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house freedom caucus
'Embarrassing': GOP Fails to Pass Their Own 'Cruel' Budget Plan Out of Committee
"It is the biggest tax cuts for billionaires in American history paid for by throwing 13.7 million Americans off their healthcare coverage," said the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Brendan Boyle.
May 16, 2025
Multiple Republican "fiscal hawks" on Friday voted with Democrats on the U.S. House Budget Committee to block the GOP's budget reconciliation package—and while high-level negotiations are expected to continue, members were reportedly told they could go home.
"They couldn't agree on how many people to take healthcare away from in order to give billionaires a tax cut," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a panel member, after the vote. "Embarrassing. We'll keep fighting to protect Medicaid and the American people."
The five Republicans who voted no were Reps. Josh Brecheen (Okla.), Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Chip Roy (Texas), and Lloyd Smucker (Pa.)—though, unlike the others, Smucker changed his vote from yes to no for a procedural reason.
"To be clear—I fully support the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). My vote today in the Budget Committee is a procedural requirement to preserve the committee's opportunity to reconsider the motion to advance OBBB," he explained on social media.
According to The Hill, Smucker also said that "we're working through some remaining issues here, there are just a few outstanding issues I think everyone will get to yes, and we're going to... resolve this as quick as we can and hopefully have a vote, ideally on Monday, and we can advance this bill."
The House Freedom Caucus said on social media Friday that "Reps. Roy, Norman, Brecheen, Clyde, and others continue to work in good faith to enact the president's 'Big Beautiful Bill'—we were making progress before the vote in the Budget Committee and will continue negotiations to further improve the reconciliation package. We are not going anywhere, and we will continue to work through the weekend."
Friday's failed vote comes after various GOP-controlled panels advanced parts of the package this week, in the face of protests from Democratic lawmakers and constituents outraged that Republicans are trying to pass massive tax giveaways for wealthy individuals and corporations while adding $3.8 trillion to the national debt they claim to worry about and gutting programs like Medicaid that serve the working class.
"The House Budget Committee's vote is a necessary—but largely performative—step that bundles the 11 different bills Republicans have approved over the last few weeks through their policy committees, including the piece the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee advanced this week and the measure the Energy and Commerce Committee approved after an all-night markup of Medicaid policies forecast to strip healthcare coverage from more than 10 million people," Politico reported.
As the Budget Committee's markup began on Friday, Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) charged that "this is a big bill for billionaires."
Boyle continued:
Now, we will hear over the course of this hearing a vigorous debate, and frankly, there is a strong divide between Republicans and some other Republicans. There is also a divide between both sets of Republicans and this side of the dais, I can speak at least as to why it is every Democratic member will be voting no on the bill for billionaires.
Simply put, besides all of the other important issues involved in this bill, this is the overarching truth. It is the biggest tax cuts for billionaires in American history paid for by throwing 13.7 million Americans off their healthcare coverage.
Now, those aren't my claims, that is not subjective. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just this week confirmed that at least 13,700,000 Americans will lose their healthcare if the GOP bill for billionaires becomes law. That is bad economics. It is unconscionable.
Several other Democrats have spotlighted the GOP's attempt to strip healthcare from millions of Americans in their critical comments about the megabill, which is backed by Republican President Donald Trump.
"This budget is disastrous and cruel, and we stopped it from moving forward," declared Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), a committee member, on Friday. "Republicans have no mandate to rip away health care and food assistance from families."
Another panel member, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), said after the vote that "even some GOP recognized that this is an ugly lie atop a mountain of lies and dangerous trillions of additional national debt."
"They'll be back with another scheme next week, and we'll be ready to fight," he added. "Limiting this bill's benefits to 98% of Americans and denying them to Elon Musk and the 2% richest would cut this bill's cost in half and protect the healthcare of millions, which the GOP would otherwise deny."
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GOP Moves to Impeach Judge Who Ruled Against Trump Health Data Purge
"They're spinning up the stochastic terror machine to threaten the judge into submission," said one critic.
Feb 24, 2025
Congressional Republicans on Monday continued to attack federal judges who rule against the Trump administration, with Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee introducing articles of impeachment against U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C.
Bates, an appointee of former Republican President George W. Bush, recently demanded the restoration of information purged from federal websites to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order on gender—a decision that lead counsel Zach Shelley called "an important victory for doctors, patients, and the public health of the whole country."
