Mitch Stops Obstructing Gov. To Obstruct His Family (Satire)

Alexandra Petri (The Washington Post) satirizes McConnell's announcement that that he will give up his Minority Leader post in November. 

Mitch McConnell will step down from his longtime post as Senate Republican leader in November, he announced on Wednesday, to spend more time eroding the rights of his family.

“I got into public service hoping to make a difference,” McConnell said in a floor speech. “And I did: a negative difference. Things are objectively worse now, thanks to me. Knowing that, I can retire from this role.”

Looking back on a tenure that saw him chip away at the nation’s political institutions, obstruct President Barack Obama at every turn, reshape the Supreme Court to strip reproductive rights from women, and fail to convict President Donald Trump after he incited an insurrection that flooded onto the floor of the Senate, McConnell said he was eager to spend more time fraying the fabric of his own home and family circle.

At time of writing, he had already moved his armchair to a very inconvenient location.

“For two decades,” McConnell said, “obstruction has been my passion. Just because I will no longer be Senate minority leader does not mean that I won’t get to keep doing what I love.”

McConnell gestured broadly at the country and said he was eager to turn his destructive gaze from public institutions to private ones — family dinner, board game nights, sitting quietly on the couch reading a book. “These seem sturdy,” he noted, “but so did the Senate when I got there, and now look at it. As I look at it, you can’t spell Monopoly without N-O.”

In retirement, McConnell eagerly anticipates standing in the middle of pickleball courts with his arms folded while people try to play around him, digging up his neighbors’ gardens and unplugging the pottery wheels of people trying to learn ceramics.

“It won’t be the same without the heady rush of power to devastate millions of human lives,” McConnell sighed, “but it will be nice to be able to keep a hand in, all the same.”

McConnell noted that he had already been offered a number of positions in the private sector for once he finishes his regular term in January 2027: as a disembodied, evil eye presiding over a blighted land; sitting in a lifeguard chair peacefully while people struggle and call for help; or just parked on an expressway at rush hour in the path of emergency vehicles.

But the leader said he would be happy simply going on neighborhood walks with his loved ones, throwing passing children’s ice creams on to the ground and turning over turtles “the wrong way.”

Despite McConnell’s years of dedicated service catering to Republicans’ worst impulses and making it possible for them to do the bad things they had been trying to do, many in the party responded to news of the departure by spitting in the outgoing leader’s eye and saying “Good riddance.”

McConnell shrugged. “This is all they know how to do anymore. You’re welcome!”

To those concerned about his departure, McConnell said not to worry: “The best part of my legacy? The guarantee that my successors will almost certainly be even worse!”

McConnell "Blinks" - But He Remains On The Hot Seat

It looks like the debt ceiling fight is over -- for now. Afraid that he and his party would be blamed for a default if they continued to filibuster raising the debt limit, Minority Leader McConnell agreed to stop the filibuster and allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling for nearly two months. But the fight is not over. The same thing is going to be repeated near the first of December.

McConnell wants Democrats to raise the ceiling using the reconciliation process, and says the short delay will give them time to do that. He could then tell voters that Republicans tried to stop the Democrats, but failed to curb their spending. It would be a lie, but that's what he wants.

But Democrats are not interested in playing his silly game. They have no intention of using reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling. They will dare the GOP to repeat its obstruction in December.

And the position held by McConnell and the Republicans is untenable. They cannot force Democrats to use reconciliation -- and if they block raising the debt ceiling and cause a default, they will be the ones to blame. The public will see it was the Republicans who voted for default, and the Democrats who voted against it.

McConnell will have to "blink" again in December. The normally Republican business community will force him to do so.

The GOP's Political Games Could Wreck The U.S. Economy

 The debt limit for the U.S. government will reach its limit about the middle of October. Unless it is raised, the government will not be able to pay its bills, and the economy will suffer (affecting millions of Americans). But Mitch McConnell is saying the Republicans will vote against raising the debt limit -- ignoring the fact that they helped create the debt that must be paid. They are saying that raising the debt limit will allow Democrats to spend more in the future, but that's a lie!

Below, I post Robert Reich's statement on what the debt limit is, and the editorial from The Washington Post editorial board on why the debt limit must be raised.

Robert Reich:

Many of you may be asking yourself: what the hell is the debt ceiling? In brief, it’s the limit on how much the government is allowed to borrow to pay for what it already owes on bills Congress has already agreed on and enacted — not for legislation that’s currently being debated. If it’s not raised, the government can’t pay its bills (just as if you or I didn’t pay our credit card bill). That would result in a default, which would mean chaos. Your variable-rate mortgage, for example, would go through the roof. The full faith and credit of the United States would be undermined.

The current debt ceiling has to be raised to pay for debt racked up by Republicans as well as Democrats, including trillions under the former guy. Senate Democrats raised the ceiling for Trump, so why won’t Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans do it now for Biden?

The Washington Post:

The White House on Thursday instructed federal agencies to prepare for an imminent government shutdown, in case Congress fails to pass a stopgap funding bill by Sept. 30. Government shutdowns are expensive and disruptive, and they deservedly sully the nation’s image and sense of self-respect. But at this point a lapse in government services should be the least of Americans’ worries. The nation faces an epochal financial disaster if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, forcing the country to default on its obligations and inviting a global financial panic.

If that happens, there will be no doubt about who is at fault: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his Republican caucus, who are playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States.

