Editorial

Dems Are On Their Own

Republicans are united in holding the federal government hostage by refusing to support an increase in the debt ceiling to let the government pay for spending Republicans approved last year.

Republican leaders don’t care that most of the national debt accumulated during the past 40 years occurred during Republican administrations, including Trump.

The debt has increased from $997.8 billion when Ronald Reagan took office to $26.9 trillion at the end of Trump’s term in 2020, the Office of Management and Budget reports. Republican presidents were responsible for $15.95 trillion of that debt increase, while Democrats were responsible for $9.97 trillion. So which party is more fiscally responsible?

After Trump took over a recovering economy from Barack Obama, Republicans passed another tax cut for the wealthy in 2017 that, once again, failed to pay for itself with promised growth. That, along with increased costs associated with the pandemic, ballooned Trump’s deficit to $4.2 trillion in 2020. Trump added $6.7 trillion to the national debt during his four years.

But last year Republicans suspended the debt ceiling for one year, passing Trump’s $6.7 trillion debt to Trump’s successor.

The debt ceiling “debate” is just another distraction from the real controversy: the Republican Party’s efforts to deny Democratic voters the right to have their votes counted in future elections. Since the election, Republican-controlled legislatures in 18 states have passed laws to make it harder to vote and easier for courts or the legislatures to set aside those votes if they don’t like the looks of them.

Republicans have shown a willingness to deny reality by obfuscation and outright falsehood. They tell lies quicker than Democrats and mainstream media can correct the record, and members of the “GOP” cult accept those lies as a matter of faith.

The Washington Post counted a record 30,573 “false or misleading claims” by Trump during his four years in the White House. He certainly hasn’t stopped lying since he left office, as he has consistently maintained the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election for Joe Biden, and a majority of Republicans still believe the Great Misleader, despite the lack of any evidence to prove his claims. Even after the “audit” of Maricopa County election results ordered by the Republican Arizona Senate, which was finally released Sept. 24, showed Joe Biden won the county by a larger margin than originally reported, Trump claimed the results showed tens of thousands of “phantom” ballots were cast in the election.

Republicans are ginning up election audits in other states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and even Texas, where Trump won, though his 52% share was a slimmer margin than he expected, so he demanded a “forensic audit.” Gov. Greg Abbott obliged, ordering the secretary of state to audit Dallas, Harris (Houston) and Tarrant (Fort Worth) counties, which Trump lost, as well as Collin County, a Dallas suburban county. which Trump won.

It might be a coincidence that the Arizona fraudit report was competing for public attention with videos of mounted Border Patrol agents trying to herd fleeing Haitian migrants who had been camping near Del Rio, Texas, hoping to gain admission to the US.

The Haitians may have been lured to Texas after the Biden administration in May extended protections for more than 100,000 Haitians who already were in the US, because of security concerns and social unrest in Haiti, but Trump associates may have been involved in getting Haitians to gather at Del Rio, a small city of 35,000 on the Texas border across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña.

Many of the nearly 30,000 Haitians who arrived at Del Rio in mid-September came from Brazil, shortly after Trump adviser Jason Miller met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of Trump.

Many of the Haitians had fled their homeland after the devastating 2010 earthquake; they were drawn to Brazil’s and Chile’s once-booming economies, as well as Central American countries.

Why they suddenly ended up in Del Rio, which is out of the way for someone traveling from South America to Texas, is a good question. It may have been a coincidence, but, as intel expert Malcolm Nance says, “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.”

Right-wing Republicans showed up to accuse the Biden administration of failing to head off another crisis on the border, and video of the Border Patrol mounties (whose union supported Trump) generated public outrage and criticism of Biden’s immigration policies by advocates, including the Congressional Black Caucus. It looked like more propaganda by Republicans who were concerned that the crossing of Latinos at the border was not alarming enough.

The Haitians swarming Del Rio also coincided with Republican promotion of the neo-Nazi “Replacement Theory” on right-wing media, as commentators such as Tucker Carlson charged that Democrats plan to replace the White majority with people of color.

Early reports indicated most Haitians would be deported, but it turned out 13,000 were allowed to remain in the US to apply for asylum, while 8,000 voluntarily returned to Mexico and 4,000 were returned to Haiti, the Department of Homeland Security reported.

The makeshift camp under the bridge in Del Rio has been cleared and the bridge has been reopened to traffic. In the meantime, Republicans are determined to force a shutdown of the government, in the hopes of disrupting the stock markets and starting a recession, which they will then blame on the Democrats.

Democrats can and should avert the economic damage by including the debt ceiling increase as part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which cannot be stopped by Republican filibuster. That Build Back Better bill includes more investments in dealing with climate change, expanding child care, pre-kindergarten, elder care, affordable housing, two years of free community college, expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision and other projects. It would be paid for through tax increases for the wealthiest households and increased tax enforcement of those wealthy households.

We hope the threat of the Republicans forcing default on the national debt will motivate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Synema (D-Ariz.), who profess concerns over the economic impact of the Build Back Better spending, to get back in line with the Democratic caucus to pass the budget reconciliation bill.

While they’re at it, Democrats should suspend the filibuster on voting rights bills and pass the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2784), the compromise bill Manchin drafted with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democratic senators.

The bill would set national standards to protect access to the vote, end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, begin to overhaul the broken campaign finance system, and create new safeguards against subversion of the electoral process.

Suspension of the filibuster, at least for voting rights bills, probably is necessary to get it through the Senate, since Republicans unanimously opposed the more sweeping For the People Act in June, and no Republican senator has agreed to support the Manchin compromise. Ten Republicans would be needed to overcome the filibuster, and Chuck Schumer is lucky to keep his 50 Democrats together.

God help us if the Senate Dems fail to get their act together. Because Republicans will be no help at all. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2021

Populist.com