The judge's move enraged far-right Republicans like Ogles, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who on Monday called Bates a "RADICAL LGBTQ ACTIVIST" and described his directive to restore resources on gender-affirming care "appalling."
"At no point in American history has the judiciary considered the surgical or chemical castration of healthy children to be a compelling or even legitimate health concern and it shouldn't start now," Ogles added in the social media post announcing the impeachment effort. "We must protect our children from predators like Judge Bates."
Billionaire Elon Musk, head of President Donald Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), shared Ogles' post on his social media platform X and said that it is "time to impeach judges who violate the law."
Elon wants to impeach judges for stopping him. This rep. called the judge a predator. They're spinning up the stochastic terror machine to threaten the judge into submission.
[image or embed]
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) February 24, 2025 at 2:29 PM
While there are no apparent legal violations on Bates' part, this isn't the first time Musk has backed ousting judges who impede Trump's agenda. Earlier this month, the richest person on Earth expressed support after Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) announced that he was drafting articles of impeachment against Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, one of the federal judges who blocked the Trump administration's funding freeze.
A third judge is also under attack by Musk and GOP members of Congress. As Courthouse News Service reported last week:
In Republicans' crosshairs is Southern District of New York Judge Paul Engelmayer, who this month issued an order keeping Musk's team out of the federal payments system. But it's unclear whether this move, aimed at ousting a judge with a lifetime appointment, has the political momentum it needs to clear the high hurdle of impeachment.
Regardless, the articles of impeachment against Engelmayer, filed Tuesday by Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden but published online Wednesday, represent the most extreme congressional action yet targeting the federal judiciary.
Although Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress, their margins aren't large enough to oust any of the judges without Democratic support, which they are highly unlikely to get.
Reuters noted Monday that "the attacks against judges for their rulings and calls for impeachment have been sharply criticized by bar groups and law professors, including John Collins of George Washington University," who said that the effort is "completely inappropriate" and "smacks of intimidation."
There are mounting fears that in addition to attacking individual judges, elected Republicans including Trump will simply refuse to comply with court orders. As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the Revolving Door Project is tracking the Trump administration's refusal to comply with orders from the federal judiciary.
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Progressives Say 'Absolutely No Reason' Dems Should Help GOP Eviscerate Key Programs
"Democrats should walk away from any deal that makes further cuts to the spending levels agreed upon in the bipartisan compromise," said one advocate.
Jan 04, 2024
As a U.S. government shutdown yet again looms, a progressive coalition on Thursday warned Democrats against allowing federal spending cuts beyond what was agreed to in the debt ceiling deal that President Joe Biden negotiated with Republicans last year.
"Congressional Republicans aren't hiding the ball. They want to eviscerate funding for programs working families rely on and they are willing to shut down the government to do it," said Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens, a member of the ProsperUS coalition, in a statement.
"There is absolutely no reason for Democrats to participate in their efforts to starve programs that provide food, housing, and childcare for families," Owens argued. "Democrats should walk away from any deal that makes further cuts to the spending levels agreed upon in the bipartisan compromise."
To avoid an economically catastrophic U.S. default last spring, Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) struck a deal on the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act, which included two years of spending caps for nondefense discretionary spending.
Since then, government shutdowns were narrowly avoided with temporary measures in September and November. Between those moves, House Republicans also ousted McCarthy—who then resigned from Congress at the end of last year—and eventually replaced him with Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), whose rise to power was widely seen as a signal of the far-right's hold on the party.
Neither chamber of Congress will be in session until next week, but Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have told reporters that budget talks are underway to potentially reach an agreement before the two government shutdown deadlines—which are midnight on January 19 and February 2, with various agencies set to be affected by one date or the other.
A shutdown could be prevented with an omnibus bill or a continuing resolution. Although Johnson claimed in November that "I'm done with short-term CRs," Forbes noted Tuesday that "full budgets appear unlikely given the tight timeline and limited progress so far. The House and Senate have both passed some appropriations bills, but they are a long way from being reconciled. Specifically, the House has passed seven appropriation bills and the Senate three."
While leading a Republican trip to the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas on Wednesday to demand hardline immigration policies, Johnson said that "we have been working in earnest and in good faith with the Senate and the White House virtually every day through the holidays trying to come to an agreement. Negotiations are still ongoing."
"And let me tell you what our top two priorities are right now," he said. "In summary, we want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce nondefense discretionary spending."
Johnson supports the GOP's Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2)—which Republicans have tied to the budget battle and Biden's supplemental funding request for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan—but the speaker "stopped short of embracing his right flank's demand to shut down the government without action," Politico pointed out Wednesday.
