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Posted on 12/19/2024 8:40:06 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Speaker Mike Johnson is getting some well-deserved coal in his stocking from conservatives livid with the Louisiana Republican’s attempt to play Santa with a Christmas list stopgap spending bill.
The massive house-of-cards measure Johnson countenanced collapsed Wednesday amid scathing criticism from conservatives and an incoming president who urged Republicans to get “SMART and Tough” with Democrats.
Johnson loathes the descriptor, but the proposed resolution the speaker has presided over is nothing more than a bloated omnibus bill packed with pork, censorship, and sweetheart deals for Congress. Turning from his reported intentions to deliver a clean “continuing resolution” to keep the bloated federal government fully open for another few months, the simple spending plan has grown to a bloated 1,500-plus pages.
On Wednesday, the scam proposal included a possible pay hike for congressional members and a provision allowing senators and representatives to opt out of Obamacare for better taxpayer-funded insurance.
Rank-and-file lawmakers currently earn $174,000 annually, with higher pay for those in leadership posts. House members earlier this year blocked a proposed pay raise despite complaints from some.
“I live in the Washington, D.C., area. It’s an expensive area in which to live,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., said in June. “This is a serious issue as to whether or not the only people who can serve here are rich people.”
With plenty of perks, federal lawmakers are faring much better than most Americans, critics assert. The proposed pay jump would potentially give lawmakers a 3.8 percent raise, or about $6,600 a year, pushing gross pay to $180,600 in 2025.
The congressional benefits package would give members a pass from the awful Obamacare health insurance the First Branch of government has stuck millions of Americans with. It also would allow the lawmakers to enroll in the Cadillac plans of the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program.
Per usual, a dull sword of Damocles hangs over the absurd stopgap spending battle, with the threat of a “government shutdown” if Congress doesn’t reach a deal by midnight Friday (Spoiler Alert: Much of the government doesn’t actually shut down at a funding impasse). Johnson’s gold chariot turns back into a pumpkin. It’s a Cinderella story in which many of the players are the wicked stepmother.
On Wednesday, a day after the omnibus was released, the complaints came fast and furious. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his incoming co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), blasted the bloated spending package, which crumbed under its own weight and awfulness. Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that he is “totally against” the stopgap spending plan. Musk admonished the House on X, the social platform he owns, asserting, “This bill should not pass.”
“Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?” Musk wrote above a photo of the massive omnibus.
Some lawmakers were not as delicate.
“There’s a certain sandwich that’s made of feces, and that’s what I would compare this to,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said Wednesday, according to CBS News. She raised concerns about jamming $110 billion in disaster relief into the omnibus bill. “This is a s**t sandwich. I don’t know how else to say that we’re being forced into this position.”
Fellow Florida Rep. Kat Cammack described the measure as “a band-aid that is laced with fentanyl,” the news outlet reported.
Johnson was feeling the strain early on over a catch-all spending bill that could prove professionally costly for the ever-equivocating speaker, who, with a razor-thin majority, is hanging on to his leadership post by a fraying thread.
Complicating matters further for the embattled Johnson, Trump and incoming Vice President J.D. Vance on Wednesday called for a clean continuing resolution and for raising the debt ceiling before the nation’s untenable $36.2 trillion debt bumps up against the reinstated ceiling on Day 1 of the new year.
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025,” Trump and Vance said in a statement posted on X. “The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”
The soon-to-be 47th president rallied Republicans to “GET SMART and TOUGH.”
“If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF. It is [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [President Joe] Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief,” Trump wrote. He added that the chaos surrounding the funding plan wouldn’t be happening “IF WE HAD A REAL PRESIDENT. WE WILL IN 32 DAYS!”
“Smart” and “tough” have not necessarily been the hallmarks of Johnson in his rocky tenure as Speaker of the House. While there surely are political realities all congressional leaders face, particularly in crafting spending bills, this is a mess of Johnson’s making. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters late Wednesday that Republicans would “continue to work through the night, through the morning to get an agreement we can bring to the floor.”
They’ll need to come up with something better than selling out conservative principles and playing wet nurse to big-spending liberals if they hope to have a deal worth making. A deal that reflects the mandate that voters just handed conservatives.
In other words, they should govern like they won an election.
“We won. @HouseGOP should start acting like it,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, wrote in response to Musk’s post on X.
Typical RINO, self-serving, deceitful, two-faced weasel needing to be excoriated and replaced, as soon as possible. Say 1/21/25?
why he didn’t prepare a clean CR - have Ds vote against it - leading to gov’t shutdown to blame on D’s for a mere 2 weeks until new Congress beats me
Johnson, like so many in DC, could “read the room” inside the DC Swamp, but became completely obvious to what the Country was actually thinking.
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money laundering, all of it.
“money laundering, all of it.”
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More like outright theft. Musk correctly called it stealing.
Why not put Gaetz in as Speaker of the House? He can serve in that capacity better than the current Reps.
I often wondered How Johnson got picked so quickly,,,
The only good thing I’ve seen him do is release the January 6 tapes
Example is the ongoing homeless " help" efforts here in CA.
THey have to always allocate first.
The perfect question!
it’s not an appointment position. The members must vote on it. Also Gaetz stepped down from Congress, and highly unlikely that he’d get the votes anyway.
And all these grants take administration, keeping the deep state government employees paid.
He was handed that bill by dem/rep senators and their lobbyists and like a beaten Dog just went along with it just like friggn HOR rinos always do!
The CR reads like it came straight from Chuck Shummer’s dest with no changes or negotiations.
Why is it never possible for Congress to propose a bill that solves theissues at hand without loading it full of expensive and unnecessary garbage? They’re all guilty of that.
