Biden Has the Right Idea About the Freedom Caucus

[Celerity]

The White House says there should be no negotiating over an oncoming government shutdown.

https://prospect.org/politics/2023-09-21-biden-has-right-idea-freedom-caucus/



America is staring down the barrel of yet another Republican-imposed government shutdown—the 21st in history. As my colleague David Dayen writes, this wasn’t supposed to happen. The debt ceiling deal from a few months ago included an agreement on what the budget should look like next year. But the Freedom Caucus—a couple dozen of the most extremist right-wing House Republicans—has forced the GOP to renege on the deal. The reason, it seems, is that they are incoherently mad at President Biden and the Democratic Party. They can’t agree on what specifically they want, whether it’s defunding the prosecution of Donald Trump, or extracting even more cuts from federal agencies, or a personal baby seal club for every Republican voter, or what. A purely messaging budget resolution that would have funded the government for just one month in exchange for deep spending cuts just went down in flames. But one thing is clear: The Freedom Caucus is extremely mad.

Luckily, President Biden has the right idea: letting House Republicans twist in the wind. Now, I thought it was the wrong move to negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling, though Biden ended up getting a much more favorable deal than I had expected. But since that deal was done, how else to approach a party that can’t hold up its own end of a bargain? In the past, the Democrats have been less willing to stand up for themselves. Back in 2011, for instance, President Obama decided to try to negotiate a deficit reduction deal by offering up hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security and Medicare in return for Republicans raising the debt ceiling. Those cuts were thankfully avoided only because the Freedom Caucus refused to countenance even a token tax increase on the rich.

Or consider a stipulation of the House GOP budget resolution that just went down in flames due to the caucus’s mad rage: the creation of a bipartisan commission to come up with suggestions to cut the budget deficit. The real purpose of a commission like this is to try to shove through large cuts to Social Security and Medicare to make budget headroom for tax cuts for the rich, which is so unpopular that it could never be passed through the ordinary legislative process. We know this thanks to the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission, created by an executive order from none other than President Obama back in February 2010. The commission produced a report whose very first recommendation was, sure enough, a large tax cut for the rich (though it did not get support from all the commission members). These days, by contrast, the Biden administration calls such an idea a “death panel” for Social Security. The Democrats really have wised up on this question.



As an aside, it is quite remarkable how argument-proof this demand for starving grandma is to all available evidence, at least on the right. The endless growth in Medicare spending, which is by far the largest driver of projections showing massive deficit increases over the long term, has actually leveled off over the last decade or so—saving about $3.6 trillion since 2011 relative to the prior spending trajectory. As The New York Times reports, nobody is quite sure why it happened. But Republicans don’t seem to have even noticed. For them, starving grandma is an end in itself. Structurally speaking, the basic problem here is that the U.S. constitutional structure requires compromise during times of divided government, but a critical mass of Republicans are simply too crazy to negotiate. Whereas in a parliamentary system, the majority has the full run of government, and hence there is no need to get opposition buy-in for anything, in our archaic system, we do. So when one party goes nuts, the government tends to get shut down all the time.

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[Fiendish Thingy]

1. With record corporate profits, calls for austerity ring hollow

But that won’t stop the performative centrists from claiming it is the reasonable, responsible path.

[LiberaBlueDem]

2. Republican spending

Increase defense spending, more subsides for oil companies and less taxes on the really rich.

And spend less by taking a little more from Granny, from schools and planetary protections.

Only ones happy with their plan are really rich people.

[DURHAM D]

3. 11 angry white men.

Too bad about their little --------.

[marybourg]

4. In a parliamentary system, as we all have

witnessed many times, in order to *get* to a majority there has to very often be compromise and negotiation and getting into bed with your adversaries. And when it falls apart, as it frequents does, the whole electoral process has to start over. If any system of government is archaic, it’s that one.

[Celerity]

6. to form a government in a parliamentary system you need to have a majority

In Sweden, for instance, you have very few cases of MPs crossing over once the government is formed in numbers large enough t make a difference. The exception, of course, is if there is a successful vote of no confidence.

The US Constitutional system is riddled with long wave Constitutional ticking time bombs (the Electoral College for one, with the very nature of the US Senate for another instance, where soon only 30% of the population will control 70% of the seats, with that 30% far whiter, more reactionary, poorer, less educated, far more RW, more fundie religious, more homophobic, more racist, more misogynistic, etc than the 70% who will only control 30% or so of the seats) that make its systemic collapse more and more likely as the decades (a couple of centuries in some cases) have played out.

