How Serious Are the Republicans about Governing? Not at All

It took 15 votes for Republicans to select a Speaker of the House, in this case, Representative Kevin McCarthy of the California 20th Congressional District.

The last time it took this many votes was in the late 1850s. The last time it took more than one vote to select a House Speaker was 1923.

Typically, the majority party selecting its speakers and committee heads is the easy part.

But House Republicans had a difficult time even with this.

To gain the Speaker’s gavel, Kevin McCarthy turned himself into a SPINO—Speaker in Name Only—because he gave away much of the Speaker’s power to get the office he craved so badly.

For example, it takes only one member of Congress to bring a vote to recall the Speaker to the floor.

In this context, the people running the show are what former Republican House Speaker John Boehner called the Crazy Caucus, though they go by the Freedom Caucus. These are the same people who were too extreme for the 53rd House Speaker to work with and, most relevant here, who caused the credit rating of the United States government to drop for the first and (so far) only time in its history.

Recently, the United States hit its debt ceiling, and the only reason we are not seeing disastrous consequences is because Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was able to pull some tricks to keep it a soft limit.

Keep in mind that raising the debt ceiling used to be routine, like reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act.

If the United States government defaults on its debts, the results will be catastrophic.

Remember how the stock market was crashing and burning in March and April 2020? How the Dow lost hundreds and sometimes thousands of points a day?

Well, imagine the Dow losing thousands of points per day. More in the neighborhood of 10 percent of its value on a given day.

Brief Explanation of the Debt Ceiling

Republicans have compared the debt ceiling to a credit card and the card is maxed out.

But the debt ceiling is more like the charges already accrued on the credit card, even if the card is maxed out.

You already agreed to pay for those charges.

Put it another way, raising the debt ceiling ensures that the payments the United States government agreed to are honored.

Using the credit card analogy, Republicans are attempting not to pay for the charges already on the credit card.

It is quite rich for these same people to suddenly be concerned about fiscal responsibility considering that Trump caused the deficit to explode by quite a large margin thanks in large part to unfunded and poorly thought out tax cuts passed in 2017.

All raising the debt ceiling does is allow the United States government to raise its borrowing power to cover its existing obligations.

The Point

There is room to have a discussion about how the United States federal government should manage its money and what spending priorities should be.

For example, I do worry about how Social Security as a system will remain solvent for my generation (I am in my late twenties). I don’t think it will: the population is getting older, and we don’t have enough immigration or local births to make up the difference.

I also think that because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s bellicose actions, it would be wise to increase military spending conditionally (conditioned on keeping a close eye to prevent waste, fraud, and corruption). We are in a new cold war after all.

Outside of military spending, I would argue the next top priority for spending must be infrastructure. This not only means roads and highways, but also making sure everyone has reliable internet access and clean drinking water.

I would also argue that America’s K-12 school system is in desperate need of investment and reform.

The sustainability of the national debt is a legitimate concern, especially for future borrowing purposes.

There are many legitimate discussions over how the taxpayers’ money should be spent. In a legislative session, the hard part is figuring out how and where to spend money, and budget fights at all levels of government are among the nastiest for a reason.

But playing chicken with the country’s fundamental financial stability and credit rating is irresponsible and wrong.

The Republican party as it exists today is fundamentally unserious about doing the work of governing.

The embarrassing start and games of chicken the House Republicans are playing only make that clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.

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