When the House Republicans who initially refused to accept Kevin McCarthy as speaker finally agreed to do so back in January, they allegedly received assurances from him and his supporters that McCarthy would genuinely oppose Democrat initiatives, not just go along with them as a controlled opposition. And that seems to be the case with the new debt ceiling deal, as Biden’s handlers appear to have made some significant concessions to McCarthy. However, it would be premature to think that the worst days of the uniparty are behind us. McCarthy has just given us a disquieting indication that he isn’t completely the reformed RINO he has seemed to be of late.
On Sunday, McCarthy declared confidently on FOX News Sunday that his deal with the devil — er, that is, with Old Joe Biden — was a “step in the right direction” for the GOP. He asserted that “more than 95 percent of all those in the conference were very excited” about the deal, and gave some reasons why: “We finally were able to cut spending. We’re the first Congress to vote for cutting spending year over year. So, you cut that back, you fully fund the veterans, you fully fund defense, but you take that nondefense spending all the way back lower than ’22 levels.” That does sound swell indeed, and McCarthy wasn’t finished.
The man who will go down in history as the successor of Nancy Pelosi then boasted about how his tough negotiating tactics had forced the Democrats to make concessions, particularly on new rules that some of those receiving government handouts had to do something for the money: “Now you get work requirements for TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] and SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], where the Democrats said that was a red line.”
McCarthy even claimed to have made inroads into the government’s ever-expanding environmentalist initiatives: “Now you’re able to reform NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act]. How frustrating we are with — it’s been 40 years since you could streamline it.” Streamlined government is good, but less government altogether is better, and McCarthy wasn’t quite up to that point. He reeled off the acronyms of these programs, without bothering to explain what they were, like the seasoned Beltway insider that he undeniably is.
He did, however, promise an easing of at least some of the stultifying maze of regulations that have done so much to blunt American initiative in recent years. “To build a road in America,” he pointed out, “takes you seven years to review.” But he promised relief: “We limit that, where it’s focused, where you can only review it one to two years. We’re going to get America working again. We get the process working again.” He added: “We are — we always have these omnibuses at the end of the year, we now penalize Congress if they don’t get their jobs done.”
All in all, McCarthy claimed this was a big victory: “There is so much in this that’s positive.” It looked even better by comparison to previous deals: “And measure it to all the other debt ceilings, when Republicans had the presidency, the Senate and the House, did they ever cut spending? No, they increased it. We were able to do this when the president said he wasn’t even going to talk to us.” Fantastic, Kevin! Wow! Elect this guy president, right? He continued: “This is really a step in the right direction. It puts us in a trajectory that’s different. We put a statutory cap on spending 1 percent for the next six years.” But then came his RINO bombshell.
McCarthy’s final summation of his great victory was succinct: “So, we let government grow but at a slower rate.”
Related: BIDEN CAVES: Debt Deal with Spending Cuts Struck
What?
How’s that again? You let government grow, but at a slower rate? This is precisely what establishment Republicans have been doing for decades, earning the justified ire and contempt of millions of patriots: they have let the statist, socialist Democrats set the agenda and largely agreed to it, while just quibbling with a bit here and there, or promising to get the whole thing done more cheaply and efficiently.
This is precisely what a RINO, a Republican In Name Only, is. Dwight D. Eisenhower, as beloved as he was, became the first of these when he took office as president in 1953. He made it clear to the Republicans that even though his was the first Republican presidency since the beginning of the Depression, he accepted the New Deal and all the massive expansion of government that it entailed. Republicans would not roll any of that expansion back. They’d just fine-tune it a little.
RINOs have been fine-tuning our long march to socialism ever since. If McCarthy’s debt ceiling deal is another step in that direction, we are better off without it, as well as better off with a House speaker who will actually oppose the Democrats, not just drag his feet a little on what they want to get done.
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