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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   29325 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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In the wake of the House of Representatives passing a Continuing Resolution maintaining current funding levels a group of Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have filed a motion to vacate against Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). This is a motion that, if passed, would remove McCarthy as Chair of the House of Representatives after only nine months on the job. The reporting I'm seeing on Twitter says Democrats are united in supporting the motion, which means only three Republicans would need to join Gaetz for the motion to pass. I believe this would also be the first time in US history the House will have removed a Speaker with a motion to vacate.

What happens after that is anyone's guess. In a literal sense we move back to where we were this January and do another election for Speaker. Presumably Democrats are going to nominate and vote for Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as they did then. It's not clear who on the Republican side would be a replacement for McCarthy. He still enjoys the support of a strong majority of Republicans, but the Republican majority is so small he needs basically everyone. His getting elected Speaker again would almost certainly need someone who voted to vacate to vote for him to Speaker. I'm skeptical there are promises McCarthy could make to the Republicans voting to oust him that could convince them to support him again. On the other hand I'm not aware of any consensus about who Republicans could be convinced to support except McCarthy. By far the funniest outcome, I think, would be the Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy abstaining in the Speaker vote, letting the Democrats elect Jeffries Speaker.

Vote on the motion is supposed to be held this morning though the House is currently debating other bills. You can watch the House Session on C-SPAN. Will update this post as the news develops.

ETA:

By a vote of 216-210-0 Kevin McCarthy becomes the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives removed by a motion to vacate.

Vote breakdown by party (based on the vote on the motion to table, C-SPAN roll call doesn't break down by party):

AyesNaysNV
Republicans82103
Democrats20804

As expected McCarthy retains the support of the vast majority of his own Conference. I think the rule is the House can't do business without a Speaker so I imagine we go directly into elections for Speaker of the House now. Given the multiple days it took to elect McCarthy before I am not confident about any particular path forward from here.

ETA2:

Am hearing online that the Speaker pro tempore (selected by McCarthy when he became Speaker) may be able to function as Speaker indefinitely. They may not have to have an election for Speaker on any particular time table.

So what's the reason that the US doesn't do the normal thing where you have an internal party vote to choose your candidate, and then everyone is bound to support the party's choice in the floor vote or they get expelled?

Strictly speaking there's nothing stopping them. If the House Republican Conference wanted to hold an internal vote for a candidate for Speaker and then expel from their conference any Member who voted against that candidate they could. The problem depends a bit on what you mean by "expelled". If you just mean expelled from their internal party in the House then it doesn't really help their candidate get any closer to Speaker and someone they've expelled is unlikely to work with them in the future. If you mean expelled from the House entirely it takes a two thirds vote of the House (so it can't be done purely internally) and the House Republican majority is so small they would be the minority party if they voted to expel all the people who voted to oust McCarthy.

I guess Gaetz is gambling that (a) if McCarthy is re-elected then he gets a lot of TV time and can grandstand again, which is his favorite activity (it’s unclear what the goal is in this case, he’s too unlikeable to be president and he doesn’t really seem like someone Trump would hire for a good cabinet job) and (b) if abstentions lead to the Dems/Jeffries winning, he won’t face any personal blowback. Gaetz is personally very shady even by Florida politician standards, but I don’t think he intends to spend much more of his career in Washington.

Gaetz is personally very shady even by Florida politician standards

Can you explain, please? Gaetz was never charged in that sex trafficking probe a couple of years ago, and indeed the Justice Department’s main informant was himself sentenced to 11 years in prison for those crimes alleged against Gaetz.

Is that what makes him shady—being accused of a crime and then subsequently cleared of it? Or that the House Ethics Committee is taking another bite at the same apple following his opposition to the House leadership?

Seems more like the uniparty wants people to believe he’s a shady character. We’ll see how the evidence shakes out, rather than innuendo.

Can you explain, please? Gaetz was never charged in that sex trafficking probe a couple of years ago, and indeed the Justice Department’s main informant was himself sentenced to 11 years in prison for those crimes alleged against Gaetz.

Menendez got away with a lot of stuff for a very long time too, the fact that Gaetz hasn’t been charged doesn’t mean a lot. Someone more conspiratorial might say that it’s always better for the ‘deep state’ to have things on those in positions of nominal power than it is for them to immediately push them out of office.

In any case, there are details around the case, specifically the Bahamas (?) trip in question, that suggest to me that it’s very unlikely Gaetz wasn’t involved. The case stalled, allegedly, because two witnesses (almost certainly young escorts) were deemed non credible. This is common in high profile prostitution cases and was part of the reason Epstein got away for so long, so it doesn’t particularly surprise me.

I mean real question- assuming the most lurid details aren’t true, why do we care that much that some escorts he took on vacation happened to be 17 instead of 18? I doubt very much he called the escort agency and asked ‘you got any minors?’, and while it’s reasonable to expect your politicians not to take escorts on vacation and reasonable to go after escort agencies for employing underaged women, it doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly big deal that he(probably unknowingly) got one who was underaged.

I would not let my daughter spend time with Gaetz if I had one, but he’s no Roy Moore. My assumption is that most politicians have mistresses or escorts and if he gets one who lied about her age, it isn’t pedophilia here.

… but he’s no Roy Moore.

This is definitely a tangent, but I haven’t kept up with political scandals. What do you mean? My recollection is that Moore was accused of some things that were really serious and some things that were merely weird; then, when some of the weird accusations were proved, people spoke as if the grave ones were too, mostly without evidence. But I am fully prepared to have missed some developments in the mean time.

While some of the really serious accusations against Roy Moore were never proven, he did admit to having a series of mistresses he knew to be underaged when he was in his thirties.

I agree, I’m just saying that it’s still somewhat shady. Like if I found out my boss went on vacations with 17/18 year old escorts I’d consider it “pretty shady” even if not illegal. Maybe sleazy would have been a better term, in hindsight.

Absolutely. It’s shady, it doesn’t make me like him, but it isn’t child sex trafficking.

If somehow the Democrats ended up in control of the house as a result of this (shutting down among other thing ers the impeachment process) Gaetz would be DOA.

(it’s unclear what the goal is in this case, he’s too unlikeable to be president and he doesn’t really seem like someone Trump would hire for a good cabinet job

I know it shouldn't be my first go-to explanation for a Congressman, but I think it's actually possible that he actually thinks it's bad that our massive deficits come from a budget process that doesn't even follow the basics of a budget process. Now, I'm sure expressing that with such vigor and grandstanding about it has additional motives tied to it, but if I were in his seat and thought the status quo was somewhere in the ballpark of absolutely, ridiculously, beyond-any-reasonable argument fucking preposterous, I would conduct myself as he currently is.