However, far-right Republicans, including House Freedom Caucus members, have a clear message. Fox News' Bill Melugin reported from Eagle Pass that GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), and Matt Rosendale (Mont.) said: "Shut the border down, or we'll shut the government down. We control the money."
The House Freedom Caucus is also a barrier to getting an agreement more broadly. According to NBC News:
A source familiar with the talks, who wasn't authorized to share details, said that they're "moving along" and that it "appears we'll reach agreement soon" on a dollar amount that includes less spending in fiscal year 2024 than was in the budget deal, "without any cuts to defense" spending.
Republicans are targeting cuts to a side pot of $69 billion in domestic nonmilitary funding that was part of the budget deal, alongside a spending "cap" of $1.59 trillion.
"One obstacle to a deal is the House Freedom Caucus, a group of ultraconservative lawmakers who want to wipe away the entire side agreement," the outlet explained. "A Freedom Caucus spokesperson said they still oppose any deal that would add to the $1.59 trillion level and pointed to the group's statement Friday blasting the use of 'disingenuous gimmicks' to secure separate funding for programs."
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Progressives Say GOP Shutdown Chaos Is About Imposing 'Extreme, Cruel' Agenda
"It's the same thing they did with the debt ceiling: Weaponize the tools of the House majority to force a false choice. Their agenda or a national crisis," said the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Sep 29, 2023
With a "completely avoidable" U.S. government shutdown less than 48 hours away, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and individual House Democrats on Friday took aim at Republicans for holding "the American people hostage to force their agenda through" at the expense of working families and others.
"You wouldn't know it by watching them fail to govern, but House Republicans have a policy agenda. It's extreme, cruel, and unworkable, and they are committed to making that agenda law," the Progressive Caucus said on social media. "Here's the problem: They can't pass it. They can't even get all their members to vote for it."
That's because the Republican continuing resolution (CR) that was voted down 232-198 on Friday—which included big cuts to social safety net spending and anti-migrant measures—was not severe enough for members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus' liking.
"So House Republicans' only option is to hold the government and the American people hostage to force their agenda through," the Progressive Caucus continued. "It's the same thing they did with the debt ceiling: Weaponize the tools of the House majority to force a false choice. Their agenda or a national crisis."
According to the Progressive Caucus, that agenda includes:
- An 80% cut in public education funding to take 40,000 teachers from poor students and students with disabilities and kick 100,000 kids out of preschool;
- A 70% cut in funding for 5 million low-income families to heat their homes;
- Slashing food assistance for millions of low-income women and children;
- Cutting support services for nearly 1 million people facing a suicidal or mental health crisis and thousands with opioid use disorder;
- Eliminating one-third of all housing choice voucher funding for poor families, increasing the risk of eviction and homelessness;
- Increasing the wait time for Social Security disability benefits applicants by two months;
- Making fruits and vegetables more expensive for 5 million pregnant mothers; and
- Cutting nearly 50% of federal wildfire prevention funds.
"House Republicans are pushing all these cruel cuts AND a death panel for Social Security and Medicare. If they don't get it, they'll shut down the government," the Progressive Caucus added. "This is why progressives are fighting so hard. We will not sacrifice working people to continual Republican threats."
Progressive Caucus Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Friday that "this shutdown is not only tragic, but completely avoidable."
"An overwhelming bipartisan majority of lawmakers in the House support a clean bill to keep the government open. The Senate is prepared to pass it, the president is prepared to sign it," she continued. "But the most extreme faction of MAGA wing of the party—egged on by [former President] Donald Trump, who craves a distraction from his indictments and criminal charges—are demanding an endless list of cuts that have brought us to a government shutdown."
"We have to remember how we got here. The government has shutdown four times in the past 30 years. Each time it happened, an extreme faction of Republicans was in charge of the House of Representatives," Omar added. "We need a clean bill to keep the government open, before this causes real harm. It's time for Republicans to stop playing with people's lives and do their jobs."
Another Progressive Caucus member, Rep. Delia Ramirez, said Friday that "today's hurtful, extremist Republican CR demonstrates the Republicans' hypocrisy, ineffective leadership, and disregard for working families."
The congresswoman continued:
Day after day, we have been here, voting until the wee hours of the morning, and we have made absolutely no progress. After each vote, conservative extremists change their demands, and [House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif)] keeps giving them more and more without making progress.