[malaise]

7. THIS

The truth

[Celerity]

8. The US was built to allow for a massive train (what I'm calling the system of governance and growth)

to come into existence. The system of train tracks was built to an extremely strong and durable degree, to allow the train to become larger and faster than any ever built before by humanity. The flaw in the tracks is that, at taproot level, it assumes some semblance of good faith.

That good faith was tossed aside once (The American Civil War), but the train and its tracks, whilst derailed and ripped apart, was not so large that one side, a stronger side (The North) could not extend itself, and set the train back upon the tracks, after they were repaired.

NOW, however, the train is so fast, so large, so intertwined with so many variables (both internal and international) that when good faith is tossed aside again (by the Regugs), that the force of derailment, the damage done to the tracks and the train will be exponentially worse. There also are now far more weapons (at every level, both kinetic and psychological) with which to bring forth sheer destruction and atomisation.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

[malaise]

12. Profound

That said I think you left out the other war that facilitated quite a bit of the good faith legislation - the Cold War. After all most of the anti- social good policies and overt racism were part of Reagan and his goons’ desire to get back to the robber baron era that Roosevelt destroyed following the Great Depression.
The collapse of the Soviet Union gave them that opening.

[Celerity]

13. Yes, but I was only referring to an actual true derailment, where the government was blown apart

The Civil War era is (so far) the only time the Union of the States was rent asunder.

An example that could cause a second cleavage:

Dog help the nation if the RW SCOTUS grants foetal personhood. It could lead to another dissolution of the Union of the States if certain infection points go truly pear shaped.

If the SCOTUS rules that foetal personhood exists (thus outlawing all or mostly all abortions nationwide), they set up a nightmare scenario that could end in the Union of the States ripping itself apart again.

Many of the Blue States will ignore their ruling.

You then will have the POTUS (regardless of Dem or Rethug) forced to make a choice:

1. The POTUS will perhaps try to bring the Blue States to heel, perhaps by force if necessary. If the POTUS (a Rethug is far more likely to do this) uses force to try and make the Blue States comply, you may well have kinetic violence and/or multiple real, large secession movements spring to life in those Blue States that are openly defying the SCOTUS foetal personhood ruling.

OR

2. If the POTUS ignores the Blue States openly defying the SCOTUS ruling, then the Red States may well start to ignore SCOTUS rulings THEY disagree with. The same chaos potentially ensues at that point.

[malaise]

14. I'm more optimistic about institutions surviving but I do see chaos on the horizon

The trials will continue for years but many many of the enablers and financiers will end up in prison and already some of their the RW alliances and groups are fracturing.

[Celerity]

15. I am starting to look at the US like siamese twins where one twin has joined a death cult

and is actively trying to kill the other twin, even knowing it will kill them as well.

[malaise]

16. Good analogy

I need a glass of white wine after that earth tremor😀

[marybourg]

9. But that "majority" is often made up of parties antithetical to those forming

the government. A prime example has been recent Israel, where secular parties have had to ally with ultra-orthodox ones to form a “majority”. With great in-fighting and paralysis ensuing. Great Britain has given us many examples, also. And there is no dearth of all the negative attributes you list in parliamentary systems around the world. Amazing to even suggest such a thing.

[Celerity]

10. Not, it is not that common to have parties that are 'antithetical' to each other form a

government, especially here in the core EU nations, and even more so here in the Nordics.

I would never trade the Nordic Model for the US Model.

Massively positive, pro-humanity things (for example universal health care, family leave, free or extreme low cost tertiary education, etc etc) that are considered bog standard normal for most other advanced Western nations are considered radical, are labelled (ludicrously) wild left wing socialism and or (even more ludicrously) Marxist/communist by vast swathes of the American political apparatus and the voters who support those parts' opposition to those things.

It also is so terribly ironic, as those same nefarious forces actually DO support socialism, they support corporate socialism, wherein most profits are kept private, whilst so many monstrously large losses are socialised, fobbed off onto the masses at large.

[HelpImSurrounded]

5. Good. Never negotiate with terrorists

[Seeking Serenity]

11. The "Freedom" (i.e. the Rebellion) Caucus

Should be heavily surveilled by our loyal intelligence community. Wouldn't be difficult to get them talking sedition