Stop panicking over the budget showdown
While the GOP has spent nearly the entire debt limit argument on saying that President Biden is uncooperative and refusing to come to the table, trying to force the party into the position of accepting cuts to the social safety net and losing popularity with their voters, President Biden refused to take the bait, staying on script with the rest of the White House on the very obvious notion that cutting Social Security – a goal the GOP has set out to do ever since it was invented, would only get worse once the door was opened.
After a few days of talks and being rebuffed on the spending cuts Republicans insist on making that won’t reduce the deficit, Republicans are now claiming that talks aren’t productive.
The GOP wants you to panic that this means the death of the economy is inevitable – and they also want you to go after Democrats and the president for letting Republicans default on the debt.
It’s part of the no-win situation they’ve been trying to push on Democrats, but the fact that McCarthy is shutting down talks now actually indicates something else – that he’s weaker than ever, and realizes he has no leverage to get his way on gutting America’s social safety net. Let’s not give him any more leverage than he thinks he has – and make sure we take the House back from the GOP in 2024.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making