By all means, speculate about Gaetz's ulterior motives, I agree that he seems like a slimy character, but just as a data point, there's at least one person watching him and saying, "yeah, fuck these guys" when he stands up and grandstands.

that our massive deficits come from a budget process that doesn't even follow the basics of a budget process.

Drafting a budget that reflects the terms of the debt ceiling deal and taking it through the legislative process would be following a budget process. This whole row kicked off because Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus didn't want to do that - it isn't clear from the press coverage how much of the issue is that they want even larger cuts than the ones Biden and McCarthy negotiated, and how much is that they want to use the budget process as a lever to change policy on other issues (like the Trump prosecutions and immigration enforcement) rather than to pass a budget that reflects their spending priorities. But in the FY 2024 budget cycle, the reason why the budget isn't the result of a budget process is because the Freedom Caucus don't want it to be.

that's not what was agreed to by McCarthy to win his speakership; he agreed to abandon CRs and Omnibus bills and have appropriations go through the normal process

not "a budget process," but the normal process described in the 1974? law which sets out how budgets will be passed

to win the speakership, McCarthy agreed to move 12 appropriations bills individually which would go through the "normal process" to pass bills

he agreed to give members 72 hours to read bills, he agreed to not put any bill which spends more than $100m to go on the suspension agenda which prohibits open amendment

there is a longer list of procedural changes which the caucus was able to extract out of McCarthy in order for him to get speakership, all of which reduce the power of the speaker and leadership

instead of doing that, McCarthy attempted to slam through a continuing resolution for 45 days, threw all of these procedure changes he promised out the window, had the CR back up to another holiday which would likely result in another omnibus bill and crunch down on his caucus essentially blackmailing them with shutdown

that failed, so he threw some opposition people from his caucus on the group who crafted the CR and they put in some funding they had whined about and attempted to pass it; that failed, so he joined Democrats in passing the CR over the objections of his own caucus after violating most of the promises he made to get speakership

as usual, press coverage is garbage with an agenda and you shouldn't rely on it for information about pretty much anything

think it's actually possible that he actually thinks it's bad that our massive deficits come from a budget process that doesn't even follow the basics of a budget process.

Considering he was enthusiastically in favor a tax cut (without attendant spending cuts) that increased the deficit a few years ago, I think we can safely dismiss the possibility that Gaetz is a principled deficit hawk.

I think the funniest result would be the Republicans removing McCarthy and then voting him back in.

Gaetz came so close to saying, "boo all you want, I've seen what you cheer" and I'm disappointed that he didn't.

Wait, so how’d McCarthy manage to cock up the support of his own team?

I wasn’t really clear on why choosing a speaker was so hard in the first place, to be honest.

I wasn’t really clear on why choosing a speaker was so hard in the first place, to be honest.

Because the Republican majority is thin, and contains both people who are almost Democrats, full on Tea Partiers, and Full on MAGAs. Given his tiny majority and discordant caucus McCarthy has been possibly the most effective speaker of the last 25 years, adjusting for degree of difficulty. This is Gaetz taking home the ball because he only won 11-10 instead of 11-0 and saying he was fouled every play.

  • Nancy Pelosi
  • Paul Ryan
  • John Boehner
  • Dennis Hastert
  • Newt Gingrich

I'm struggling to find a single person who was less effective than McCarthy. The people above created and continued the dictator speaker era. In order to win the speakership, McCarthy conceded the speaker dictator era (perhaps ending it going forward) by making promises he didn't intend on keeping, strung his caucus along for 7 months as he avoided keeping those promises, and then lost his speakership the first time he tried to use his power to lean on his caucus.

I'm struggling to figure out how anyone has a positive view of Kevin McCarthy other than as the Ticketmaster of politics whereby your forgettable GOP congressmen can have McCarthy take the heat for unpopular programs instead of forcing an indiv vote which could be embarrassing for them, e.g., on Ukraine war funding.

McCarthy and the rest of GOP leadership made a clear decision during the last election cycle that they wanted a slight majority or minority which they could control which included them specifically and purposefully gimping their own party candidates across the country. GOP leadership got what they want except ~10-20 GOP Congressmen who made it through the gimp process weren't willing to go along with it. Giving McCarthy a pass for a situation he helped create is silly and even if he didn't help create it, he was a laughably ineffective speaker who lasted 7 months and lost as soon as he leaned on his speakership to bludgeon the people he lied to to support him.

His last dumb political move was thinking Democrats were going to save him because he kowtowed to their spending wants to avoid shutdown, hitting the cooperate button as Democrats continue to slam defect, which is a fitting microcosm of his entire political career.

His last dumb political move was thinking Democrats were going to save him because he kowtowed to their spending wants to avoid shutdown, hitting the cooperate button as Democrats continue to slam defect, which is a fitting microcosm of his entire political career.

McCarthy did not ask Democrats to save him and was aware in advance they almost certainly would not. McCarthy wanted to avoid a shutdown so he worked with Democrats to do that. McCarthy's issues are representative of the split within the GOP and nothing to do with Democrats hitting defect.

Whether you count the Freedom Caucus as hitting defect against the GOP by forcing outsized limitations (based upon how many of them there are) upon McCarthy to get him chosen, or McCarthy hitting defect against them because he did not go along with the agreements he made, none of it has anything to do with Democrats.

rumor was this was a floated possibility and discussion by McCarthy and Dem leadership in negotiation for the CR; you don't have privy information to closed-door negotiations and I'm relying on rumor, but you don't actually know what you're asserting

and even if that didn't happen; so your claim is that McCarthy and Democrats hitting cooperate button has something to do with Democrats, but then the foreseeable and threatened next vote on the floor to vacate McCarthy which Democrats refused to do anything about despite it being caused exactly by the previous vote to cooperate has nothing to do with Democrats because the vacate vote is caused by McCarthy's failure to keep his promises to his caucus? in a legislature with two major factions?

okay, well, we'll just have to disagree about that

but then the foreseeable and threatened next vote on the floor to vacate McCarthy which Democrats refused to do anything about despite it being caused exactly by the previous vote to cooperate has nothing to do with Democrats because the vacate vote is caused by McCarthy's failure to keep his promises to his caucus? in a legislature with two major factions?

