The Stupid Party Gets Its Trophy

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a weak-kneed empty suit, but at least he’s sort of a half-assed Republican.

But you can’t say even that much for the ostensible GOP leader in the Senate. After 59 years suckling on the public teat, Mitch McConnell is a bought and paid for Deep State saboteur, if there ever was one. He has been instrumental in the GOP’s capitulation on every debt ceiling battle since 2011— so heaven forfend that he would finally dare say “no” to the Brobdingnagian Spending Machine sprawled out on the banks of the Potomac.

Au contraire. McConnell’s notion of the Leader’s job apparently is to kick the can, con the voters and “soothe” the markets, while leaving future taxpayers to inherit the fiscal carnage. And never mind that he couldn’t even persuade his own ranks to go along with his latest folding-like-a-lawn-chair act. The bedraggled gaggle of GOP Senators actually voted 17-31 against McCarthy’s risible spot of fiscal bunko.

Under the current circumstances, of course, that required entertaining a short game of rope-a-dope with the intrepid few fiscal conservatives left in the Senate. Accordingly, amendments by Rand Paul and others containing real cuts were dispatched quickly, thereby paving the way for the public debt to reach at least $36 trillion by January 2025. And it was all over and done hardly before the shouting had even died down.

After the next election, of course, it will be time for another pointless round of the X-date games and for Washington to rinse and repeat yet again. And as far as we can tell, the GOP caucus in the US Senate cares so little about fiscal sanity that McConnell is likely to still be in the Leader’s saddle, calling for the markets to be “soothed”:

“I can tell you what I hope happens is that those who have amendments, if given votes, will yield back time so that we can finish this Thursday or Friday and soothe the country and soothe the markets,” McConnell told reporters.

Still, for the life of us, we can’t understand why McConnell thinks the markets need “soothing”. The punters down in the canyons of Wall Street got Washington’s number a good while ago.