Lots of those ‘promise ‘s’ ain’t gonna go anywhere …
The ‘system’ that HAS operated for centuries?
IS gonna keep on operating….
Trump or the Freedom Caucus people may try…But things will only bend but so much….
Again?
Maybe the Democrats have done BETTER in losing the House?
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made a lot of promises to become House speaker.
Republicans knew he was giving up a lot, and some of those concessions are already causing problems for the House GOP. Three of the 11 bills House Republican leaders promised would go straight to the floor to kick off the year have been pulled back because of opposition within the party — a sign of the growing pains of a new majority.
McCarthy promised action on the “fair tax,” a decades-old idea resurfaced by Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.) that would do away with all federal taxes except for a hefty sales tax and abolish the IRS.
Previous iterations went nowhere for a reason: It’s wildly unpopular, and most analysts say it would hit lower-income and middle-class Americans the hardest.
GOP second thoughts: Many Republicans aren’t on board. McCarthy himself suggested on Tuesday that he doesn’t support the bill. …
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“They’re not going to go anywhere in the Senate, and they certainly aren’t votes that people in swing districts should be taking,” she said.
Democrats think they’ve hit the jackpot.
“It will impose a tax hike that is dramatic on 90 percent of the American people, working families, middle-class folks, seniors, and those who aspire to be part of the middle class, the poor, the sick and the afflicted,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday at a news conference with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Schumer has hit Republicans on the fair tax every day this week. President Biden said Tuesday that he’s thrilled to talk about it, and he’s expected to bring it up again in a speech in Virginia today….
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Strengthening border security is a priority of Republicans, and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) pushed for a vote on his border bill as McCarthy sought his support for speaker.
GOP second thoughts: As we reported this week with our colleague Marianna Sotomayor, the bill doesn’t have the votes. Some Republicans don’t like the asylum components, others want it to go through the committee process, and others think it is bad optics for Republicans to focus only on border security and ignore immigration policies.
Voting on the border security bill and the sales tax bill in their current form would be “bad policy and bad politics,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who said Friday that he had received a commitment from McCarthy’s aides that the border security bill would through committee….
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Republicans promised to show their support for police officers during the campaign as they tried to paint Democrats as hostile toward local law enforcement
GOP second thoughts: But during their first week of legislative work this month, Republican leaders had to remove a pair of pro-police bills from the floor — one that would require prosecutors to show the number of cases they don’t prosecute and another that would express support for law enforcement — because some members wanted changes….
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Booting Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee wasn’t a McCarthy concession — but it was a long-standing promise should he become speaker.
GOP second thoughts: Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) indicated she won’t vote to kick Omar off the committee and said she needs to see the text of the resolution before she decides. Republican leadership, at a closed-door meeting Wednesday, went through a list of things Omar has said about Israel to shore up support for the measure, Marianna reports.
“It was definitely a threatening message to members,” said one lawmaker in the room…..