You misunderstand. The Democrat's propping up McCarthy would have doomed him. He knew that, he said he would win with support from his own side or not at all. Having to be propped up by your opposition is political suicide when your whole job is wrangling your party. You don't get into his position without being a decent politician and this is basic politics. I think he probably could have bargained with Democrat's to not vote for vacating in exchange for the CR bill. But his public comments thereafter indicated that he did not, and that he understood why that would have been a bad idea. Some quotes from McCarthy

“They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything,”

“Hakeem Jeffries and I have a good relationship,” McCarthy said. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for me. I understand where the Democrats are. I’m not asking for any special deal or anything else.”

and from Gaetz which illustrates why getting support from Democrats would have doomed McCarthy either way:

“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen. Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House, or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats. And I’m at peace with either result, because the American people deserve to know who governs them,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

I am going off what was said, plus what an understanding of politics tells me was his best option, and both of those align. If you want to put rumor over that, you certainly can.

You misunderstand. The Democrat's propping up McCarthy would have doomed him

So like passing Ukraine funding bill and the CR? edit: Both of which the first did not have majority of the majority support and McCarthy relied on Democrat support to get both things passed. And you're right, it did doom him. This is him hitting "cooperate" button which lead to the vacate vote and Democrats not cooperating.

You misunderstand me. I do not think McCarthy is bad at politics; I think McCarthy is very good at politics. I think he would have been a more effective speaker than any GOP Speaker since Gingrich if only his dumb behavior and speakership designs didn't lead him to push campaigns and money in ways which lead to a tiny majority in the House. McCarthy is an incredibly effective fundraiser and he used that skill to shape the caucus in a way to get him speakership. Unfortunately for him and the NRRC, their games they played to gimp candidates they didn't like in winnable races while pushing stooges in races which were a stretch like Maine 1, not to mention patently idiotic behavior by the GOP in the months leading up to the 2022 election caused by the Democrat unpopularity, drove down their own voter motivation so they only barely won a slight majority despite having better metrics to do far better than that than any environment in a decade.

Some quotes from McCarthy

I'll be honest. I do not believe a single thing which comes out of McCarthy's mouth because he has a long history of these sorts of comments about backdoor negotiations which were lies.

If you want to put rumor over that, you certainly can.

well, you have a quote from McCarthy which you accept as true (I don't) and one from Matt Gaetz which could support both of our opinions

so yeah, I'll take my rumor over what comes out of McCarthy's mouth about backdoor dealings

so yeah, I'll take my rumor over what comes out of McCarthy's mouth about backdoor dealings

The issue is the rumor would require McCarthy to be a bad politician. Believe me, there is no-one who trusts politicians words less than me (I've worked with a lot of them,). But the good ones don't lie without cause. Here his words support what his best course of action was, so probably he wasn't lying, if we think he was a good politician. Indeed I think he is a good enough politician that he could have got concessions from the Democrats had he wanted, which is another piece of evidence (but not proof) that he was probably pursuing his best and only real option.

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McCarthy and the rest of GOP leadership made a clear decision during the last election cycle that they wanted a slight majority or minority which they could control which included them specifically and purposefully gimping their own party candidates across the country.

This is silly. A small majority is much harder to control than a big one. With a small majority your dozen most strong-headed members have a lot of leverage (as we've just seen), while with a big majority you can afford a few defections and it's no big deal. Plus the party leadership gets the credit and authority of having delivered a big majority.

except when you think you're going to get 240+ seats which gives you seats you can sacrifice to beat back the MAGA insurgency

what did the GOP do leading up to the 2022 midterm with great poll numbers? Well, they passed gun control and talked about illegal amnesty, both topics which will necessarily drive down turnout numbers

and I agree it was a stupid move, I called it out in the other place while it was happening a year ago, but it's the move they went with and a bunch of examples I can remember off the top of my head to support it (joe kent, john gibbs, jr majewski, david giglio, and more) and the fact it blew up in their faces is funny; blaming Gaetz/Trump candidates for losses when the Party picked the vast majority slate of candidates, attacked their own candidates, picked the strategy, talking points, and consultants, and conditioned money on accepting it, refused to support them in winnable races anyway while blowing silly amounts of money on Party candidates in losing racing, is simply silly

Plus the party leadership gets the credit and authority of having delivered a big majority

party leadership wants to maintain party leadership; empowering insurgency candidates doesn't preserve party leadership with easy examples of this being the Tea Party which took down Boehner

you think of the GOP leadership as people who want to get things done, but they don't, they're roaches who want to survive and maintain their power (even if it means the respectable loser opposition) and strong majorities mean they are expected to deliver on promises and their excuses are harder to believe (especially given they don't actually want to do most of the things they tell their voters they want to do)

believe it or not, 60 insurgent candidates in a 245 caucus is far worse for the people in party leadership than 10 in a slight majority, despite it looking like a big show circus when Leadership attempts a crunchdown after stringing them along for 7 months

it's far harder to make a stand with a small group of 8 people than with a larger group of people, despite you think they have individual power outsized their numbers, because it's easier to media blitz them, shame them, ostracize them, or buy them off

the way you think things work in politics simply isn't the way it works

None of those people could have become speaker at all given McCarthy's tiny majority and rebellious faction within it. Just for starters, no Democrat leader has ever faced real opposition intra-party in my lifetime. Second, Boehner and Ryan didn't get much done, even with larger majorities and more favorable overall situations. McCarthy was basically a head football coach at Syracuse going 8-4/7-5, which is amazing.

I also disagree with your idea of what GOP leadership wanted. This "gimping" was done by Trump and the DNC, not anyone McCarthy aligned. First. McCarthy wasn't a shoo in for the speakership. He was a front runner, for sure, but would never have liked such a small majority. The majority is small, basically against his wishes, because a lot of Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidates lost. It is best to think of what just happened in a non-US context. What happened was that there were 3 parties: 1) The Democrat Party; 2 The Republican Party; 3) The Gaetz Party. The Gaetz party chose, in this leadership election, to be team Democrat.

Sure, I agree that McCarthy probably should have anticipated the backstab by Democrats, but that doesn't make it not a backstab. He probably was getting backstabbed by someone this time around no matter what. Either it was Gaetzers or the Romney/Cheneys he was gonna get backstabbed. Such is the problem of running a coalition party without full media hegemony.

every speaker for a very long time has dealt with "rebellious factions" within their caucus, from tea partiers to new dems

Nancy Pelosi had the votes for speaker in 2019 without 10 Democrat members, so the claim she wouldn't have managed it in a similar situation to McCarthy falls flat, and it would have required fewer concessions to boot with easy examples to support that claim being later legislative fights where she got people who allegedly opposed her or her agenda to embarrass themselves with individual "present" votes because she wanted them to.

