decent candidates that check all the boxes and are still electable. Reality stinks sometimes.
And as I said in the other thread, McConnell declaring that giving loads of cash to Ukraine is the “number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans” is galactic scale gaslighting. He really is shameless.
Is there no one in office willing to fight for the great citizens of this nation? Greedy, selfish thieves.
This abomination will almost certainly pass, thanks to worthless members of GOPe and the odious “Cocaine Mitch”, whose comments about the funding of the Kievan “Welfare Queen” (the apt description from Candace Owens) are idiotic and repulsive. It is now being reported that Z, who has just landed and is soon “to address Congress”, will be asking for even more than appears in this monstrosity of a bill filled with utter nonsense and pork aplenty, written by “K Street” lobbyists and lawyers, and read, in its grotesque entirety, by no-one who will be voting on it. There are no words for such a travesty.
Practically every time McConnell opens his mouth, the party shrinks. I think 2016 was the zenith of GOP for years to come. This morning “It’s important for the Republican Party and the country that he runs again.” speaking of Romney.
Here’s the best I can think of, based on another of today’s headlines:
We know we can’t really beat McCarthy for Speaker, but we can put him in a vice and squeeze concessions from him. He’s already shown that is true, but siding with us, at least on paper.
So, what we do is make demand #1 being we get to name chairman of Ways and Means, and enough good people to use it. Once we have that, we tell Mitch we’ll get HIS tax returns, and release them. Same for any others who hate us.
At a minimum, it would give pleasure to us wingnuts. And may even do some good.
‘…you can see plenty of commenters saying the equivalent of “That’s it; I’m done! I’m not voting for Republicans anymore!” – which of course merely makes things worse. The answer is voting for more conservatives.’
and
“A GOP civil war will warm the cockles of Democrats’ hearts, of course.”
________
The trouble with that is that it ensures it will never change, unless we decide to vote ONLY for solid conservatives, and toss out the worthless ones. I noticed when I was young, that the Democrat Left was willing to take a loss, to discipline their politicians.
I mean, Humphrey was a pure liberal; in 1960 he was considered, by conservatives, as the worst in the Dem’s primaries. But he didn’t toe the line sufficiently, so he had to go. The result: their party does their bidding. We will never get there until we are willing to vote against a mere “lesser of two weevils”.
Just because I dropped my GOP registration about 10 years ago doesn’t mean I will never vote GOP. In fact, I almost exclusively vote a straight GOP ticket.
None of that diminishes my extreme anger at the GOP and the party leadership. And if it takes a civil war in the GOP to clean out all those rats, so be it. We can’t continue the path we’re on just because it may help the Dems….they already are in such a position of power not much is going to harm them anyway at present.
Is Anna Paulina Luna as attractive as her name sounds? Judge for yourself. Hopefully she has many years ahead of her. “Presidente Anna Paulina Luna” has a nice ring to it.
Meanwhile, no matter how unseemly, rumor has it that Zelenskyy might make a pitch to boost his already enormous allotment in the pending budget.
The ones willing to fight were the ones who were blocked by mcconnells games goimg back to 2010 and 2012 and 2014 cycles i dont have to elaborate do i
What do you expect McConnell to do? Hold his breath until he turns blue? He doesn’t have the votes.
It’s like Ted Cruz’s government shutdown in 2013 over Obamacare. It was a completely pointless gesture. There was absolutely no way that Obamacare was going to be repealed or even siginicantly modified the year after Obama was reelected. None.
Same here. With a Democrat in the WH and a Democrat controlled Senate, there is no chance of getting a budget for 2023 that any of us would see as anything other than a larded up travesty. None whatsoever.
So, do you take whatever wins you can or make a meaningless gesture that probably results in a worse budget, as it did in 2015?
This omnibus is just the first consequence of November being such a debacle. It won’t be the last.
(Another point – one result of nominating a bunch of Trump bozos who lost in November is that it swings the balance of power towards the GOPe wing of the party.)
A couple of reforms I’ll never see
No omnibus bills, one bill, one department, maybe on a three year cycle. That means each department gets scrutiny and a President can police them more carefully.
Shorten Congressional time in Washington. Right now it’s a full time job there and has developed its own language and culture that is not the same as the rest of the country, in fact, it’s quite at odds with much of American life. I suggest a three month annual session, July, December, and January, to focus their attention.
Bauxite:
Resistance by McConnell might be futile if he ever tried it, but people are extremely upset at the prematurity of the cave-in. The point is that sometimes gestures are needed, not giving up before the fight occurs and then acting like it’s a victory.
And it makes no sense to say that nominating Trump supporters means the shift is to the GOPe in the GOP. Not nominating strong conservatives mean that the power stays with the GOPe; nominating some who win means that it shifts a bit although not enough.
