Republicans Have Nothing To Offer Except The Trump Clown Show... And Americans Don't Want That Again

Yesterday, Catherine Rampell started the day by noting that the Republicans can’t agree among themselves on a budget plan. “How,” she asked, “do you negotiate with someone who has no idea what they want?” That’s the challenge for President Biden as Republicans say he must (A) satisfy their fiscal demands before they’ll raise the debt limit; even though they (B) can’t decide what those demands actually are; and they (C) have zero credibility for delivering 218 House votes for whatever those demands eventually turn out to be.” (That isn’t stopping the right-wing fringe of the House Dems— led by Blue Dogs like Jared Golden (ME) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ)— who are trying to cut their own Republican-lite deal with the actual Republicans.)

Republicans say they want less debt. Unfortunately, they have ruled out virtually every mathematical means for achieving that outcome.

To wit: They won’t raise taxes (to the contrary, they have pledged to cut taxes further); they won’t touch Social Security or Medicare; they won’t slash defense or veterans’ programs; and they won’t zero out the rest of the nondefense discretionary budget, as would be required if they chose to extend all the Trump tax cuts and took all those other spending categories off the table, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Not to worry: At least Republicans still pledge to cut “wokeism” from the budget! (This apparently means defunding the FBI.)

…In a letter in late March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) accused the president of being “missing in action” on debt negotiations. Never mind, apparently, McCarthy’s lack of concrete positions of his own, beyond platitudes about “reducing excessive non-defense government spending” (which ones are excessive?) and advocating “policies to grow our economy and keep Americans safe, including measures to lower energy costs.” (Okay, how?)

The same day, on CNBC, McCarthy defended his caucus’s lack of budget by saying, “The budget doesn’t have anything to do with the debt ceiling.” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), chair of the Republican Study Committee, used nearly identical language in telling the Hill: “I don’t think the budget has anything to do with the spending limit.”

To be clear: I agree!

Raising the debt ceiling is about making good on past obligations; budget proposals are about future spending and tax decisions. These things should not be linked. Congress should pass a clean debt limit increase or suspension without preconditions, just as Republicans repeatedly agreed to do when Donald Trump was president. Since then, however, Republicans have tried to bundle the two unrelated things, treating one as a useful hostage to force (again, TBD) changes to the other.

Last week, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) let slip the real reason there is neither a detailed GOP fiscal plan nor a concrete set of principles for one. Convincing 218 lawmakers (that is, a House majority) to commit to a budget is not “as easy as when I was a freshman here,” he said.

In other words: The GOP caucus is a cacophonous mess. Republicans don’t know what they want; they only know they don’t want the thing Democrats are offering. Which is reminiscent of the dynamics of many other major policy debates in recent years.

And yet Republicans keep demanding that Biden sit down, negotiate and make concessions. Each time they do, the rest of us should respond: Concessions on what?

I guess enough of them figured they could ignore all this budget and debt ceiling stuff and just deliver on… spending two years investigating Hunter Biden’s dick pics and other nonsense from Marjorie Traitor Greene’s fever dreams. But that’s been working out badly for them as well. While Rampell was writing about their budget woes, Jordain Carney was trying to figure out why their politically-motivated investigations have all gone off the rails. “[T]hey’ve gotten almost nowhere so far— and some in the party are getting frustrated. According to interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans, a sizable chunk of the conference is focused on preventing a banking crisis and a looming debt fight instead of on Biden family oversight or a politicized government panel. At the same time, the party base is chafing at the lack of big bombshells and concrete steps against administration officials to back up all of lawmakers’ talk.

Long before GOP lawmakers settled their speakership fight, they promised voters they’d deploy the chamber’s oversight power against President Joe Biden on a host of issues. They vowed to find a smoking gun that links Biden to his family’s overseas business dealings. They even embraced comparisons of their investigative efforts to Congress’ storied 1970s Church Committee, which uncovered significant abuses by the intelligence community.

The pressure on Republicans stems chiefly from the gap between their voters’ hopes and Washington reality— for example, [Louisiana extremist Mike] Johnson said some of his constituents want them making indictments and arrests, which Congress doesn’t have the power to do. But Republicans also acknowledge some of their problems are self-inflicted as they face growing pains readjusting to the majority.

One GOP aide, granted anonymity to speak frankly, described an internal perception that the politicized government subpanel run by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) had gotten off to a “rocky start” after its initial hearing revealed little new information. That same hearing sparked public kvetching among outside groups and high-profile pundits, who questioned both the structure and the strategy of the panel.

“There’s always going to be people who want to go 110 miles an hour and get frustrated with the pace of how things work,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), a member of both the politicized government panel and the Oversight Committee. He noted many House Republicans are new to life in the majority.

Then there’s Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY). He’s in a perilous position for a leading Republican, facing skepticism from some Fox News figures who have publicly questioned if he’ll be able to back up his goals for a Hunter Biden probe, given that the president’s son has been under a separate federal investigation for roughly five years.

… [T]he Oversight chair has to step lightly around potential turf wars as he pursues a broad scope of investigations that risk elbowing into the jurisdiction of other committees. Comer shot down talk of internal conflict, particularly with the Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subpanel chief, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY). The two men share a home state and are close, Comer said; if they had an argument, “it wouldn’t be over baby formula.”