Just for starters, no Democrat leader has ever faced real opposition intra-party in my lifetime

real opposition defined by what? the fact that the speaker wasn't vacated? this is a chicken-egg problem where I will claim they didn't face "rea" opposition because they were effective and you will claim there wasn't a "real opposition" to begin with

McCarthy was basically a head football coach at Syracuse going 8-4/7-5, which is amazing.

what did McCarthy accomplish? what are his 8 wins and 4 losses? I would bet most of these "wins" you can think of weren't Kevin but the part of the caucus you claim is on "team democrat" holding his feet to the fire to deliver from committees, to subpoenas, to indiv personal appointments, to some individual bills, and more

he stuck around promising individual Congressmen more aggressive investigations, subpoenas, individual bills brought to the floor, and more, and he never delivered or only delivered crumbs, and as the anger and opposition mounted he attempted a crunch-down media blitz with aligned media mouthpieces and that failed

he became speaker by making promises he didn't intend to keep, lying to a bunch of people, stuck around for 7 months stringing them along, and it all came crashing down as he attempted to force his caucus into a CR which failed (something he promised he wouldn't do) so he teamed up with Democrats to pass a CR (something he promised he wouldn't do) over objections of his own caucus

and then he relied on Democrats to save him from pissed off members of his own caucus

and you think this makes McCarthy the most effective speaker of the last 25 years (difficulty adjusted)? this isn't supportable

worse, your attempted portrayal of this is Gaetz sided with team Democrat? this isn't supportable

This "gimping" was done by Trump and the DNC, not anyone McCarthy aligned.

The majority is small, basically against his wishes, because a lot of Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidates lost

I agree McCarthy likely didn't want a majority which was this slim, but it's the result of his and the Party's behavior:

  1. Party funds primary opposition to Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidate
  2. Party candidate sends out mailers calling Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidate nazis
  3. Party candidate loses, but Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidate spends all his money
  4. Party refuses to give any money to Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidate while threatening donors if they give any money
  5. Trump/Gaetz-aligned candidate loses

lots of candidates lost, it wasn't something which was limited to "Trump/Gaetz-alligned" candidates; candidates without trump endorsements but Party endorsements did worse

or are you trying to claim McCarthy isn't a part of this Party leadership who made these calls? McCarthy controls the money because he's the one who raised it and uses that money to control the Party in the House

unfortunately, I suspect out beliefs about basic facts of what has happened over the last few years in this area may be too different to have a productive dialogue without quite a bit of effort on both our parts

real opposition defined by what? the fact that the speaker wasn't vacated?

There has not been a 8 vote defection by democrats on any important vote in the house in a decade at least.

worse, your attempted portrayal of this is Gaetz sided with team Democrat? this isn't supportable

They voted together on one of the most important questions of the 2 year term.

yeah, that's the point

you claim this is because there is no real opposition, I claim because the speaker was more effective

there is no articulated substance to your opinion about McCarthy or even a single note of any of his accomplishments, so there really isn't a dialogue to have there

You really think Pelosi is more effective as opposed to McCarthy being less because???

Boehner and Ryan were also mysteriously less effective than their contemporaries. Its almost like there is a pattern. Perhaps its just Pelosi is the GOAT. I think its much more likely that Democrats are easier to govern.

More comments

The problem is that the majority the Republicans have in the House is very small. It takes 218 votes for a majority and they have 221 members. So if even three members don't like McCarthy they can effectively keep him from becoming Speaker or kill any legislation. At the beginning of the year there was a segment of the Conference that thought McCarthy was too weak on spending and so didn't want to elect him Speaker, which is why it took so many rounds. With supporting a CR this weekend at current spending levels those same members regard it as a betrayal of the promises he made to get their support to be Speaker, hence the present motion to get rid of him.

I believe this would also be the first time in US history the House will have removed a Speaker with a motion to vacate.

I was looking it up and I guess this is only the third time a motion to vacate ever happened in history. The last time was kind of similar to this, the right flank, led by Mark Meadows, rebelling against John Boehner in 2015. It was unsuccessful but he ended up resigning anyway.

The first time was in 1910 and the Speaker filed a Motion to Vacate against himself. Basically he was daring unruly representatives to challenge him publicly, and ultimately they fell in line. Couldn't be farther from our present situation.

The first time was in 1910 and the Speaker filed a Motion to Vacate against himself. Basically he was daring unruly representatives to challenge him publicly, and ultimately they fell in line. Couldn't be farther from our present situation.

Goddamn that's a baller move

It's a baller move as long as it works. Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull tried something very similar in 2018, his bluff got called, and he ended up losing his job and looking like a bit of a goose.

It wouldn't be a baller move if there wasn't risk.

In one of his last acts as speaker, Boehner is now expected to defy conservatives by bringing up a funding bill that would prevent a government shutdown beginning next week but that would not cut money from Planned Parenthood.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

It should be noted this was long after PP funds were banned from being used for abortions, so moderate Republicans got smeared with trying to cut funding from all the other services PP provided to some several million low-income women. And then as now, Democrats had the Senate so there was a limit to how conservative any viable budget could be.

all the other services PP provided to some several million low-income women

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those other services mostly things that cultural conservatives don’t have any problem defunding even if it’s still legal to spend government money on them? I was under the impression that PP wildly exaggerated the services it provided and that the remaining ones are either objectionable to cultural conservatives in themselves(sex Ed and some gay stuff and contraceptives) or basically just referrals.

I thought the big one was cancer screening—pap smears and mammograms. Not sure what fraction of money goes to those.

Soriek has actual numbers below, and contraceptives dwarf anything cancer related, and planned parenthood spends twice as much on STD-related stuff as it does on contraception. These are the two largest categories and it’s pretty common for cultural conservatives to oppose government funding for those two things even when it doesn’t go through planned parenthood on the basis of incentivizing promiscuity.

Thanks. Sounds like I was a bit off base.

Cancer screening doesn't generally have the advertised benefits when we look at all-cause mortality rather than cancer-specific mortality. Here's a fairly recent review of evidence on mammograms specifically. At this point, I'm against government funding of mammograms until someone can demonstrate that it actually improves health outcomes.

Hydro asked if it was mostly "gay stuff and contraceptives," and the answer is no.

I understand that you're in favor of general slashes to most forms of government aid. But I doubt that the opposition to Planned Parenthood stems from principled minarchism.

The linked report is interesting, though. It's a plausible thesis, and the provided meta-analyses don't suggest much of an effect from mammography.