Bauxite. The election of 2022 was stolen too. Scroll down to see disappearing votes. Something Stinks in Georgia
Mcconell puts us in a choke hold, cui bono its not us certainly
Obamacare 2013 no border wall a host of manifestly terrible appointees rubber stamped
Part of the problem is the McCarthy shortfall in votes because Republicans did not flip enough seats in 2022. Every slim majority is a cause of constant peril, as we see for his Speaker status, a small handful of dissenters can cause any House vote to go cattawampus.
One argument I have heard about the outcome of this Senate vote on the Omnibus is that they think as bad a deal as this one is, deferring the budget vote to 2023 is a bigger risk of Republicans failing to get any concessions on those later votes.
Nancy Pelosi could hold together a slim majority of her caucus in the House, but Republicans are more inclined to infighting rather than unifying to turn back the Progressives.
neo – The problem is not that conservative candidates were nominated. The problem is that so many of the conservative candidates who were nominated were so terrible. So the GOPe wing wins, sometimes even in blue states. The conservative wing nominates duds who lose, in purple and even in red states. That’s bound to strengthen the GOPe wing and weaken the conservative wing.
On prematurity – McConnell (and others) seem to believe this is the best deal that Republicans are going to get. There is certainly reason to believe that view is correct, especially in view of 2015 and the mess that McCarthy has on his hands. I’m sorry, I’m not really into futile gestures.
The concerned conservative™ continues to astound with his insight: this time, after carrying McTurtle’s water; that “Trump bozos” are to be blamed for the Senate staying in Democrat control.
JD Vance, is he one of your clowns, concerned conservative™?
And why did McTurtle “shiv” conservatives in Arizona and Alaska? Please ‘splain it.
McConnell has no interest in the priorities of Republican voters. Or in satisfactory public policy. He has no redeeming features.
Bauxite:
In most cases the choice was between Trump supporters – some of whom were pretty good – and lackluster GOPe candidates. Not a whole lot of non-Trump supporting-conservative candidates who had any oomph presented themselves.
And I wonder whether you think the election in Arizona was on the up-and-up. I don’t.
Ed:
Agreed. But people don’t like to hear that sort of thing, plus they certainly don’t like to be lied to and told the bill is a big victory.
Some optimism for the winter solstice.
Slowly the mix of the Senate is changing. This year, Eric Schmitt will replace the rino Roy Blunt in Missouri and JD Vance replace the rino Rob Portman in Ohio. Schmitt is a fighter with a lot in common with Missouri’s other Senator Josh Hawley. I have high hopes for JD Vance but we will have to wait and see.
Taking the House means we dodged a bullet for at least two years: no packing the supreme court, no admitting Puerto Rico and Washington DC as states, no takeover of elections by the Feds.
The Democrats stole the statewide offices in Arizona but Republicans still hold the legislature.
There is good news if you look for it.
A American Thinker article writes the DOJ ( $2.63 B for coming year) a $212.1M boosters to hunt down Jan 6 protesters
At some points t feeding tens of thousands they will open the Gulag
neo – This gets back to what we’ve noted previously. The alternative to Don Bolduc was actually Sununu, who didn’t run. The alternative to Oz was Pat Toomey, who didn’t run. The alternative to Blake Masters was Doug Ducey, who chose not to run for the Senate. I dont think any of those three would completely satisfy folks around here, but all three likely would have won and I guarantee that the GOP would have been able to drive a much harder budget deal with 52 Senators than they have with 50, about to be 49. Efforts to recruit those three would have been much more likely to succeed without the prospect of a MAGA primary challenger for each.
Arizona looks fishy to me, but it is terribly difficult to tell for sure from media reports. I apply a general rule to avoid assuming malice when incompetence is a sufficient explanation. Show me evidence that 17k Lake voters were disenfranchised, and I’ll agree that the election was stolen. (Masters lost by 130k.) Its also relevant that other Republicans won statewide in AZ. It wouldn’t have taken too many “McCain Republicans” to put Lake over the top regardless of whatever happened in Maricopa County.
Also, FWIW, I really like JD Vance and I’m looking forward to seeing how he does in office. I think his perspective is important to the future of the party.
om, does Vance become GOPe because the concerned conservativeTM likes him? 🙂
I have written to both my senators, Tillis and Burr, asking them to vote for a continuing resolution to, say March 31, 2023, to give the incoming House majority a shot a reducing some of this insane spending. I don’t think they will listen.
But on the positive side, I think the Overton window for Republican candidates, and winning Republican candidates, is slowly shifting right. McCarthy must be the Speaker, because the alternative is a Democrat, and that’s an awful idea. McCarthy can be pressured. I think younger Republicans, younger than McConnell and Romney, anyhow, see the conservative pressure coming and will have to at least compromise with it. For this shift in the R Overton window we can thank Trump, whatever happens in 2024.
How much more obvious a steal did they have to pull off in arizona for you lights.
