“Speaker” Mike Johnson steps in it
Even though the 2017 Trump tax cuts were even less popular historically than tax increases, the law passing them at the end of Donald Trump’s first year in office was pretty much his only major legislative accomplishment – as well as the only one by that Republican congress, before we got the current leadership of Mike Johnson that’s even more hopelessly incompetent.
This would seem like a no-brainer for House Republicans to renew – but you’d be wrong if you did think that, with a major reason being that their majority in the House is a lot smaller than it was eight years ago. That’s right – every election does make a difference – which is why shoring up 215 seats was so crucial in November.
The problem is that the GOP can’t decide how the spending would work – particularly as the spending cuts proposed are horribly unpopular and most of them are in swing districts where they would have to pass as moderates. Even the question of raising the debt limit or letting the country default on a massive budget was an uncomfortable realization for many of them while Donald Trump is off playing golf – and now Mike Johnson is faced with the reality that he may need to backing of Democrats when it comes to raising the debt ceiling – forcing him to walk back the idiotic notion of rolling all of Trump’s proposals into one bill.
We’ve got a lot of battles to fight in 2025 – but it’s clearer than ever that the GOP doesn’t have a magic wand on anything – and the surest way to win the war is to show that these clowns can’t govern. Let’s shout it from the rooftops from now until November 4.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making