What the current congressional GOP leadership wants to do, eliminate domestic safety net programs and consumer protections is highly unpopular. So, they keep their mouths shut about it. The NYT writes:
At a news conference this month to showcase how Republicans will handle their looming debt ceiling showdown with Democrats, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was asked to explain what specific spending cuts his party would support in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap.
“Exactly what those are, we’re not willing to lay out here today,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that plans would be determined in consultation with House Republicans.
The refrain has been familiar in recent weeks as Republicans have insisted that they want “structural” fiscal changes in exchange for voting to raise the borrowing cap, but they have so far declined to offer a cohesive plan outlining what programs they would cut.
Since the radical right GOP leadership won’t say, one can reasonably speculate that
(1) at least Medicare, social security, Medicaid, food stamps, all other welfare programs, the IRS, the EPA, the Education Department, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are all slated for total elimination; and
(2) tax law and business regulations are to be revised to enhance the flow of both power and wealth to wealthy and/or powerful elites, big corporations and Christian groups and businesses.
That’s just fair and balanced. That assessment is based on decades of government, secularism and safety net hating rhetoric from the radical right. Why not simply believe that they really do want to do what they have been saying they want to do for decades?
Lest we forget:
“The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” -- Government hater Ronald Reagan, 1986 (37 years ago)
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Globally, democracy is in fairly bad shape. It is under constant attack by greedy, corrupt authoritarians, plutocrats, theocrats and the like. The Guardian writes about citizen’s assemblies that are being tried in a pro-democracy effort by people in political disagreement to compromise and move forward without hating each other’s guts. TG writes:
Citizens’ assemblies, a phenomenon that is gaining in popularity around the globe, date back to ancient Athens, where legislative panels, courts and councils were chosen via random selection. In a practice known as sortition, Greek citizens over the age of 30 were enlisted to debate governmental matters from city finances to military strategy. More recently, citizens’ assemblies have convened to hammer out solutions to such issues as homelessness in Los Angeles, the allocation of a $5bn budget in Melbourne, Australia, and the longstanding ban on abortion in Ireland.
In 2017, after meeting over the course of five weekends for deliberation, an Irish citizens’ assembly came up with a recommendation to legalize the procedure. Sixty-six per cent of Irish voters later approved the referendum, ending more than four decades of fruitless political debate.
Modern citizens’ assemblies are typically convened by legislative bodies, which work alongside non-profit groups to reach out to large numbers of citizens at random – sending letters like the one Bajwa received in the mail – then sorting the respondents who express interest according to social and economic factors. The result is a group of people who are randomly selected and reflect the demographics of the population as a whole.
Sortition, a word that might evoke the next chapter in the Hunger Games franchise, offers a revived spin on democracy. Instead of leaving the decision-making up to elected officials, citizens’ assemblies can offer a special interests-free alternative to politics as we know it.
This is an interesting development. Given America’s deeply polarized, corrupt and broken two-party system, maybe this offers a helpful component in the battle to save democracy from tyranny, kleptocracy and whatnot.
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A core goal of Christian nationalism is to tamp down civil liberties in an effort to shift power from citizens to church organizations and religious leaders. The Hill writes:
The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee has disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which focused on issues including voting rights, freedom of assembly and criminal justice reform policies.
In a committee meeting on Tuesday, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said this doesn’t mean topics related to these issues can’t be brought before the committee.
“Let me be very clear: any topic that’s not mentioned in the subcommittee jurisdiction is reserved for the full committee,” Comer said. “We can have a committee hearing in this committee on basically anything we want.”
Notice Comer’s intentional propaganda. Yes, the remaining full committee certainly can have hearings on civil rights and liberties. But it is reasonable to think that it won’t. Whatever actions that might be taken will be in defense of what the Christian nationalist wing of the GOP has been delivering for years, namely weakening of targeted voting rights and civil liberties such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Of course, gun rights will be defended if needed, but that is unlikely to be necessary. The radical right Supreme Court has probably made nearly all existing gun safety laws unconstitutional. That issue probably will not come up.
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