A band of House conservatives Friday voted down a GOP bill to avoid a government shutdown. The vote marked a significant — and embarrassing — defeat for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) …
A band of House conservatives Friday voted down a GOP bill to avoid a government shutdown. The vote marked a significant — and embarrassing — defeat for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) …
You seem to be misunderstanding the Hastert Rule. The rule does not say that the bill has to be passable without bipartisan support. It says that the Republican portion has to represent a majority of their party. I didn’t say it had to be so friendly to Democrats that most Republicans wouldn’t vote for it.
Also, McCarthy’s Speakership won’t survive turning his back on the Freedom Caucus anyways, unless the Democrats decide to back him. So there is no reason he has to follow that rule at all, if he’s going to cross the aisle. Hastert himself broke the rule a dozen times according to your link.
In this case there are 221 Republicans, they would only 111 to have a majority of the party on board. Sure a true bipartisan bill would be great, but they only really need 18 democrats willing to vote along with 200 Republicans or as many Democrats as 107 with only 111 Republicans. There is a lot of wiggle room if both sides have members willing to cross the aisle.
The real problem is finding enough Side A-ers that would be willing to have their names alongside them crazy Side B-ers.
I understand your point, and you are accurate about the majority, my apologies, however; (and I did look this up and couldn’t find an answer) how many of the bills passed by the house have been brought to the floor during the 118th congress were only brought forth with enough votes to pass them with GOP only votes? Are there any exceptions? Would they even bring one to the floor? It seems effectually this rule has been taken to an extreme. It appears today, McCarthy finally put on his big boy pants and is proposing a 45 day clean spending bill, but it’s just kicking the can down the road again.
Many of the items put in the majority of bills that could normally pass with bipartisan support are non-starters for Democrats. These insane “anti-woke” (whatever the hell that means), policies and support/proliferation of Russian propaganda resulting in our neglect of Ukraine aid are not in our nations best interest.
It’s amazing to me that under GOP control they will cut taxes, spend like lunatics, blow up the deficit, and then their constituents buy into the “fiscal conservatism” ploy, hook, line and sinker as soon as they are the opposition party. It’s baffling to me. No one, especially me, disagrees with the fact that our national deficit is way beyond egregious, but shutting down the government, defaulting on debt, crashing the economy, harming our military service members, and ruining our currency and credit rating is political terrorism.
No one is willing to take on our defense spending issues, and I’m not talking about supplying our troops, I’m talking about only having one company that provides parts or equipment with no competition, changing absurd prices, and the same goes with much of our investment into equipment development. I cant recall if it’s the JSF or the F22, but while they are publicly funded programs the US doesn’t even own the patent rights and can’t allow for competition for replacement parts etc. It’s insane, our defense budget is so out of wack it needs a complete overhaul.
While I was definitely a proponent of this, I will easily admit that I was a bit surprised that he actually did it. There are far too many “non-starters” for both parties right now, and it seems to be getting worse not better. Even identifying as a moderate or centrist is pretty well derided at every turn. It is a bit crazy, but the most heated arguments I get into are with people that I agree 80% or more with.
I am sure that the fiscally conservative Republicans are just as frustrated by this issue as you and I are. Over and over we hear the talk and then they come back with even more spending and less taxes, which is definitely the opposite of what is needed. The problem I see, is that I can’t even remember the last time I heard a Democrat in office pushing for a balanced budget. I am not sure what is worse, not mentioning it or talking about it then doing the opposite; probably the latter but clearly not everyone agrees.
The worst thing in all this, is that we have some how taken on all this excess debt during during a virtual golden age. It is a bit scary to think about what the future would look like if we had a long-term recession.
I fully agree that this is an issue, and with most of your related points, but I really don’t have any kind of a solution for it. The idea of creating or propping up an additional military company indefinitely frustrates me even when just thinking about it.
I keep teetering on an isolationist bent, where we would pull back from a lot of our military bases and make it clear that some old commitments are about to be updated, but I think it is pretty clear that some of our world adversaries would take that as a sign of weakness and start pushing their boundaries immediately.
I think it is time that some of our allies that rely on our military take on some of their own responsibility, but most of them are nowhere near ready. Also, I am pretty sure it will just create more world level chaos and likely lead to a new great war.
I think we likely have gotten ourselves into a bit of a pickle. Doubly so, since we are having such a cultural and political division issue at home. When its nearly impossible to handle simple issues, deeply complex issues like these are almost laughable, in the Joaquin Phoenix as Joker kind of way.
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