(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Democrats openly boasted on social media Wednesday night about bamboozling House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and fiscally squishy Republicans to support a spending plan that provides token cuts, while delivering the Biden administration a sky-high debt ceiling for the rest of his term.
The U.S. House with its alleged GOP majority passed the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act that raises the debt ceiling at least $4 trillion, retains the bulk of new IRS compliance agents sought by Democrats and claws back a meager spoonful of a bloated $4 trillion in excess COVID-19 funds.
The bill passed the House by a 314-117 vote, with a group of 71 fiscally conservative Republicans opposed for its prolific spending, along with 46 Democrats who thought it didn’t spend enough to satisfy their wants but were assured it would pass without their support and that they’d eventually get what they demanded.
“I wonder how many of the Democratic ‘no’ votes were cast by people who were told by Democratic leaders to vote against the bill—so as not to signal too much to their Republicans colleagues that they’ve been played,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The signals were loud and clear, nonetheless.
“Now we are allowed to say it: we rolled them” crowed Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., after the bill passed.
Democrats weren’t the only ones who agreed that the bill, as approved by a House with a GOP majority, played into the hands of the Biden administration and its far-leftist agenda.
“The term for a bill that gets more Democrat votes than Republican votes is a Democrat bill,” tweeted The Federalist’s Sean Davis. “GOP leadership just whipped for and passed a Democrat budget that completely eliminates the debt limit for the entirety of Joe Biden’s presidency.”
Ignoring jabs from gloating Democrats and criticisms from fiscally responsible Republicans, McCarthy said, “We’ve done our job,” and proclaimed the passage a victory.
It was a sentiment that flew in the face of reality, said House Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy, R-Texas, who voted against the spending package.
“My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut,” Roy said. “The fact is, at best, we have a two-year spending freeze that’s full of loopholes and gimmicks that allow for increased funding of the federal bureaucracy in order to achieve a $4 trillion increase in the debt.”
Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., another Freedom Caucus member, reiterated those concerns during an impassioned speech before the vote was taken, trying to rally GOP votes against the looming disaster.
“Every supposed ‘get’ for the Republicans, was chock-full of cosmetic things, artificial things, things that have actually been outright lied about,” Bishop said, specifically noting the bloated funding still on tap for the IRS to hire an army of new compliance agents.
“The only thing we get here is tokenism, a token, artificial, fake, nothing-benefits,” Bishop said.
This is what it looks like when the uniparty cartel sells out the American people. #NoDeal pic.twitter.com/79ufV5d4sx
— Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) June 1, 2023
The bill is widely predicted to pass the Senate, but Biden reportedly emerged from his cognitive stupor long enough to see sense in withholding boasts over how McCarthy and the Republicans had been played like a cheap fiddle.
“The president admitted [that gloating by Democrats would hurt the effort] on Monday, telling reporters, “I hear you guys saying… ‘Why didn’t Biden say what a good deal it is? Why wouldn’t Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote?’ You think that’s going to help me get…
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 31, 2023
Biden economic adviser Bharat Ramamurti cut through his boss’s obvious spin and made clear what McCarthy had given Democrats with a deal “essentially locking in the wins that we have gotten for the last two years.”
“What this deal allows us to do is continue to see that through,” he said of Biden’s agenda, an admission that prompted Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., to highlight the brag with multiple red flags.
“This should tell you a ton about how bad this 4 trillion $ deal is,” Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., added.
