UPDATED 12/21: Democrats won, GOP/MAGA/Trump/Musk lost. Simple as that. Oh, and of course the CR continued a pay rise for Congress. The ‘compromise’ that 34 GOP members (many of the same that defected on the first try) opposed was essentially the deal we had already struck with the GOP for a temporary CR earlier this year. Most of what was stripped out was put there in by GOP leadership in hopes of log-rolling the GOP caucus. Trump and Musk have egg on their face and Trump failed to get his debt ceiling reform right out the gate. So it is now official: Donald Trump is a lame duck the day he takes office. He is unable to control the votes of his own congressional caucus. They don’t fear him. They don’t respect him. He is proven irrelevant to future elections for a significant faction of office holders and that does not bode well for Trump being able to execute a legislative agenda. So, good news for the opposition! That’s us!
The current Continuing Resolution/Budget Ceiling crisis arising from the GOP/MAGA war in the U.S. House that may shut down the federal government as we head into Christmas makes one thing abundantly clear: Donald Trump is a lame duck even before his Presidency begins.
What tells us clearly that GOP/MAGA pols believe that Trump is already a lame duck is that they are bucking him on a major policy point on day one: the debt ceiling. Trump wants it raised until 2027 (or simply eliminated!) so that he can cut taxes for billionaires and corporations and massively inflate the deficit once again, and a sufficiently sized contingent of deficit hawks in the House are unwilling to grant it to him.
With almost 40 GOP Reps willing to buck Trump’s most important agenda item on day one, it is clear that Trump is not going to easily pass any legislative agenda, at least not if it expands the national debt and/or continues to grow the deficit at the unprecedented rate of his first term.
The Republicans are currently trying to knit their majority back together with massive cuts to entitlements (est. at $2.5 trillion), which simply won’t make it through the Democratically-controlled Senate. You can follow the latest negotiations and developments on the negotiations at Politico’s live coverage page.
If a shut down is to be avoided, the only realistic path is to honor the original deal with Democrats for the Continuing Resolution. Almost any other outcome will simply fail in the Senate. If MAGA retreats and basically honors the existing deal against the Musk/Trump duumvirate’s wishes, we will know that Trump is truly powerless to impose his fickle will on his own party.
This may turn out to be a major debacle for the GOP/MAGA right out of the gate. But this is also the very disfunction and infighting that has paralyzed the GOP-controlled House since 2022, and presumably the exact outcome voters wanted (or, at least, should have expected) by granting them another term in control of the House. Careful what you vote for, people! You may get it!
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I agree with the main premise of this article. I do have one point that concerns me a bit. While I certainly would not want to enable Trump in any of his plans to aid the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, I have to say that I actually agree with one thing he is asking for: eliminating the debt limit. Like the Aggregate Expenditure Limit in AZ, the federal debt limit is an absurdity. In both cases, it is the fundamental job of the legislative branch at both levels to decide on expenditures for the government. Having the additional limit just adds drama but no value to the process.
I do understand that Trump has other motives for asking for this, and that in the short term it benefits “our side” to leave the debt limit there as a future forcing function. I would be opposed to just postponing a debt limit fight until a time of Trump’s choosing. But eliminating it would be a good thing.
And that might end up being the only thing that I even partially agree with that on. We’ll see. Stopped clock, etc.