"To what end? A 30% cut to government services? So that 10,901 women and children in the IL-03 can go hungry? So that 28,187 active and reserved service members will go without payment in Illinois? So that 5,000 residents in IL-03 may lose access to federal help and vouchers?
"These are not the goals of people who care about working families," Ramirez asserted. "On the contrary, it's a vicious attack on working families"
"If the Republicans were serious about averting a shutdown, they would bring a clean CR to the floor," she argued. "That's not what they want. They want to send our economy into crisis, protect Donald Trump, and harm our communities."
"Enough is enough!" Ramirez added. " I call on six courageous, principled Republicans to do their job, serve our constituents, and protect the economy."
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House Freedom Caucus Threatens 'Reckless' Government Shutdown Unless Far-Right Demands Met
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that "if the House decides to go in a partisan direction it will lead to a Republican-caused shutdown."
Aug 21, 2023
With Congress on August recess, the far-right House Freedom Caucus on Monday issued expected but unlikely-to-be-met demands for a stopgap funding bill that would avert an October government shutdown.
Members of the Senate and House of Representatives are set to return to Capitol Hill on the first and second Tuesday of September, respectively—giving them little time to pass full-year appropriations legislation before funding runs out at the end of next month.
Considering the time crunch, both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have recently signaled support for a continuing resolution (CR) that would give lawmakers a few more months to pass a larger package.
So far, McCarthy's fractured conference has only passed one of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year (FY) 2024. Among the GOP's "five families" is the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), which does not publicly list its members but is made up of a few dozen legislators, including Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Vice Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
In terms of the appropriations legislation for the next fiscal year, the HFC said in a statement Monday that "we remain committed to restoring the true FY 2022 topline spending level of $1.471 trillion without the use of gimmicks or reallocated rescissions to return the bureaucracy to its pre-Covid size while allowing for adequate defense funding."
"In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a continuing resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats' bloated Covid-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities," the caucus continued. "Any support for a 'clean' continuing resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago."
The HFC declared that its members will refuse to support any CR that does not include the House-passed Secure the Border Act, "address the unprecedented weaponization" of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and "end the Left's cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military's core warfighting mission."
The Pentagon language likely relates to U.S. military policies on abortion and gender-affirming care as well as diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility while the DOJ comment is widely seen as a reference to investigations of former President Donald Trump, who has been indicted in four cases this year—including in two probes led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland after the Republican announced his 2024 presidential campaign.
"We will oppose any attempt by Washington to revert to its old playbook of using a series of short-term funding extensions designed to push Congress up against a December deadline to force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget-busting, pork-filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill at year's end and we will use every procedural tool necessary to prevent that outcome," the HFC added Monday. "Lastly, we will oppose any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill."
Democrats in Congress quickly warned that the faction of Republicans was up to no good, with Schumer saying in a statement Monday that "if the House decides to go in a partisan direction it will lead to a Republican-caused shutdown."
Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) said that "extreme House Republicans are now threatening to send us into a reckless government shutdown if they don't get their way. A shutdown would be a disaster for Virginians—from missed paychecks to lapses in essential government services that families rely on."
Referencing Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media that "House Republicans are determined to shut down the government and crash our economy. We will fight these MAGA extremists every step of the way. For. The. People."
The New Republic's Tori Otten also suggested that "tanking the economy" could be the goal, noting that the HFC made similar demands earlier this year before McCarthy struck a debt ceiling deal with Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection:
The government shutdown in 2018 cost the United States $11 billion, including $3 billion in economic activity that will never be recovered, the Congressional Budget Office said at the start of the following year.
With a presidential election on the horizon, the Freedom Caucus could be looking for ways to undermine Biden any way it can. Destroying the economy he's helping to recover would do just that.
The Washington Post reported Monday that "White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton told reporters that she had no updates on whether Biden plans to sign a continuing resolution."
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House GOP Plan to Create 'Fake Hysteria' Over Gas Stoves Backfires
"An incredible embarrassment for the House Republican leadership," said one observer. "The morning McCarthy tries to turn the page, conservatives slap him and his leadership team in the face."
Jun 06, 2023
Progressive pundits on Tuesday derided what one commentator called a "complete shitshow" as a group of hard-right House Republicans voted with their Democratic colleagues in tanking GOP-backed bills to block regulation of gas stoves.
Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus joined Democrats in voting against a rule to advance four bills, two of them related to shielding gas stoves from federal regulation. Industry groups including the American Gas Association—which has known and tried to hide for decades that gas stoves can harm human health—support the legislation.
"Today, we took down the rule because we're frustrated at the way this place is operating," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters, according to The Hill. "We took a stand in January to end the era of the imperial speakership. We're concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed Kevin McCarthy to assume the speakership have been violated as a consequence of the debt limit deal."
While many progressives were infuriated by the deal struck between President Joe Biden and McCarthy (R-Calif.) to raise the nation's debt limit and avoid a first-ever default because the agreement helps protect wealth tax dodgers while slashing social safety net and climate spending, far-right Republicans also loathe the deal because they believe its belt-tightening measures are largely cosmetic.
"We warned them not to cut that deal without coming down and sit down and talk to us. So this is all about restoring a process that will fundamentally change things back to what was working," said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who also voted against advancing the gas stove bills.
In addition to Gaetz and Roy, the following Republicans voted to block the bills' advancement: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.) and Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Bob Good (Va.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), and Matt Rosendale (Mont.).
"Haha. Republicans don't even have the votes to advance their own bill creating fake hysteria around banning gas stoves—which no one is trying to do," tweeted Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. "The House GOP majority hard at work on the issues that matter most!"
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Matt Gaetz Openly Confirms Republicans See US Economy as 'Our Hostage'
"A key player in the extreme MAGA House majority now admits what anyone paying attention has suspected all along," said one watchdog group.
May 24, 2023
Through their actions in recent months, House Republicans have made clear that they view the debt ceiling standoff as a hostage situation that they can exploit to advance their political agenda—which includes draconian cuts to social programs and massive handouts to the fossil fuel industry.
On Tuesday, just days before the June 1 "X-date," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) came right out and admitted it, telling reporters that "my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage."
Semafor's Joseph Zeballos-Roig published audio of Gaetz's comments on Twitter:
The Limit, Save, Grow Act is legislation that Republicans passed in a party-line vote last month, staking out their position that the debt ceiling shouldn't be raised unless rich tax cheats are protected and an axe is taken to spending on federal nutrition assistance, Medicaid, affordable housing, childcare, and other key programs.
The House GOP, officially led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) but heavily influenced by the far-right Freedom Caucus, has held to that position, threatening to force a debt default and unleash global economic chaos unless their demands are met.
Gaetz, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested Tuesday that the deal McCarthy struck with his far-right flank to secure the speakership—specifically the rule allowing just one lawmaker to call a vote to unseat the speaker—has kept the Republican leader committed to debt ceiling brinkmanship.
"I believe the one-person motion to vacate has given us the best version of Speaker McCarthy and I think he's doing a good job," Gaetz said Tuesday.
Democratic lawmakers and progressive watchdog groups saw Gaetz's remarks as a frank acknowledgment of what they've said since the start of the debt ceiling standoff.
"A key player in the extreme MAGA House majority now admits what anyone paying attention has suspected all along: Congress Republicans consider the U.S. economy and millions of jobs a 'hostage' while making unreasonable austerity demands that especially hurt low-income veterans and seniors," said Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Accountable.US. "Anyone who doubts the looming default crisis and recession is not entirely manufactured by the MAGA majority need only give the fringe Freedom Caucus a call and hear it from the horse's mouth."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, wrote on Twitter that "Matt Gaetz just admitted Republicans are holding the U.S. economy hostage."
"The pro-default extremists in the GOP are willing to risk economic calamity to force their cruel cuts on American families," Boyle wrote. "House Democrats will not let that happen."
Boyle is leading a longshot procedural effort known as a discharge petition to force a vote on a debt ceiling increase as the Republican leadership remains committed to pursuing deep spending cuts that Democrats in the House and Senate have dismissed as nonstarters.
Not a single House Republican has signed the discharge petition, and two Democrats—Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Ed Case of Hawaii—have yet to sign.
With negotiations between the White House and Republicans at a standstill, a growing number of congressional lawmakers—including prominent progressives such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—are imploring President Joe Biden to use his 14th Amendment authority to unilaterally avert a default, an option the president has thus far resisted.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has said the 14th Amendment "should be on the table," pointed to Gaetz's comments Tuesday as further confirmation that Republicans are not negotiating in good faith.
"I want to be clear about what the Republican Party is taking hostage. It is not Democrats. It is the entire U.S. economy," Ocasio-Cortez told CNN late Tuesday. "It is extreme, and it is not acceptable."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) added on Twitter that Gaetz and the GOP "are playing a dangerous game and, like every hostage situation, someone is likely going to be hurt."