Democrats joined with Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling during the Trump administration. But Mr. McConnell suddenly declares that the majority is solely responsible for performing this unattractive task, even though he pioneered the routine use of the filibuster to force any and all Senate legislation to overcome a 60-vote threshold. With only 50 votes, and Republicans unwilling to lift a finger to avoid financial calamity, Democrats’ only option would be to use the arcane “reconciliation” procedure. Senate experts believe this would be possible, but it would require a couple of weeks of complex parliamentary maneuvering and some Republican cooperation in the Senate Budget Committee. Meanwhile, the treasury is on the verge of running out of money.

Other than sticking it to Democrats, what is the point? Using reconciliation, Democrats would have to raise the debt limit by a specific dollar amount, not just suspend it for a time, as Republicans did under President Donald Trump. This would enable Republicans to run attack ads blasting Democrats for expanding the debt by some large, specific number. Never mind that raising the debt limit does not approve any new spending; it merely permits the treasury to finance the spending Congress already has okayed.

For their part, Democrats do not want to jump through complex procedural hoops while they are trying to pass other big legislation, and they want the same political cover they gave Republicans during Mr. Trump’s presidency by raising the debt limit in a bipartisan fashion.

National default should be unthinkable, and the need to avoid default should not be viewed as a political opportunity. Even if Democrats manage to force through a debt limit hike this time, Mr. McConnell’s out-of-nowhere standard placing all the responsibility on the majority party will make it much harder to lift the debt ceiling going forward, and correspondingly more likely that the nation will one day walk off the cliff even if it manages to step back now.

Time’s up. It’s hard to see how anyone professing patriotism could willfully risk inflicting this kind of harm on the nation. Republicans with any sense of responsibility should band together and help pass a clean debt limit increase.

Following Trump's Example, McConnell Lies To Americans

Truth no longer means much to today's Republicans. When they are confronted with it, they simply respond with a lie -- usually a whopper. The biggest lie being spread by Republicans is Trump's lie that he won the election (but was unseated by massive fraud). But there is another lie being spread right now that is almost as outrageous. It is Mitch McConnell's assertion that Republican legislatures in the states are not trying to suppress the vote.

Here's what Steve Been had to say about this at MSNBC.com:

As Senate Democrats advanced the For the People Act, Republican opponents turned to a series of rather predictable talking points. GOP critics said, for example, that the effort represented a "federal power-grab," which made a degree of sense since the legislation would curtail state-level schemes to undermine democracy. Other Republicans complained that the bill is "partisan," which was really just a lazy way of saying GOP politicians don't like it.

But the most unnerving talking point came, once again, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

McConnell accused bill proponents of misconstruing election laws in Georgia and other states to justify a federal proposal he described as unnecessary. "The biggest lie being told in American politics in recent weeks has been that the states are involved in a systematic effort to suppress the vote," the Kentucky Republican said Tuesday.

If this sounds at all familiar, it's because McConnell pushed the same line in March, telling reporters, "States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever."

All things considered, the word "gaslighting" is probably used a bit too much in our political discourse, but for the Senate GOP leader to justify the Republican Party's voter-suppression initiative by denying its existence is a classic example of the phenomenon.

This isn't a matter of subjectivity. As regular readers may recall, FiveThirtyEight recently published a striking tally, noting that while much of the country learned of Georgia's new voting restrictions, it's just one of 11 states in which Republicans have acted this year to make it harder for Americans to cast ballots.

Relying in part on data from the Brennan Center for Justice, FiveThirtyEight reported that "at least 404 voting-restriction bills have now been introduced in 48 state legislatures." Many of those proposals will go ignored, but plenty will not: FiveThirtyEight's report highlighted 25 voter-suppression bills that have already become law this year -- and there are still several dozen related measures pending in states where Republicans have some power. . . .

It's rare to see a don't-believe-your-lying-eyes moment this brazen.

Voters See Biden As Most Bipartisan - GOP Leaders As Least

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done between May 18th and 20th of a national sample of 1,994 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

It shows that a majority of voters think President Biden cares about getting bipartisan support. They also see GOP leaders (McConnell and McCarthy) as being the least caring about bipartisanship.

That may make McConnell and McCarthy look good to the Trump-loving base of the Republican Party, but it doesn't impress the Independents (who will decide the 2022 election results).

The Senate Keeps The Filibuster - But That Could Change

Minority Leader McConnell has withdrawn his objection to the proposed Senate rules. That means the new rules (which are the same as in 2001 - the last time the Senate was equally divided) allow the Democrats to take chairmanships over Senate committees.

It also means the Senate retains the right of members to filibuster legislation, and 60 votes are still required to end a filibuster.

McConnell had been holding out for a Democratic promise to retain the filibuster regardless of what happens. Majority Leader Schumer rejected that. He said the filibuster will remain for now, but Democrats reserve the right to eliminate it if it is misused -- if the Republicans use it to block all or most Democratic legislation instead of negotiating a compromise on legislation.

Currently, three Democratic senators are against eliminating the filibuster -- Sen. Manchin (West Virginia), Sen. Sinema (Arizona), and Sen. Tester (Wyoming). One of those senators (Tester) has already said he could change his mind if it is used to create gridlock in the Senate, and if that happens, the other two might change also. 

If all 48 Democrats and the 2 Independents (who caucus with Democrats) vote to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster, it will happen -- even if all 50 Republicans vote against that. The 51st and deciding vote would come from Vice-President Harris.