Vance sort makes up for the betrayal lugar did to murdock 10 years ago. What candidate did better than christine in the next dozen years
concerned conservative™ forgets that the Great Orange Whale endorsed JD Vance IIRC.
om – I sure didn’t forget. Perhaps my OMB isn’t what you think it is.
concerned conservative™:
It just seems to crop up in every thread that is political. So JD Vance wasn’t, but could become, a Trump-endorsed Bozo?
it’s rather striking how sununu was always virtue signaling, is it a genetic thing, that one has to nick pick some of our top stars, meaning my governor, he is no where near what his father was, i guess he was sui generis,
as for ducey, he was a respectful cigar store indian who didn’t make any waves the first time they stole the state in 2000, so naturally the dems went bigger in their ambitions, and took everything but the treasurer position,
similarly with toomey always glad handing with manchin, willing to trade our inalienable rights, in retrospect santorum was the best of a bad lot, specter was probably the worst, now that the dems can put caligulas golem (crossed metaphor) in the seat, who knows what disasters will eventuate,
Bauxite:
As I’ve written before, Sununu would have won – but he didn’t choose to run, for whatever reason, and the race was left to an exceedingly lackluster GOPe type and Bolduc. Neither could have won, IMHO, so it almost didn’t matter who the nominee was between the two of them.
I think Sununu just didn’t fancy being a senator.
Bauxite:
You say “other Republicans won statewide” in Arizona. I don’t know what you’re referring to. The only other statewide election besides for governor was the Senate race, and Masters lost, as you know. The House races are not statewide. The Secretary of State race is, and it was also won by a Democrat.
To win, Lake needed a good showing in Maricopa. The machine failures all occurred in Maricopa, and in the reddest parts of Maricopa at that.
om – Vance won. He was the only Trump Senate endorsee in a contested primary to do so. Unlike all of Trump’s other primary endorsees, Vance has a political philosophy that pre-dated Trump and, in fact more or less anticipated the political philosophy that Trump rode to the WH. Vance doesn’t have Trump’s baggage or bad bahavior problems.
So, he’s really different in kind compared to Walker, Oz, Masters, Bolduc, etc.
A sliding scale, a redefinition, but he can still fall into Trump clowndom. Vance wrote a book Hillbilly Elegy and has no record in politics IIRC. Also IIRC many conservatives felt that the other R. candidate was preferable. But time will tell. No doubt that had Vance not won your tune may have been different, counterfactuals.
“An omnibus bill is a proposed law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics.”
Therein lies part of the problem. The House controls the Federal Government’s purse strings. That’s leverage and the failure to use it is criminal negligence.
House Repubicans should be offering specific narrowly focused bills. Vote down all proposed bills that lump together unrelated areas. Fund the dem’s social programs in seperate bills, which will block the dems propagandizing in those areas. Severely cut back the Deep State funding. Cut the military budget. Cut the funding of the Education dept. etc, etc.
When the dems scream, respond calmly with common sense and if they block the seperate, greatly reduced FBI bill… so what. So too with the CIA, DOJ, etc. bills.
Take the heat and stay the course.
@bauxite:
You say “om – Vance won. He was the only Trump Senate endorsee in a contested primary to do so. ”
Ted Budd in NC will dispute that.
Eeyore:
“Facts are difficult things.” J Adams.
Another Trump-endorsed nonclown?
Thanks.
National Review post disputing Hemingway’s claims.
Without a complete video and transcript – for some source I trust and NR is not longer a default – this is dueling interpretations.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-mitch-mcconnell-actually-thinks-about-the-omnibus-bill/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
The discussion may be moot at this point anyway.
And the writer doesn’t address the NR post directly but seems to me to undercut the argument of “we got a good deal, and better than if we had to do it next year.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/12/21/omnibus-stalls-title-42-amendment-causes-major-problems-short-term-funding-bill-discussed/
Neo has no solution.
But we do. Just vote MarxiCrat. Ignore the fake oppo party and ignore Neo’s thoughtful but failed “solutions.” Let it all..break…down.
I’ll be more than rough. But in the the end, it will work because nothing else has.
The USA had a good run. Time to stop resurrecting the eternal corruption that sustains this horror show. Just stop.
The same people who screamed bloody murder when the democrats did NOT “betray their party” by voting for Trump’s budget now scream bloody murder when Republicans vote for Biden’s budget.
Either both are bad, or neither is bad, politically speaking.
While we may disagree on specific line items in the budget (and nobody in congress or elsewhere has read more than a few of them, for decades now, it’s way too much, in itself a far bigger problem than whether it gets approved or not), the principle remains.
Either both are bad, or neither is bad, politically speaking.
Now lets talk policy. Trump’s budgets involved an excess of public sector borrowing. This business McConnell’s agreed to (pre-empting the incoming House Republican caucus) incorporates a tsunami of public sector borrowing.
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