Since then, overdiagnosis has become apparent in two studies of mammography trials based on at least 15 years of follow-up data, which imply overdiagnosis rates of 5 to 55 percent depending on the subgroup and base rate (1, 2).

#1 concludes with a 10% overdiagnosis in women 55-69. #2 says 30% in women age 40-49 and 20% in women age 50-59. They're certainly suggestive of a correlation with age. Let's use the conservative figure. For every 7 women who needed the diagnosis, then, 3 didn't. That...doesn't feel terribly wrong to me? And I'd certainly feel comfortable with a 9-to-1 rate.

Anyway, back to the main thrust: all-cause mortality. Much like the trend lines, the author oscillates between emphasizing the lack of statistical significance and the weirdness of seeing a trend line at all. How could the interventions actively kill people sooner? Is there a confounder, where the people who actually get screenings are the ones who are a little unhealthier to start?

So...interesting results. Probably a good reason not to screen under 50 or 55. This is a little more strict than what various governments already suggest.

Though I would hesitate to use this as evidence against cancer screening in general. The paper cites colorectal and cervical cancer as examples where the outcomes really are much better with earlier detection!

I should be clear I don't really have a dog in the fight, just didn't want people to have the impression that the fight was particularly about abortion.

Out of curiosity I looked at Planned Parenthood's 2021-22 report; sex ed seems to be small compared to the medical services category ($49,200,00 vs $1,052,000 on page 33). I think a lot of the medical services are offered under affiliates but if it's funded through the same source or receives patients from the same centralized pipeline I guess same difference.

The breakdown of medical services is on page 29, for some reason the total is a little smaller here (9,117,154):

Edit: @FarNearEverywhere caught that this is probably number of services provided rather than dollar value per service category. Leaving the breakdowns up in case that's still interesting info.

STI Testing & Treatment: 4,411,825

Contraceptive Services: 2,348,275

Cancer Screenings & Prevention: 470,419

Other Reproductive Health Services (Pregnancy Tests, Prenatal Services, Miscarriage Care): 1,110,247

Abortion Services: 374,155

Other Services (Family Practice Services, Adoption Services, Urinary Tract Infections Treatments): 402,233

Probably a lot of this stuff conservatives consider elective, and cultural conservatives maybe object to contraceptives, but I'm not even sure how substantial that opposition is. Pew suggests only 4% of Americans think contraception is morally wrong and even for Catholics the number is only 13%. I imagine opposition is less to specific services and more just a holistic dislike of Planned Parenthood as an organization for that very public backing of abortion. Personally though I'm kinda surprised what a small portion goes to abortion.

It seems like large majorities of that are either STD prevention or contraception, and cultural conservatives don’t have to be tradcaths to object to spending government money on it. Indeed, it seems pretty common for cultural conservatives, even fairly moderate ones, to oppose non-planned parenthood funding for contraception and STD treatment as ‘incentivizing promiscuity’.

I mean, there's a reason only a few reps made a big deal out of it in 2015 and it never reached a floor vote. Like I said though, I have no dog in the fight, I mainly didn't want non-American readers here who didn't have the Hyde Amendment background to think this was specifically a fight over money going to abortions.

I should be clear I don't really have a dog in the fight, just didn't want people to have the impression that the fight was particularly about abortion.

I mean, it was about abortion. Yes, they weren't allowed to use the money for abortion, but Republicans still very much opposed the money going to them because of all the abortions they do.

Like if the Ku Klux Klan was getting a bunch of federal funding, people wouldn't say that's ok as long as they use their own money to do the actual lynchings.

That is what I said:

I imagine opposition is less to specific services and more just a holistic dislike of Planned Parenthood as an organization for that very public backing of abortion.

Abortion Services: $374,155

That figure seems very low. Looking at their own website, and taking the lowest cost of an abortion at a PP clinic, that's $600 for a surgical abortion:

Abortion pills (AKA medication abortion) can cost up to around $800, but it’s often less. The average cost at Planned Parenthood is around $580.

An in-clinic abortion can cost up to around $800 in the first trimester, but it’s often less. The average cost of a first trimester in-clinic abortion at Planned Parenthood is about $600. The cost of a second trimester abortion at Planned Parenthood varies depending on how many weeks pregnant you are. The average ranges from about $715 earlier in the second trimester to $1,500-2,000 later in the second trimester.

Your abortion may be free or low-cost with health insurance. But coverage for abortion varies depending on a lot of factors, like the laws where you live, what type of insurance you have, and the reason you need an abortion. You can call your insurance provider directly to find out their policies. Your nearest Planned Parenthood health center or other abortion provider can give you more information about the cost of abortion, and whether your insurance can help lower the cost.

How many abortions did they carry out? This site is definitely not a fan of theirs, but it claims from the 2020-21 report that:

Planned Parenthood performed 374,155 abortions in 2020-21 – down a little over 9,300 from the previous year, but over 3.4 million abortions over the past 10 reports.

So it seems that the 374,155 figure is not the funding but the number of abortions carried out. 374,155 x $600 = €224,493,000.

Somebody check my figures, that seems like a lot of money.

Looking at the report, the figures are on pages 11 and 29. I think the mistake you are making is that the figures on page 29 are services, not money. So for instance, "STI Testing & Treatment 4,411,825" is not dollars, it's the number of tests they carried out/provided (e.g. STI Tests 3,668,031 means they did over 3 million tests for STIs, not that the testing raised $3 million dollars).

If nationwide you're doing around 300,000 abortions annually at an average price of 600 bucks (be that "we take cash or credit cards" or your health insurance pays), then that ain't hay.

Woah, I read that crazy wrong if so, thanks for catching that. Pretty annoying they don't provide dollar breakdowns of the actual services.

I don't think contraceptives are morally wrong, but I do think using them outside of marriage is morally wrong.

How about handing out contraceptives to people for free, no questions asked, in the hopes that their use will slow the spread of communicable diseases? Is that kosher?

Only if the people are married, to each other, (which sort of makes the contraceptives meaningless for disease prevention).

I’ve been relatively happy with McCarthy. But I support Ukraine funding.

We do need to cut federal spending. The current levels are harming the economy. If we cut federal spending it would cause demand to fall. But that fall is easy for the fed to compensate for by cutting rates. We could go back to the 2010’s economy of big but workable deficits and low rates. Bidenomics has been a disaster.

Also I wish they were doing a better job impeach Biden. (Let’s not relitigate that but personally I believe it’s correct and just).

I’ve been relatively happy with McCarthy.

...

We do need to cut federal spending.

