Alternate View of Speaker Contest

For John, BLUF:  It is easy to take something at face value, but sometimes it is deeper, as with the Contest for House Speaker.  Those 20 Republican House Members really are interested in changing how the House does business, to move away from the more Massachusetts General Court approach of the Pelosi era.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A Significant Majority of Republican Voters Agree With the GOP Rebels

From Pajama Media, by Reporter Stacey Lennox, 4 January 2023, 1:36 PM.

Here is the lede plus two:

The Republican establishment that still believes they can manage voters’ expectations to maintain the status quo may want to do a reality check.  The base had high expectations in 2022, and the elections did not meet those expectations.  Many voters suspect that at least some establishment Republicans put a greater emphasis on ensuring that candidates tied to President Trump did not win than on winning back the Senate and a more significant majority in the House.

Then, the GOP members they did manage to elect voted to keep the wildly unpopular Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as Senate Republican Leader.  Then, with a RealClearPolitics average favorability rating of -33%, McConnell turned around and betrayed Republican voters by helping Democrats pass a $1.7 trillion Omnibus package along with 17 of his colleagues.

No one should be surprised that Republican voters are fed up.  They organized the Tea Party and elected candidates who promised fiscal responsibility.  When that did not work, they elected a reality television star as president.  Yet the incumbents in Washington still don’t learn.  So while CNN wrings its hands about Republican chaos and Karl Rove lectures the Freedom Caucus on TV, voters want change and are getting ready to close their wallets.

This all looks like 20 Republican representatives mad at Houose Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, of San Diego.  However, that is a surface analysis.  As I said on City Life (or was it The Dawn Patrol) this moorning, they re really mad at our own Rep, Ms Lori Trahan (D-MA).  She, and a lot of Democrats, and 17 Republican Senators, raided the Pork Barrel last month to give us a 1.7. TRILLION dollar Omnibus Spending Bill, when our Budget deficit and national debt are both out of control.♠

The Omnibus spending bill is the grab bag of what is supposed to be a dozen different appropriations of discretionary spending.♥

Part of the problem with the National Debt is the need to be paying the annual interest.  This is happening in a borrowing market where the interest keeps going up.  Several media sources (e.g., CBN News) say things to the effect:  "In fact federal interest payments are on track to cost more than the defense budget in the coming years."

Regards  —  Cliff
♠  According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the current national debt of the U.S. is $31.3 trillion.   Roughly 12% of total government spending for the year, or $48 billion, was employed in maintaining the U.S. national debt as of October 2022.
♥  FedSmith dot Com described the bill thusly:  The Omnibus Spending Bill (Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023) is a monster bill. It is a 4,000+ page amalgamation of a wide variety of topics, many of which could not get passed as individual bills in Congress. Some of these bills are inserted together in one large bill and passed into law as the government budget has to be passed for the federal government to continue to function. It was not read before it passed. No amendments were considered.