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Biden pushes McCarthy to fulfill what he previously called 'our very first responsibility' [1]

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Date: 2023-03-30

So House Republicans expect to pass some major legislation, which is kind of a novelty for them. It’s totally a messaging bill, but they’ve failed to pass a lot of other messaging bills, so they get a golf clap if they push this one through.

But the big thing they need to be doing is raising the debt limit before the United States government goes into default, and they don’t seem to be making progress on that. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week tried to pretend the lack of progress was on purpose and that Biden was the one who needed to move, but Biden is now using McCarthy’s own words against him. Back in January, when McCarthy was presumably still high off the victory of being elected speaker on the 15th vote, he rashly said, “our very first responsibility, we both should have to pass a budget … so the country can see the direction we're going.” Around the same time, House Majority Leader Steve “David Duke without the baggage” Scalise said their budget was “due in April” and “we’re going to work to meet our deadline.”

Biden made a budget proposal in early March, but there is no indication House Republicans will have a budget in April, as McCarthy’s letter to Biden earlier this week seems to have been intended to distract from. McCarthy has also tried to blame the March, rather than February, arrival of Biden’s budget for their delays, as if Republicans were patiently waiting for Biden’s budget so they could seriously engage with it and try to arrive at a compromise.

Biden’s plan would tax the very wealthy and use that to pay for things like restoring the expanded child tax credit that lifted millions of children out of poverty in 2021, while also reducing the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years. He seems eager to have Republicans release a budget that he could publicly contrast with his proposal. Maybe that’s part of why they’re being so slow about it, although incompetence can never be discounted as an explanation for anything coming from House Republicans these days.

Biden, who always has been a bit of a comedian, is pressuring Republicans to deliver their budget proposal before they leave for that two-week recess.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/30/2161073/-Biden-pushes-McCarthy-to-fulfill-what-he-previously-called-our-very-first-responsibility

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