I don't understand how these sentences can be placed so close together.

McCarthy negotiated a deal with Biden for below-inflation increases in federal spending (including cash-flat discretionary spending). In real terms, that is a cut. Given how high inflation was, it would be the biggest real-terms cut in federal spending since the Clinton-era welfare reforms.

The approach McCarthy was taking is a perfectly reasonable approach to cutting spending for a party that can only win elections by promising not to cut any of the big, popular programs.

You could feel that his options are tightly constrained by his thin majority in the House and his opponents holding Senate and Presidency. He doesn't have many good options and is unlikely to be able to cut spending, so avoiding damaging chances for Republicans in the next voting cycle (which a shutdown might do) may be the very best that can be done. Patience in politics is rare, but it can be valuable.

"other than that, how was the play?"

He only holds the house by a few votes while the other party has the Presidency and Senate.

Government shutdowns have tended to be bad for the party that does them.

Government shutdowns have tended to be bad for the party that does them.

Which is to say the Republicans, because if the two sides don't agree, it's always the Republicans who get the blame (because the media decides this).

For as much as this forum has talked about how conservatives need to refuse to cooperate with dems on matters of policy, this seems a bit cheeky. The mean old media is just so biased, the republicans surely had nothing to do with any legislative gridlock.

I mean. Rarely. Whenever Republicans have control of a branch they typically pass financing regular order bills piecemeal, as is supposed to happen, for the majority of departments months in advance. And then the other branches either don't vote on them or promise to veto them until an omnibus/cr is passed. This is why the "shutdown" and "debt ceiling" canards are as such, the Democrats have, over the last 12-15 years, never passed regular spending bills for the subsections of the government. Like, the Republicans could pass a bill for DOD the Dems would vote for (as is supposed to happen), but they just wouldn't put it to a vote, because then they lose the leverage of soldiers not getting paid (which the media would unfairly pin on Republicans) because republicans wouldn't fund 300 billion in solar panels in Toronto.

Whenever Republicans have control of a branch they typically pass financing regular order bills piecemeal, as is supposed to happen, for the majority of departments months in advance.

The focus is on Republicans here because they specifically didn't do that, and the hold up was opposition by the right flank.

party leaders served notice that in order to fulfill the mission of taking up individual bills, a scheduled recess the week of Oct. 2 was likely to be scrapped for floor consideration of the Interior-Environment and Energy-Water spending bills. That in itself is an admission that the chamber doesn’t have time to pass all the individual bills before the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

McCarthy pointed out that the House hasn’t been able to pass more than one bill largely due to conservative holdouts who have objected to floor consideration since the initial bills were ready to go in July.

This even though ironically the Appropriations Committee passed all 12 bills with full markups and on a bipartisan basis for the first time in forever.

Indeed, but this also indicates a total lack of bipartisanship from Democrats. If there are all 12 passed, and 8 Republican holdouts, a good faith few Dems would go with it. Just like this motion to vacate. McCarthy has shown to be a good faith partner, even if he holds to principles. His reward was the Dems giving him zero good faith in return on the motion to vacate.

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Agree. Two additions.

  1. This is kind of what's going on with Tuberville's hold. He's holding DoD senior officer promotions until the Dems give him a floor vote on the DoD abortion policy. He's stated he'll abide whatever the result of that vote is and lift the hold. The goal, for Tuberville, is to either get the DoD abortion policy changed or, at least, get a bunch of Dems to vote explicitly in favor of keeping it. The one wrinkle is that, to my knowledge, he hasn't offered anything to vote on and has asked the Dems to bring their own policy package, which is kind of weird. The headlines always stop short at, "Republican Senator holds all DoD promotions because he doesn't like abortion." He just want's a vote.

  2. I'd eagerly wager that 99% of Americans cannot accurately describe regular order in either chamber of Congress. Fewer still can give a good outline of the bill-to-law pathway through committee, amendment processes, markups, etc. The procedural realities of Congress make time the precious commodity. There just isn't enough time to do everything. Worse, when you have goofy distractions all of the time, there's frequently not enough remaining to do even the important things correctly (like passing a budget on time). So, you end up with omnibuses,CRs, and generally slipshod work for literally the last 27 years.

But reporting on the complexity of Congressional process doesn't get viewership, and "political reporters" can be technically true in writing headlines like "X opposed Y resulting in Z." I can't begin to enumerate the ways the media has failed since about the 1970s onward, but especially after the internet became ubiquitous. One of the chief failings, however, is in the media's ongoing failure to simply report on the mechanics of government (or, for that matter, economics and business cycles). The default is such overly simplified narratives that they cease to be functionally useful or even complete. What's a narrative structure without functional use? It's a story. It evokes emotion, it pastes a concise arc over a complex situation. Satisfying, but useless and incomplete. If you repeat that for years and years, eventually the audience can only conceive of "information" and "news" within the structure of emotional narrative arcs. Anything outside of that format may serve some other niche purpose, but isn't "news." Reporters have ceased to know what they're talking about, focusing, instead, on knowing what has already been said (knowledge v. narrative). It's a self reinforcing feedback cycle. Today's "news" is an expansion and commentary on yesterday's "news" and an easy to follow narrative line is important.

I like to imagine a headline on NYT/WaPO the reads "Here is a guide to how committee markups work" and then imagine the first comment being "What does this have to do with Congress?"

He's holding DoD senior officer promotions until the Dems give him a floor vote on the DoD abortion policy.

Imo it's kind of reasonable not to set the precedent that we can hold up the functioning of the government so one guy gets to have a vote on a very tenuously related issue he's into. The Senate has passed a ton of bills the House is never going to look at either, that's just how a divided Congress goes.

Otherwise 100% agreed the boring, procedural stuff and general gov mechanics are super important and I wish they were reported on more.

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“Mine, yours, theirs” asymmetry: “Democrats show admirable solidarity in the face of Republican radicalism,” but “Republicans cause gridlock, refusing to cooperate in a spirit of bipartisanship.”

Tribal bias turns negotiable differences into irreconcilable divides. Each side’s marketing says it is the only side operating in good faith on the side of good, making good decisions for the good of the people. This is why politics is the mind-killer.

for what it's worth i understand how "the media" doesn't mean the exact same thing to our two fine political parties, but it still annoys me that this discussion ignores the existence and popularity of right wing media and pundits. Fox news doesn't frame the discussion this way and i think they count as "the media"

as for mindkilling, i fully agree. more and more i have a hard time wanting to wade into political debate because it legitimately always devolves into arguments i have had since i was 16 years old and there often isnt any objective correct answer.

one of the reasons that i'm pro hypothetical AI overlord is that it would be interesting to see what an "adult" thinks about our sibling squabbling

It takes two to tango, but somehow only one side ever gets accused of dancing.