Republicans have also faced staffing issues. Reps. Dan Bishop (R-NC) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) brought up concerns about personnel as part of a strategy meeting with Jordan earlier this year. And while the House Judiciary Committee now has more than 50 GOP staffers, and requested a budget bump, it’s still shaking off a public perception that a core group of Jordan confidants are running it.

Gaetz, asked about the meeting, said members left the regularly scheduled sitdown feeling like they were all on the same page. And Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye said in a statement that the subpanel had “hired a talented and aggressive team,” in addition to an existing Judiciary Committee roster that led former President Donald Trump’s defense during House impeachment inquiries.

Regardless, there are fresh signs that the GOP conference’s investigative focus is diverging.

Gaetz crossed wires with Comer after the Florida Republican tweeted that he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), with the chair’s “blessing,” would conduct a transcribed interview with a woman who has accused Biden of sexual assault, an allegation the president denies. Comer countered that there had been a “miscommunication” and that Gaetz, who is not a member of the Oversight, hadn’t spoken with him before the tweet.

“We’re following the money, we’re following the bank records. … We’re not going to get distracted on anything else, any sideshows,” Comer said, adding that Gaetz “can do whatever he wants” in the Judiciary Committee or its politicized government subpanel.

Both Comer’s and Jordan’s committees have been highly productive, but only a slice of what they’ve done so far has gained traction beyond friendly GOP outlets. As of Monday, the Judiciary Committee has sent 148 letters, received nearly 114,000 documents, issued 11 subpoenas, conducted six transcribed interviews and scheduled nine interviews or depositions. They’ve also put out two reports and issued a brief to members on subpoena compliance, with Jordan signaling he intends to dole out information to the public as he gets it.

“[We’re] going as aggressive but thorough and consistent with the Constitution as we can,” Jordan said. He dismissed any Church Committee comparison, because the decades-old panel is linked to a foreign intelligence surveillance law that Republicans have “all kinds of concerns with.”

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said he gets asked about the investigations back home “primarily from Republican activists” but added that “I don’t pay much attention to it.” Another GOP lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, shrugged off investigations as designed to “make you feel good” but “never yield anything.”

And while Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) characterized Comer’s work as “important,” he described a split among constituents: Some conservatives positively cite Comer’s frequent TV hits, but among another “tuned-in” group he outlined “a frustration that … when is anyone going to be held accountable?”

As for himself? Barr said his focus is “not on those things,” pointing to issues like bank solvency.

“We all have a role to play, and I’ve got enough on my plate right now,” he said.

Wonderful that Barr brought that up. I’m not sure where he stands on it but Brendan Petersen reported yesterday that there was some bipartisan movement on clawing back the money banksters stole on the way out as their institutions collapsed. Usually conservatives never agree to anything like that but suddenly there are some— though not all by any means— Republicans who are seeing the light.

Petersen wrote that’s he’s been hearing “a lot of chatter on Capitol Hill about one legislative fix or another since Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed last month. Progressives want to repeal a 2018 deregulation bill.” Conservatives will never agree to that. But some conservatives are buying into the clawback plan being pushed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie and, believe it or not, Biden. “The idea is broadly popular among Democrats. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, told us that bank officials shouldn’t get paid ‘in cases where management is or should be aware” of significant problems but took “no meaningful action.’ Yet the more eye-opening takeaway is how many Republicans in both chambers are also open to the idea.”

Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), who serves on Financial Services, said the proposal was “absolutely worthy of looking at,” especially regarding banker bonuses.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), a former banker who also sits on the panel, said if managers did so poorly they might “face jail time or could be sued and lose in a court of law. I think that would be something that we could probably look at and support– to try and claw back in that situation.”

Rep. William Timmons (R-SC) told us he surprised his staff with an interest in clawback legislation.

“There just needs to be consequences,” Timmons said. “It doesn’t need to be draconian, but if you made a whole bunch of money and then you cause your bank to fail, and it adversely impacts millions of people, something should happen.”

There’s notable interest from Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee too. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), the panel’s former chair, said he was “generally reluctant” to give the federal government more power over private sector management.

But “when there are actions that are abusive and sometimes even, in fact, illegal, I don’t see a problem with the regulatory authorities being able to claw back that kind of compensation,” Crapo added.

There are, of course, a million places along the way where this effort could fall apart. Many of the Republicans open to the thrust of this reform effort want it to focus on bank management guilty of crimes or clear ethical violations.

A bill that’s more open-ended would be a tougher sell.

“I’m open to the concept,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said of a clawback proposal. “What I want to do is make sure that we have clear definitions.”

Republican opposition could also grow if the banking lobby mobilizes to kill the proposal.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said he would “absolutely not” support any legislative change. Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) said former bank executives trying and failing to find employment at a new bank was “the ultimate clawback.”

I bet congressional Republicans in swing districts weren't thrilled to see these instructions today when they woke up. This especially puts a lot of New York and California Republicans in jeopardy, but about Thomas Kean (NJ), Jen Kiggans (NJ), John James (MI), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Bryn Steil (WI), Zach Nunn (IA), Nancy Mace (SC), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR)... If McCarthy brings anything like this to a vote, they'll have to decide who they are going to offend, extreme MAGAts or normal people.