119th Congress, Part 2.

 

February 4, 2024

The House of Representatives will move forward with a  $17.6 billion bill this week that provides military aid to Israel and replenishes U.S. weapons, but leaves out more help for Ukraine.

It will not pass the Senate. 

The Senate apparently left the House out of its efforts to negotiate on these topics, which shows the level of dissention between the two bodies.

Ukraine has become an increasingly hot topic in the House, which is strongly influenced by Trump, who is a Putin fan.

February 5, 2024

Mexican Border Crisis

On the weekend shows, a preview of the extensive bipartisan Senate border bill was featured.  Mike Johnson is pretty clearly going to oppose it as he has orders from his puppet master. A Republican Senator threatened to push Johnson into a vote over his speakership, which apparently there had been a backdoor deal with Democratic Senators to try to prevent when he was nominated.  This was based on the assertion that he'd broken his promises in that closed door meeting.

Governor Kristi Noem was banned from the Pine Ridge Reservation for declaring she wants to send razor wire and National Guardsmen to the Texas border.

February 6, 2024

Yesterday Mitch McConnell urged Republicans to vote for the Senate bill then in a closed door meeting urged them to vote against it.

President Biden threatened to veto the House's stand-alone aid package to Israel.

Cont:

Matt Gaetz and Elise Stephanik have co-sponsored a resolution that Donald Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States on January 6, something that clear is an attempt to address the 14th Amendment in that insurrection may be excused under it.

Having said that, a resolution that it didn't occur will not excuse it, and this will not get through the Senate.

Cont: 

The House failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. All the Democrats voted against this, and the following Republicans retained their integrity on this matter; Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-05), Rep. Ken Buck (CO-04),  and Rep. Mike Gallagher (WI-08). Rep. Blake Moore (UT-01) also voted no, but on procedural grounds to that this may be brought back up again, even though it should not.

Look for all four, including Moore, to suffer the same fate as Liz Cheney.

February 14, 2024

Yesterday the House managed to get the Big Top in order and the GOP was able to impeach Mayorkas.

This now goes to the Senate, which will have to deal with it, but he'll retain his job.

Wyoming's Congressman Harriet Hageman will be a Senate Trial Manager for the impeachment.

Impeachments, which were rare up until Bill Clinton was wrongfully impeached, were once rare.  Now they're becoming extremely common, a sign of the collapse of American government.

The Senate voted aid for Ukraine. Wyoming's Senator John Barrasso voted against it, then came out with a statement noting his strong support for Ukraine.  Clearly he's worried about the strong MAGA base in Wyoming.

February 26, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Two separate discharge petitions to bring funding for Ukraine are being introduced into the House on different bills, one being the bill that has already passed the Senate.  There seems to be optimism that one of them, that being the unique House bill in particular, will pass in this end run around politically castrated Trump eunuch, Mike Johnson.

February 28, 2024

One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter, so I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.

Mitch McConnell, earlier today.

Personally, I suspect the almost certain election of Trump this Fall, and the descent of the GOP into a nativist, isolationist, Evangelist, Populist Party had a lot to do with this.

This is, frankly, not a good development at all.

March 1, 2024

The House passed a stopgap funding bill yesterday.

March 10, 2024

President Biden has signed the bill.

March 14, 2024

The House of Representatives took passed a bill which might ban TikTok due to its Chinese ownership and fears that it exploits information for the benefit of the PRC.

Oh my, what will over endowed teens and twenty-something girls now do?

I have to admit that I find it almost impossible to care about this, which in turn contributes to my cynicism.  I don't know if the Chinese are mining vast amounts of data from TikTok  and frnakly I'm in favor of banning the vast amount of the Internet that's hypersexualized porn of some sort in any event. But that's not why it's being banned.  I can't help suspecting that its being banned as this is a feel good moment for a body that's done almost nothing.

Address the border?  Nope.

Address Russian aggression in Ukraine?  Nyet.

Let's ban TikTok instead.

Well, if I was there, I'd probably vote to ban it too.  It's trash.  I just find it amusing that this, and seemingly this alone, is the one thing they seem to be able to do.

March 21, 2024

Republican Congressmen have introduced a bill, the details of which I have not yet learned, to raise Social Security retirement age to 69.

Yikes.

This follows a series of comments by Republican figures recently, at first taken to have been made in a gadfly like fashion, that taking retirement is not a proper thing to be doing in the first place.

The Social Security System does need to be immediately addressed, and pushing the age limit up would help keep it funded, but there are other ways to do that and at some point it becomes manifestly unfair as well as a retardant on the economy.  We already are enduring a gerontocracy in the US, and this would make it worse. 

March 22, 2024

Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher is leaving the House of Representatives next month, dropping the GOP majority in the House down to one vote.  Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to remove Johnson, but it's a motion that doesn't have to be taken up.

The chances of the Republicans losing the House before November are now about 50/50, and with each example of Republican dysfunction, the corpse of the dead GOP starts to smell more and more.  While nobody is yet predicting it (I'm about to), the Democrats will take the House and the Senate in the Fall.

March 23, 2024

The Senate passed the budget bill so the government will avoid shutting down, again.  This just before they went home on recess, again.

Last prior edition:

119th Congress, Part 1.