More like neither group really wants to dance but one side is happier with the lack of dancing than the other

What should we cut? If you don’t want to cut Ukraine spending I presume it isn’t defense. Social security is reckoned separately from the rest of the budget. Everything else is a rounding error.

Everything else is a rounding error.

Nonsense. Here's a tool that's easy to tinker with and see what the options are. Given how many federal programs I think are negative net value, my preferred policies would result in nearly budgets within a couple of years through simple drawdowns to things like SNAP, education, and healthcare spending. I recognize the difficulty of large immediate cuts due to system shocks, but in the longer term, I see no need for federal education spending, federal "nutrition" spending, the ATF, HUD, and numerous other programs. Hell, just federal food spending is nearly $200 billion, which is not a rounding error.

That's a cool tool, but it takes far too many clicks to zero out programs.

Just like in the real Congress.

We went from sub 21.5% federal spending on gdp last decade to slightly over 24% since COVID. So that 2.5%. Ukraine spending might be .3% of that increase.

Defense is less than 20% of the budget if you lump in veterans benefits. If you take out social security you still have 60% left to play with.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/

Personally I would slash Medicare and Medicaid to start, it's just subsidizing a good that has a restricted supply because of over regulation. It's a political non starter though as are pretty much all spending cuts.

I agree that artificially restricted supply has a lot to do with spiraling medical costs, but I'd really prefer the order of operations to be

Remove supply restrictions -> Price goes down -> Slash programs that were helping people afford the high prices,

instead of

Slash programs that are helping people afford the high prices -> A few politicians promise to lower the prices -> Oh, wait, they didn't -> Fuck.

One of the reasons supply is restricted within medical care is because MMS helps fund residency slots and have historically capped their funding at '96 levels, keeping supply of doctors lower than it could be. Only in 2022 have we started to fix this and raise the residency slot funding. Cutting MMS funding would be moving backwards on doctor supply.

Most of the rest of the supply restrictions are state level like Con and COPA laws. Cutting MMS funding won't do anything to fix those problems.

What does the government spend funding residency slots though? Medicare has a budget of $800 billion for example and google tells me that $16 billion of it goes to funding residencies, so 2% of their budget. You could make massive cuts to medicare without touching that. A lot of programs are like that where they use the miniscule fraction that's actually useful to justify the fact that the rest of it is bloat.

Yeah, and if you cut Medicare’s budget, the bureaucrats running it will take it out of the actually useful fraction.

My point that it's an oversimplication to describe federal spending as "just subsidizing a good that has a restricted supply because of over regulation." Just as easily a lack of funding can be the root cause of a dearth of supply.

Administrative excess should be culled everywhere, but I'm unconvinced that "the rest of [the budget] is bloat". From this graph on their budget it looks like a reasonable 5-10% is administration while the overwhelming majority is compensation for services, 50% for hospital care, 25% for physician services, and the remainder broken between prescription drugs, and smaller categories like equipment and nursing homes.

I'm unconvinced the future is bleak either. The largest growing category in spending has been prescription drugs and the IRA should arrest that trend substantially. You've likely also read the recent headlines that our projections have wildly overestimated growth in Medicare spending, which has leveled off significantly per beneficiary for the past decade.

Administrative waste is bad but isn't the core problem here. The problem is that the government restricts the supply of people allowed to practice medicine through regulations and then provides subsidies to purchase healthcare so that people buy more of it than they otherwise would. New players are legally barred from entering the market to raise the supply so the subsidies go straight into the pockets of the providers. It's like when the government provides section 8 housing vouchers but at the same time makes it illegal to build new housing via zoning restrictions or environmental regulations. You can't subsidize your way out of a cartel.

And the fact is that we're just not getting a good return on investment. We spend more on healthcare than anywhere else in the world but life expectancy is declining. Paying a trillion dollars a year so people with alzheimer's can linger in the nursing home for another year is just a bad way to spend money.

The problem is that the government restricts the supply of people allowed to practice medicine through regulations

This is like saying the government restricts the supply of tanks or something. There's no regulation artificially restraining something that would be in more abundance on the free market, the subsidy just isn't big enough. There is no law restricting resident doctors, which hospitals can have as many of as they want, there just isn't extra public funding to have more of them, so hospitals make up funding shortfalls out of pocket, from state governments, or philanthropy. Cutting government would ofc result in less residency slots, not more.

There are lots of regulations that genuinely do restrict the supply of medicine via laws that shield hospitals from anti-trust and prevent new competitors from emerging. But these are mostly on the state level. Even the lengths of residencies themselves are usually required by state-level licensing rules. If there's anything federal scale that's as significant as CON/COPA laws, I'm more than interested to hear about it though, that's why I asked.

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Cutting MMS funding would be moving backwards on doctor supply.

As with so much government spending, I am told that we need government spending due to the onerous government regulation that creates a need for government spending. There is, of course, another option available.

I'm all for cutting unhelpful regulations, but which federal regulation would substantially reduce healthcare costs? The largest increases in costs have been from physicians and hospitals becoming increasingly consolidated monopolies, and this has much less to do with federal law than state-level rent seeking.

What happens after that is anyone's guess. In a literal sense we move back to where we were this January and do another election for Speaker.

I can only see two plausible outcomes:

  • There is another round of humiliating chaos for the Republican caucus, ending with them re-electing McCarthy for the same reason they did last time.
  • The 10 or so RINOest RINOs in the caucus put up a RINO for speaker and the Democrats vote for him.

The Freedom Caucus have zero leverage here. The speaker needs to be acceptable to the median Representative, who (a) is a RINO and (b) will lose their seat if they become associated with the unpopular parts of the Freedom Caucus agenda.

I think there's a possibility for another 'oops Trump' where the left goes along with beclowining the Republicans by giving legitimacy to a Gaetz that he then uses down the line.

The D's support recalling McCarthy presumably because it seems like an easy win to make the Republicans look bad, cause self-inflicted chaos and ultimately not end up any worse. But the side cost is legitimizing a Gaetz win.

Gaetz doesn't have leverage now in getting a new speaker elected. But he did just successfully flex power. If the Dem's don't think Gaetz in the future is a problem, whatver, but by joining him in a recall vote, he makes himself more legitimate in future congresses with different make-up.

Gaetz as a power player? I think we both know the odds of that.