Regarding shutdowns, you must remember several things:And THAT's why Johnson is in the predicament that he's in right now.
- Mitch McConnell has vowed to NEVER allow a government shutdown. The Senate is his Preciousssssss, and he would do anything to keep a government shutdown from happening.
- See: 8/7/2022 - Trump says McConnell ‘got played like a fiddle’ on Democrats spending bill
Former President Trump laid into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday after Senate Democrats passed their long-awaited health care, tax and climate package.“Mitch McConnell got played like a fiddle with the vote today by the Senate Democrats,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“First he gave them the fake Infrastructure Bill, then Guns, never used the Debt Ceiling for negotiating purposes (gave it away for NOTHING!), and now this,” Trump said. “Mitch doesn’t have a clue – he is sooo bad for the Republican Party!”
- See: 7/9/2022 - ‘We Got Our Ass Kicked’: John Kennedy Laments Senate Republican Loss to Democrats on CHIPS, Reconciliation
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said on Thursday that Senate Republicans got tricked into passing a semiconductor bill after believing that a Democrat reconciliation bill was dead.While Republicans were split on the merits of the legislation, most Republicans, including House Republican leadership, did not want to pass the CHIPS legislation if Democrats were to pursue a reconciliation bill to pass climate change, Obamacare, and other leftist priorities.
The same day that the Senate passed the CHIPS bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced a deal on the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that would aim to reduce the deficit, raise taxes, and boost climate change and Obamacare spending.
Announcing the deal immediately after Senate Republicans backed the CHIPS bill left many GOP lawmakers with egg on their faces.
"We got our ass kicked. It’s just that simple. Looks to me like we got rinky-doo’d. That’s a Louisiana word for 'screwed.' And we got our ass kicked. That’s the way my people back home see it," Kennedy said...
McConnell also lost to Schumer on a debt ceiling fight in 2021, which led to a deal to temporarily create a carveout for the legislative filibuster. One former senior GOP aide said the deal was to save McConnell’s "ego."
- Knowing #1, Pelosi and Schumer always scheme to stall Republicans in the House and Senate in order to create debt ceiling crises because they know that McConnell is the weak link in that chain.
I don't know why McCarthy took so long in the House to get his spending bills worked out before slamming his side with it as the debt ceiling crisis loomed. Perhaps he was counting on Pelosi's promise to "always stand by him?" Perhaps he didn't see how he was being manipulated into wasting time over the summer in order to create the debt ceiling crisis that Democrats would then exploit in the Senate?
- Can't you see how Johnson is being manipulated into the same trap by Democrats? They drag out and delay in the House until deadlines loom, and then rely on McConnell in the Senate to react as he's been conditioned to. That's why McConnell was pressuring Johnson to comply with the Senate-side bill over Johnson's House bill.
- Can't you see how things might be different if our side coordinated between the two chambers, compared notes, told each other what the Democrats are doing on their side of the aisle in their respective chambers?
Because you know that's what Pelosi and Schumer are doing. It's why our side is always caught by surprise -- because our side in the Senate thinks the House is beneath them. That's why our side thinks it has to be the Senate bill that "fixes" what the peons in the House did.
Look up the Reconciliation procedure to see why Democrats push so hard for single omnibus bills.
Democrats can't control the vote on separate budget bills from the House because they can't get enough votes for cloture in the Senate. To get around that, they force everything into single omnibus bills that they can push through the reconciliation process that only requires a simple majority in the Senate to pass, but they can only do it once a year per revenue, spending, and debt ceiling bill.
The longer that Senate Democrats fail to act on House bills, the shorter the time becomes to pass a budget or hit the debt ceiling. Democrats and the LAAP-dog media always blame Republicans for "shutting down the government" saying that Republicans won't send them something that will pass in the Senate.
This puts pressure on the House to either send the Senate what Democrats want, or Democrats will use reconciliation to amend one massive omnibus spending bill via reconciliation and send it back to the House, again blaming them for a government shutdown if they don't pass the Senate bill.
The limit of one spending, one revenue, and one debt ceiling bill in the Senate makes the Democrats strategize how to use this streamlined process for maximum impact for Democrats. That's where the brinksmanship comes in. They can take separate revenue bills from the House and amend them together with Democrat pet budget items into one massive bill that only requires a simple majority in the Senate to pass, and then force the House to accept the Democrat bill or shut down the government (or Ukraine will die, or the Israeli hostages will dies...).
See this article from earlier today: Chuck Schumer brags to Senators about Mike Johnson giving Dems everything they wanted on Ukraine, foreign aid: report
Excerpt:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer bragged on the Senate floor on Wednesday about how House Speaker Mike Johnson gave into Democratic demands in foreign aid packages.Human Events' Jack Posobiec said he heard from a senior Republican official that Schumer "was just on the Senate floor bragging to other members about Speaker Johnson giving Democrats everything they wanted in the Ukraine and foreign aid packages."
Keep in mind that the Democrats have NOT used their 2024 debt ceiling reconciliation bill yet, and the clock is ticking until January 3 when Republicans take over the Senate. Of course Jeffries is angry that this CR bill is being stopped. Schumer doesn't want the debt ceiling raised for 2025, because he'd lose the one sledgehammer that he's been so effective at using.
And they almost got Johnson to fall for it again, too, until Vivek, Elon, and President Trump stepped in to stop it.
-PJ
Gaetz was not there to single handedly prevent this monstrosity but thankfully a few brave souls stepped up.
Paul says that Republicans always get soft when this happens, but it's time for that to change.
-PJ
HOYER:
I am surviving on $1452 a month of Soc SEC
YOU ARE HAVING A PROBLEM???
F U
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