Republican Representative Nancy Mace began her Tuesday morning post debt ceiling “deal” bemoaning the fact that Republicans had been “outsmarted” by President Biden, whom she denounced as someone who couldn’t find his own pants.
So following Mace’s logic, Republicans were trounced by a man who can’t find his own pants… and this says what about Republicans?
“Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants. I’m voting NO on the debt ceiling debacle because playing the DC game isn’t worth selling out our kids and grandkids,” the South Carolina Republican wrote on Twitter.
This theme by Republicans has been ongoing since the “deal” was announced. On Memorial Day, the loudest voices from the Know-Nothing Caucus (Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co) etc) were squealing about this “deal” — but didn’t have the courage to do what they said they would do when they finally cast votes for Kevin McCarthy to be their Speaker.
The fact of the matter is there should not have been the need for this “deal” because the debt ceiling is not part of the budget negotiation process. But for a decade plus, Republicans have been ruining holidays and investment portfolios with threats to drive the car off the cliff if they can’t get “reductions” in spending — but only when there is a Democratic President.
These are not serious people, and the reductions are never from their sacred cows like defense spending, a place of infinite fraud, waste and abuse. The “cuts” always have to come from the poor and funding to the IRS so their elite, wealthy funders won’t get audited while the rest of us get audited over nothing just because.
But at any rate, President Biden carefully separated the two issues and then put on a show of negotiating with McCarthy, who was facing imminent disaster on his watch if he actually caused a default over his need to look like an “alpha.”
The facts of the deal, as Jason Easley detailed on The Daily, show that Biden protected his spending initiatives that fund his agenda. Biden got the framework that he wanted and no cuts or broad work requirements in his deal with Kevin McCarthy. The debt limit will be increased for the next two years, taking out of the Republicans’ hands the ability to weaponize it over an election year. They had started this “negotiation” only offering to raise it for months.
He pointed out, “The work requirement that Biden agreed to covers about 7% of SNAP recipients. McCarthy didn’t get anything remotely close to what the House passed in their debt limit legislation, and Republicans gave away their power to take future hostages for the rest of the likely time that they are in the House majority.
The deal that McCarthy struck with Biden is a failure. Republicans picked the debt limit fight because they wanted massive cuts to federal spending, especially social safety net programs. Instead, they ended up agreeing to an expansion of SNAP.”
President Biden was asked before his Marine One departure about the deal and he responded, “One of the things that I hear some of you guys saying is, ‘Why doesn’t Biden say what a good deal it is?’ Why would Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote? You think that’s going to help me get it passed? No. That’s why you guys don’t bargain very well.”
Biden was asked who got the better deal, which he refused to answer saying instead, “(D)o you think it’s going to help me get it passed? Come on.”
Yes, that man who protected his legislative victories and kept Republicans from getting what they stated were their goals of promises repealing much of the Inflation Reduction Act, capping non-defense spending at 2022 levels for a decade, blocking Biden’s student debt relief and killing the $80 billion of IRS funding so it can do its job to actually audit wealthy people who evade paying their fair share, supposedly can’t find his pants, but he knows enough to put on a public face of not bragging about he owned McCarthy in order to allow the Speaker to sell this absurd nothingburger to his caucus of angry radicals.
It never seems to occur to Republicans to ask themselves, if President Joe Biden is really the old fool they say he is, how come he keeps beating them?
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