Well, the bigger a future GOP majority, the less power Gaetz has. And even as the GOP slowly moves to the right in congress, there are still going to be many longstanding incumbents there years from now, many of whom will hate him for this play.

The Freedom Caucus have zero leverage here.

This depends on the goal. Not to engage in too much typical minding of Freedom Caucus members, but if they think anything like me and their constituents are anything like me, my express goal is to humiliate McCarthy and make it difficult for the federal government to start doing anything that it isn't currently doing. There are many goals I have that would be more proactive, but if I can't have those, I could at least cause a lot of trouble. If you're someone that wants "extreme" positions like cutting the federal budget by 1%, the most you might be able to do is make it incredibly tedious and inconvenient for your enemies, who certainly include the RINO caucus.

Yeah, if Gaetz’s goal is to cause chaos and shut the government down- or if he’s the fall guy for chip Roy shutting the government down- it makes a lot of sense for him to do what he’s doing.

There’s also the possibility that the republicans throw out a moderate but not RINO Republican and get the remaining blue doggers on board. Not likely, I know.

The 10 or so RINOest RINOs in the caucus put up a RINO for speaker and the Democrats vote for him.

I have sometimes wondered if this would function the other way. There are, like, 10 House Republicans who were elected in 2022 in districts Biden won in 2020. I wonder if there's some angle where a few of them could be convinced to vote Jeffries for Speaker. It would only take four!

In a sane world, voting for Jeffries for speaker would get them kicked out of the Republican Conference and lose them their committee assignments, so it would only make sense if they were planning to defect to the Dems (which might be a good idea if the DNCC can credibly promise that they won't face a serious primary challenge from the left). But I suppose the House Republican Conference have already demonstrated that they are living in Clown World.

What a tremendous backstab by the Democrats, right? McCarthy avoids the shut down only to get ousted by Dems helping out his internal enemies. I'm flabbergasted at the choice of "betray" by the Dems. It makes absolutely clear to any future R speaker with problems on his Right to never ever under any circumstances compromise with the Dems.

This assumes that avoiding the shutdown was some sort of gift to Democrats. It wasn't

Or alternatively a knife edge house should elect an ultra moderate as speaker who can command control of enough people on the opposite side of the house that restive elements on his own side can't do anything. I'd be in favour of a bunch of moderate republicans supporting Jefferies to punish the republican defectors against McCarthy. The slap in the face Republicans would get for losing control of the house even though they have a majority of members is something the party has desperately needed over the last 7ish years.

Notably McCarthy has not asked for support from the Democrats. Probably correctly realizing that doing that weakens his position with his own party. If the Democrats want to make things awkward for him, voting for him is exactly the way to do it. He wins this vote, sure, but it's a terrible look for him and he would probably be gone in a month or two.

This is not a backstab, because it is what McCarthy expected to happen. Remember winning the vote is not the only thing at stake here for him. Losing clean is probably preferable to winning due to your opponents voting for you. It would taint him for close to a third of his House brethren.

The Democrats best way to help him is to stay out of it, which means voting against him, so doing what they are expected to do. If any of them do vote for him, that will be the interesting scenario.

The Democrats could have stayed out of it by voting "present", which would have left the discharge position dead by a large majority.

I think Republican representatives would have (correctly in my opinion) have seen that as Democrats helping him out.

What do you mean? The Democrats helped the Republicans keep the government funded, which is what the majority of the GOP wanted. This is completely separate from an agreement for the Democrats to support a Speaker from the opposite party. McCarthy, like Boehner before him, would certainly never expect that without specific negotiations (which he's said he won't do, at least so far) and no minority party would grant it without significant concessions.

Shutting down the government is bad (according to Dem orthodoxy). McCarthy acted, against the Freedom Caucus jackrabbits working on making themselves ungovernable, to avoid the government shutdown. While I don't think he did so for reasons or in a way that represents a compromise with Democrats, he did act to do so. Democrats should reward that action by keeping him around. By not doing so, they make obvious to the next R Speaker that they should not act to keep the government open.

Shutting down the government is bad (according to Dem orthodoxy)

Shutting down the government is bad according to both parties. "Having a functional government" isn't some kind of concession a generous Speaker can make to the Democrats, it's literally just the majority party's job and was obviously what McCarthy and the majority of the GOP caucus repeatedly said they wanted. They couldn't achieve that, despite all 12 appropriations being fully endorsed by both Republicans and Democrats in the Appropriations Committee, specifically because of rebellion from other Republicans, so Democrats saved them and gave them the votes they needed to pass a CR.

They did this despite the fact that McCarthy had already betrayed them on the agreement he made during the debt ceiling negotiation to keep funding at certain levels, and also broke his public commitment not to launch an impeachment inquiry without a floor vote. Despite all this they still reached across the aisle and helped him anyway, only for him to hold a press conference the very next day blaming them for holding up the spending deal.

Given that he did nothing for them, repeatedly reneged on prior commitments, and even accused them of being the root problem after admitting repeatedly it was the Freedom Caucus, it is a bit rich to accuse them of a tremendous backstab against him.

Forgive me if my tone sounds peeved, I'm just somewhat exhausted listening to friends and family members explain to me how somehow the Democrats are at fault here after one of the more embarassing internal party performances ever seen. The GOP's problem right now is intraparty cohesion and it is simply never going to fix that by blaming squabbles on the other party.

I suspect the Democrats would say McCarthy hit "defect" first by trying to pass a bunch of spending bills or CRs that departed downward from the spending levels agreed on in the debt limit negotiations earlier this year. It's not like McCarthy passed the clean CR because of loyalty to Dem priorities, it was either CR the Dems would vote for or government shutdown. On the other hand, I'm skeptical whatever Speaker comes out of this mess will be more palatable to Dems than McCarthy.

The whole situation is strange, with the majority's margin as small as it is. I almost wish the US had some mechanism to call snap elections like the UK does.

There was also that whole opening an impeachment inquiry without a house vote, which he claimed he wouldn't do shortly before doing it.

And when that failed to win him the support he needed, after relying on Democrat votes to pass the CR, said the next day the Dems "tried to do everything they could to not let it pass". The latter was apparently played to Democrats in the meeting where they decided to vote against him.

Still, who knows if this works out for them aside from making the Republicans look chaotic for a bit.

I suspect the Democrats would say McCarthy hit "defect" first by trying to pass a bunch of spending bills or CRs that departed downward from the spending levels agreed on in the debt limit negotiations earlier this year.

Based on a quick check of the Hellsite Formerly Known as Twitter, they are saying just that, loudly.

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