"We have to rescue the American people," she wrote.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) as a Republican.
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Top Budget Democrat Slams 'Pro-Default' House Freedom Caucus as GOP Halts Debt Ceiling Talks
"These MAGA extremists will not rest until they've either turned America into a deadbeat nation or imposed cruel cuts on American families," said Rep. Brendan Boyle.
May 19, 2023
Hours after the far-right House Freedom Caucus demanded that Speaker Kevin McCarthy call off debt ceiling talks with President Joe Biden, GOP negotiators did just that on Friday as the two sides remained at an impasse over federal spending—which Republicans want to slash deeply—and other issues.
"It's time to press pause because it's just not productive," Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), McCarthy's handpicked lead negotiator, told reporters Friday without saying when or whether talks would resume.
McCarthy (R-Calif.) echoed Graves, saying, "Yeah, we've got to pause."
An unnamed White House official told the Associated Press Friday that additional talks "will be difficult" given the two sides' "real differences."
The abrupt halt to negotiations, which had yet to yield much if any substantive progress, came at a pivotal moment, with the June 1 "X-date" less than two weeks away.
"The nation is days away from a disastrous default crisis and the extreme MAGA Majority is splintering into camps of the unreasonable and the absurd," said Liz Zelnick, director of economic security and corporate power at the progressive group Accountable.US.
"Republicans have made it clear they will hold the world economy hostage unless President Biden gives in to their demands."
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, a faction of dozens of Republicans that nearly denied McCarthy the speakership earlier this year, have signaled that they won't accept anything less than the extreme legislation the House GOP passed late last month.
If approved, that bill would impose devastating cuts to federal spending and kick millions of people off of federal nutrition assistance, Medicaid, rental assistance, and other programs while only raising the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion—or suspending it through March 2024.
"House Republicans did our job on debt ceiling," the Freedom Caucus tweeted Thursday. "It's time for President Biden and Senate Democrats to do theirs and pass the Limit, Save, Grow Act."
But the legislation in its current form has no chance of passing the Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Democrats. Progressives in the House and Senate have said they won't support any deal that includes the GOP's regressive spending caps or additional work requirements for federal aid programs.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in response to the Freedom Caucus' statement that the far-right GOP faction is "pro-default," adding that "these MAGA extremists will not rest until they've either turned America into a deadbeat nation or imposed cruel cuts on American families."
"This is exactly why I filed a discharge petition to ensure we can avoid default, pay our bills, and save our economy," Boyle added.
But Boyle's discharge petition, which would force a House floor vote on legislation to raise the debt ceiling, is also a longshot solution to the Republican-induced crisis given that it needs at least five GOP votes.
"Let's be clear: this did not have to happen," Boyle said in a statement earlier this week. "By taking our economy hostage and refusing to address the debt ceiling, MAGA extremists have forced Congress to consider other pathways to meet our constitutional obligation—something Congress has done more than 100 times before on a bipartisan basis, including three times in the previous administration."
As an alternative to legislative action, nearly a dozen senators led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are imploring Biden to get ready to invoke the 14th Amendment to avert a debt default, warning that Republicans aren't negotiating in good faith and are willing to wreck the global economy in pursuit of punishing austerity.
Biden aides are reportedly concerned about the legal fight that would certainly ensue if the president attempted to use his executive authority to end the standoff.
But Sanders reiterated his 14th Amendment message on Friday, writing on Twitter that "Republicans have made it clear they will hold the world economy hostage unless President Biden gives in to their demands."
"Instead," Sanders added, "he should prepare to use the 14th Amendment to ensure we pay our debts and protect working families who are already struggling."
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As GOP Targets Food Aid, House Dems Remind McCarthy of $1.9 Trillion in Trump Tax Cuts
"In tax cuts in 2017 passed by the other side of the aisle, we see wonderful tax cuts for yacht owners and private jets," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "But in order to balance our budget now, we're talking about cuts to SNAP, to food out of babies' mouths."
Apr 26, 2023
Before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened debate Wednesday on a bill that would raise the nation's debt ceiling while gutting social programs and imposing more barriers to access them, nearly 200 House Democrats from across the ideological spectrum signed a letter imploring Republican deficit hawks to drop their demands and pass a clean hike.
