After they grudgingly agreed to allow Trump to pick his House Speaker— MAGA Mike— 11 GOP “rebels” immediately released a letter that a Democratic member sent me. Their goal was to apparently let their colleagues— if not the world—know that they’re still disgruntled and that they will be a thorn in MAGA Mike’s side if he strays from… whatever it is they think they represent.
The letter was signed by Freedom Caucus chair Andy Harris (R-MD) and Chip Roy (R-TX) plus Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Scott Perry (R-PA), Clay Higgins (R-LA, like MAGA Mike), Michael Clad (R-TX), Andy Ogles (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Eric Burlson (R-MO), Ralph Norman (R-SC) and Andrew Clyde (R-GA)— basically the craziest of the crazies, leaving out the lady nut-cases. But my congressional friend said he doesn’t think the letter itself is crazy. This is what they wrote:
Dear House Republican Colleague,
Today, we voted for Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors. We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the Speaker’s track record over the past 15 months.
To deliver on the historic mandate earned by President Trump for the Republican Party, we must be organized to use reconciliation— and all legislative tools— to deliver on critical border security, spending cuts, pro-growth tax policy, regulatory reform, and the reversal of the damage done by the Biden-Harris administration. It is critical we get this work done expeditiously. To do this, we believe the Speaker should have committed to:
• Modify the House calendar to work at least as hard as the Senate— which is in session five days a week for the first 10 weeks— rather than working three and a half days a week for eight of the first 10 weeks;
• Ensure any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends;
• Guarantee members can offer amendments and stop putting bills on the floor that violate the 72-hour rule (members need time to read and debate legislation), rely heavily on Democrat support for passage, or that are often not supported by a majority of Republicans.
Now, Speaker Johnson must prove he will not fail to enact President Trump’s bold agenda. Therefore, legislation that is put before this body must, for example:
• Fully secure the border to stop the flow of illegal aliens completely and enact permanent border security policy reforms without amnesty or immigration expansion;
• Cut rampant inflationary spending significantly to guarantee deficit reduction and a rapid path to a balanced budget;
• Not increase federal borrowing before real spending cuts are agreed to and in place;
• Reverse Biden-Harris policies immediately, including disastrous and expensive student loan bailouts, inflationary EV-mandates and Green New Deal subsidies to unleash American energy, massive subsidization of unhealthy foods in the food stamp program to make American healthy again and save taxpayer dollars, and much more;
• Fully embrace healthcare freedom by expanding health savings accounts and freeing them from costly regulations to empower patients and doctors, not insurance companies;
• Fix American elections completely by ensuring only citizens vote, requiring voter
identification, enforcing same-day (or close to same-day) voting, and securing ballots;
• End stock trading by members of Congress.
There is always room to negotiate on so-called “leadership” positions under the rules; in the meantime, each one of our election certificates is still equal. Personalities can be debated later, but right now there is zero room for error on the policies the American people demanded when they voted for President Trump— the ones necessary to save the country. We demand the House of Representatives deliver— quickly.
The Democrat who sent it to me sees it as a document Democrats should deal with. “We should,” he wrote, “negotiate over some of this, in order to get other things that we want, in return. Of course, that would require actual thinking, actual prioritizing and actual work, none of which seems to be available. It probably doesn’t matter, because it wouldn’t get through the Senate, anyway.”
I was disappointed by his response to the first policy demand, basically folding and raising the white flag immediately— “This is clearly what the voters want and they [the Republicans] know that they don’t have to give anything in return for it.” I guess we can see the “resistance” crumbling on that one.
On the second one, about inflation, he called it “just nonsense, unless they are specific about what they want to cut. At that point there would be some possibility of a ‘Grand Bargain’ which would make taxes fairer (which they will never agree to). So this is really a dead end. Not that when they put the Simpson-Bowles plan for a balanced budget up for a vote in the House, it got around 75 votes. In reality, no one is willing to do much of anything about this since they know that the FED will take care of the problem.”
Actually, only 22 Democrats and 16 Republicans voted for it, so 38, not even 75. I should really ask him what the Democrats would give away for “fairer taxes.” Raising the Social Security retirement age? Hopefully that’s one third rail the Democrats never stumble onto.
On the third, about raising the debt ceiling, he noted that “Trump has already shown his cards on this. We should use this as a bargaining chip— but I doubt Hakeem will.”
And then on the over-arching 4th one about reversing Biden’s policies. “There are no significant ’student loan bailouts;’ Trump-appointed judges blocked them. The Republicans will never convince the voters about this despite their bets efforts on Fox News and wherever. The proper response is to make therapy a price for doing this.”
“There are no significant ‘EV-mandates’ outside of California, which the courts have decided is OK for California to do by itself.”
“The ‘Green New Deal subsidies’ are bad economics, but they are not significant. ‘American energy’ has already been ‘unleashed’ by fracking, and there is almost nothing more to do in this regard, except possibly increase offshore drilling, which would cost them a lot of votes. What they’re basically doing, without saying it, is to agree with Biden’s ‘all of the above’ energy policies.’”
[Imagine how hard-pressed Republicans would be about offshore drilling by their voters in Florida, New Jersey, Long Island, the Carolinas, even Georgia, not to mention California. I’m guessing doing this would cost the Republicans a dozen House seats in 2026 plus whatever their Senate chances are in Georgia and North Carolina.]
“Regarding their incessant, obsessive attacks on food stamps, we should just call it their ‘let them eat cake’ policy, which is what it is. First, they’re just starving people, including children. Second, this program is an enormous giveaway— which I happen to agree with— to the farm states. In a fair world, the GOP would have lost almost every farm state because of their opposition to this. And they’ve been doing it for 20 years now. If they wipe out food stamps, they’re wiping out Iowa and Kansas.”
Their “health care” proposal (#5) elicited an interesting response from my congressional pal. “There is,” he wrote, “nothing wrong with expanding health savings accounts— in fact, all health expenses should be with pretax dollars. This is something we should be happy to negotiate about. Regarding ‘freeing them from costly regulations,’ this is about trying to undo the Obamacare rules, for instance the rule that insurance companies can’t reject people based on preexisting conditions, and the rule that insurance companies can’t charge women more than men. Our side needs to explain this better so people understand what the Republicans are attempting to do.”
The sixth demand, about elections “is, he wrote, “basically part of their continuing effort to cut down on or eliminate mail-in ballots, because that is how a lot of Democrats vote. The rets of it is fine and, as a practical matter, not something that anyone can reasonably oppose. The correct counterpoint, I would say is ‘How about doing something to keep 5 rich people from throwing out a billion dollars to buy the presidency, the Senate and the House?’ (Which is the real problem at this point.) There are plenty of ways to challenge this; for instance, a 1000% tax on SuperPAC spending.”
As for their last point about the stock trading, “they are just trying to appeal to the misconception that every member is as corrupt and evil as Matt Gaetz... I have to say one thing— they’ve done a good job of spelling out a simple platform, something which has completely eluded us again.