Letters from an American - February 27, 2024

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

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February 27th, 2024. The House of Representatives will be back in session tomorrow after the February 19th President's Day holiday. It is facing a number of crucial issues, but the ongoing problem of the radicalism of the MAGA Republicans has ground, and apparently continues to grind, legislation to a halt. The Farm Bill, which establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government, agricultural subsidies and food benefits, among other things, and which needs to be reauthorized every five years, expired in September, 2023. While Congress extended the 2018 bill as a stop gap until September, 2024, the new bill should be passed. The Farm Bill has more breathing room than the appropriations bills to fund the government

in fiscal year 2024, which started on October 1, 2023. One of the continuing resolutions Congress passed to keep the government running will expire on March 1. The other will expire on March 8. Operating on a continuing resolution that maintains 2023 levels of spending means the government cannot shift to the new priorities Congress agreed to in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. And Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, along with leaders from the Pentagon and the Senate, warns that the lack of appropriations

measures is compromising national defense. On an even tighter timeline is the National Security Supplemental Bill to aid Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. Ukraine is running out of ammunition and its war effort is faltering. Every day that passes without the material only the U.S. can provide hurts the Ukrainians' cause. All of these measures are stalled because extremist MAGA Republicans in the House are insisting their demands be included in them. Negotiators have been trying to hash out the farm bill for months, and today, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat of Michigan, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she would rather continue to extend the 2018 law than bow to the House Republicans'

demands for cuts to food assistance programs and funding for climate change. Appropriations bills are generally passed clean, that is, without the inclusion of unrelated controversial elements. But House Republicans are insisting the appropriations bills include their own demands for much deeper cuts that House leadership agreed to, as well as riders about abortion, gun policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives, LGBTQ plus rights, and so on. Those are non-starters for Democrats. As for the national security supplemental measure, lawmakers agree on a bipartisan basis that Ukraine's successful defense against Russia's invasion is crucial to U.S. national security. The Senate passed the bill on a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29, and if brought to the floor of the House, it would be

expected to pass there too. But House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, refuses to bring it to the floor. When President Joe Biden first asked for the aid in October, Republicans insisted they could not see their way to protecting our national security overseas without addressing it on the southern border. A bipartisan group of senators spent four months hashing out a border provision for the bill. House Republicans declined to participate, only to have House Republicans scuttle the measure when former President Trump told them to. The Senate promptly passed a bill that didn't have the border component. Rather than take it up, the House recessed. Today,

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders and urged them to pass the appropriations bills and the national security supplemental. But Biden, Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat of New York, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat of New York, all agree on the need to pass these measures immediately. The holdout is House Speaker Johnson. After the meeting, Schumer said the meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense scenes he had ever seen in the Oval Office. We said to the Speaker, get it done. I told him, this is one of the moments. I said, I've been around here a long time. It's maybe four or five times that history

is looking over your shoulder. And if you don't do the right thing, whatever the immediate politics are, you will regret it. I told him two years from now and every year after that because really it's in his hands. For his part, Johnson said that the House is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options on the supplemental bill, but again the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it's secure. Johnson appears to be working for Trump, who is strongly opposed to aid for Ukraine and likely intends to use immigration as a campaign issue. But Trump is a poor choice to give control over United States security. Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith

responded to Trump's motion to dismiss the charges against him associated with his stealing and hiding classified documents on the grounds that he was being treated differently than President Biden, who had also had classified documents in his possession, but was not criminally charged. Smith noted that while there have been many government officials who have accidentally or willfully kept classified documents, and even some who briefly resisted attempts to recover them, Trump's behavior was unique. He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation's most sensitive documents and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club. Then, when the government tried to recover the documents, Trump delayed, obfuscated,

and dissembled, finally handing over only a fraction of those in his possession. finally handing over only a fraction of those in his possession. No one, Smith wrote, has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and has not been prosecuted. Perhaps to distract from Smith's filing, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, and House Committee on the Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, a Republican of Ohio, today subpoenaed information from special counsel Robert Herr's investigation into Biden's handling of documents. Herr's report exonerated the president and showed such contrast between Trump's behavior and Biden's full cooperation with officials that Smith used material from it in his filing.

Comer and Jordan are likely also eager to find new material against Biden after the man who provided the key evidence in their impeachment attempt turned out to be working with Russian intelligence agents and was recently indicted for lying and creating a false record. Since this year is a leap year, Congress has three days to pass the first four of the appropriations measures or to find another workaround before March 1st when parts of the government shut down. As Schumer said, those measures, along with the National Security Supplemental Bill, are now in Speaker Johnson's hands. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions,

Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.