Since Washington's arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional borrowing limit was breached in January, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has implemented "extraordinary measures" enabling the U.S. government to meet its financial obligations for a few additional months. Unless President Joe Biden's administration takes unilateral action to disarm the debt ceiling, Congress has until sometime between July and September to increase or suspend the federal borrowing cap. If Republicans refuse to do so, the U.S. is poised to suffer an unprecedented default that would have catastrophic impacts both domestically and globally.
Fully aware of the stakes, GOP lawmakers are holding the economy hostage in a bid to further weaken the nation's comparatively meager welfare state and its insufficient climate policies. Last week, McCarthy (R-Calif.) unveiled the so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act, which would raise the debt ceiling, but only in conjunction with measures to peg discretionary spending at fiscal year 2022 levels through 2033; establish new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries and expand work requirements for recipients of food aid and income support; force through a Big Oil-friendly energy package; repeal recently approved clean energy investments and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding; eliminate Biden's contested student debt cancellation plan; claw back unspent Covid-19 relief money; and require congressional approval before any major federal regulations can take effect.
Wednesday's letter—led by House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and New Democrat Coalition Chair Annie Kuster (D-N.H.)—calls on McCarthy to fulfill his duty to "uphold the full faith and credit" of the U.S. by "allowing prompt floor consideration of legislation to raise the debt ceiling without any extraneous policies attached."
House Democrats pointed out that "congressional Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling without preconditions or crisis on three separate occasions" under former President Donald Trump and urged them "to do the same on this occasion."
Democratic lawmakers also reminded McCarthy—who recently described the national debt as "the greatest threat to our future"—that "congressional Republicans voted to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in 2017, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated would increase the federal deficit by $1.9 trillion over 10 years, with 83% of the law's benefits estimated to accrue to the richest 1% by 2027."
Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently contrasted GOP lawmakers' willingness to attack the poor and slash popular initiatives like Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with their previous support for the highly regressive and deeply unpopular TCJA, which corporations and the wealthy enthusiastically welcomed when Trump signed it into law.
"In tax cuts in 2017 passed by the other side of the aisle, we see wonderful tax cuts for yacht owners and private jets," said Ocasio-Cortez. "But in order to balance our budget now, we're talking about cuts to SNAP, to food out of babies' mouths, instead of actually reexamining the inequities within our tax system."
As the letter notes, "The first act of House Republicans in the 118th Congress... was passing legislation—which Democrats unanimously opposed—to rescind funding for IRS enforcement against tax evasion by wealthy individuals and large corporations. The CBO estimated that by reducing revenue, that legislation would increase the deficit by $114 billion over 10 years."
In addition to refusing to consider how creating a fairer tax code and cracking down on tax dodging would increase revenue, GOP lawmakers have shown little interest in shrinking the ever-expanding U.S. military budget.
Overall, the Limit, Save, Grow Act—heavily influenced by the far-right House Freedom Caucus' austerity blueprint—would reduce the federal deficit by roughly $4.8 trillion over 10 years, according to a CBO estimate published Tuesday.
But as journalist Bryce Covert observed, it's essential to remember that this meaningless achievement would be realized in part by taking away Medicaid and SNAP benefits from millions of people.
In a Wednesday blog post, Josh Bivens and Samantha Sanders of the Economic Policy Institute warned that if McCarthy's "deeply unrealistic spending cuts actually came to pass, the human toll would be enormous, and economic growth would be deeply damaged."
"The McCarthy proposal," they wrote, "also resurfaces a completely inaccurate but alarmingly persistent conservative claim: the idea that government anti-poverty programs are unnecessarily generous, bloated, and are keeping people out of the workforce who should otherwise be supporting themselves entirely through income earned in the labor market."
"The U.S. safety net is in serious need of reforms, but not because of inaccurate claims that its excess generosity keeps people out of work," they continued. "The biggest problem with the U.S. safety net is that our programs don't help as many people, or as effectively, as they should."
Echoing House Democrats, Bivens and Sanders derided McCarthy's claim that his proposal would put the U.S. on a path to "fiscal responsibility" and lower inflation as "laughable."
"The biggest driver of deficits for the last 20 years has been a steady trend toward ever-larger tax cuts for corporations and the richest U.S. households," the pair wrote. "No one who actually wants to reduce the federal deficit should be looking to do that on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans."
In their letter, House Democrats said that "instead of supporting an agenda of deficit-exploding tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, we welcome an honest discussion regarding the federal budget that makes clear that the deficit is made up of revenues and investments and that sustainable fiscal solutions will ensure our revenues match the level of investments needed to maintain our economic growth and prosperity."
However, the CPC tweeted, "negotiations on what the government is spending its money on have a time and place—the yearly budget process."
"Republicans are welcome to try to get their extremist wish list met that way," the group added. "But that must happen separately from the threat of U.S. default."
The GOP cleared a key procedural hurdle on Wednesday afternoon when the House approved the rule governing debate on the Limit, Save, Grow Act in a 219-210 party-line vote. McCarthy is seeking to pass the legislation later on Wednesday.
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Giving Away the Game, Gaetz Says McCarthy 'Picked Up' Far-Right's Debt Ceiling Plan
One progressive critic said the GOP bill is "a reflection of just how totally controlled by the fringes of his caucus McCarthy is."
Apr 21, 2023
Far-right House Republicans are reportedly "thrilled" with the debt ceiling legislation that Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled earlier this week.
That's likely because, according to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), McCarthy (R-Calif.) simply "picked up the House Freedom Caucus plan and helped us convert it into legislative text."
"And it shows," replied the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US.
Gaetz, one of a number of far-right Republicans who led a revolt against McCarthy's speakership bid earlier this year, told reporters Thursday that "if you held this plan and the plan that the House Freedom Caucus laid out some weeks ago and held them up to a lamp, you would see a lot of alignment."
Titled the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, the legislation would revert federal spending back to fiscal year 2022 levels and cap annual spending growth at 1% over the next decade—central demands of the hardline House Freedom Caucus members who threatened to deny McCarthy the speaker's gavel in January.
Last month, the House Freedom Caucus outlined a more detailed proposal that would claw back unspent coronavirus pandemic funds, repeal clean energy tax credits and other elements of the Inflation Reduction Act, block President Joe Biden's stalled effort to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt per borrower, and impose new work requirements on recipients of Medicaid and federal food assistance that could kick millions off the lifesaving programs.
The Limit, Save, Grow Act would do all of the above and more, a fact that helps explain the bill's largely positive reception among far-right Republicans—though some, such as former House Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), want the bill to attack aid programs more aggressively.
As Semafor reported, Biggs "expressed openness to voting for the bill" but said he "wanted to see even stricter rules around food stamps."
"That's who is really in charge of the MAGA majority," the progressive advocacy group Indivisible said of the House Freedom Caucus.
Citing Gaetz's comment to reporters, Accountable.US argued the GOP's debt ceiling bill is "a MAGA wishlist, not a serious proposal."
If passed—an unlikely scenario given opposition from congressional Democrats and the Biden White House—the Republican bill would increase the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or suspend the ceiling until next March, setting up another high-stakes standoff in early 2024, a presidential election year.
Congressional Democrats rejected the legislation as a nonstarter, pointing to the massive impact it would have on federal programs related to housing, education, healthcare, climate, and other critical areas.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development warned that roughly 640,000 families would lose rental assistance if its budget was reverted to fiscal year 2022 levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, estimated that 1.2 million people would lose access to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) under the Republican proposal.
"These caps are cuts," Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday. "They would ensure that resources for critical programs 10 years from now remain below the levels in effect today. That's 10 years of cuts for less than one year of preventing a default."
Analysts stressed that the cuts to social programs would be even steeper under the GOP plan if it exempts the bloated Pentagon from its austerity spree.
Republicans have two options to make their math work, according to Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress.
Option one, Kogan noted, is "the entire discretionary budget is cut 28% by 2033 due to McCarthy's caps—including a 28% cut to defense and [Veterans Affairs] Medical Care." The second option is shielding the military budget and inflicting "a 58% cut to all else," leaving "most essential services destroyed."
"This is a ludicrous demand," Kogan argued. "McCarthy's position is that, unless both the president and Congress accede to his very specific and extreme demands, he will force the government to illegally default on its statutory obligations—such as payments to disabled veterans and [Social Security] recipients."
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, said the House GOP leadership's proposal is "a reflection of just how totally controlled by the fringes of his caucus McCarthy is."
"It's just as bad as we expected," said Levin. "Literally take food off the table of millions of families just trying to get by? Help the ultra-wealthy and big corporations get away with cheating on their taxes? Strip away healthcare from children, veterans, and seniors? Saddle millions with crushing student debt? Pull the plug on new clean energy jobs? That's your big pitch to the American people?"
"It'd be funny if it wasn't so serious," Levin added.
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