Some More News - SMN: The GOP-Led House Is Really Embarrassing Itself

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Hi. The GOP has been in control of the House for just over two months, but all they can seem to do is promote awful legislation, hold performative investigations, and fight amongst themselves. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gmPVNdVVRPIu19mAxR87AVKaYwiw3zGIye3Kj1AL7Fw/edit?usp=sharing Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh    Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  If you're looking for an easier way to take supplements, Athletic Greens is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/MORENEWS What's better than getting one pair of Shady Rays and not worrying if you break or lose them? Getting two! Go to https://shadyrays.com/morenews and use code morenews and for a limited time, when you buy one pair of Shady Rays, you'll get a second pair FREE. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show!

Holy moly, check out this cannoli. Slap your dick beaters together for me, Funky Cody J. Cause it is time, I'm sorry, can we make this intro like less terrible? What's that? We can't. Because you think it's funny that I'm embarrassed? Wow, great, thanks mom.

I don't know why I even have an earpiece that's directly connected to your voice constantly. She whispers really weird things to me while I sleep. Anyway, ah, geez, what a terrible start to this episode. I got all dressed up in my nicest and only suit, set up these lights and cameras, said my good luck prayer to the Mesopotamian wind demon, Pazuzu, and sat down to deliver the news to you fine people.

And then I just… Quiffed it. Sharded nonsense from my pretty little mouth. A real terrible start. I just got here, everyone clicked on the link, and here I am, having this terrible start. Just a really bad, bad start. Made a big stink of getting here, and now I'm here in this job that I wanted to have.

And it's just a really, really, really bad, really terrible and bad. Checking in with the new house GOP. Really bad start. Hey, so here's a totally unrelated thought. Remember how we had those midterms a few centuries or minutes ago and it went pretty un-good for the GOP?

There was a brief moment of reflection that mostly consisted of people pointing fingers. McConnell blamed Trump, Trump blamed McConnell, Paul Ryan blamed Trump, Trump blamed McConnell, Paul Ryan blamed Trump, Trump blamed abortion. So many old conservative men all fingering each other. But of course, Donald Trump got the deepest fingering of them all. Overall, this moment of reflection seemed to be everyone

conveniently blaming whatever they didn't represent and ultimately nothing was learned. Ben Shapiro claimed that the midterm failure was because of frivolous bull semen, gross Ben, only to hastily add that he wasn't talking about the culture war because that would of course implicate him. So overall, pretty embarrassing stuff,

but hey, at least they were able to just barely win back the house. And so we thought it would be fun to perhaps explore what this new GOP-led house is up to, because the midterms were so epically mortifying for them and clearly reflected a country slowly getting sick of their usual rhetoric. And so one would think that they would be on their best behavior now that they have the House. So let's take a hearty gander, starting with selecting

the House Speaker. They have now finished their first round of voting today. And after multiple votes yesterday, again today, Republican Kevin McCarthy unable to secure the votes he needs. So just to set the stage here, the new Congress is there ready to be sworn in, but no speaker. But I mean, look, we all know what's happening here, which is that Kevin McCarthy in real time is as close as you can be. And he seems like at least at this point he is not over the finish line and he's walking away there. He's holding somebody back. Look at that. Oh, somebody just held somebody back. Stephanie, just look at that. It looks like a fight breaking out on the floor.

Kevin McCarthy has been elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives amid heated exchanges, which almost saw fellow Republicans come to blows. It took four days, 15 votes and numerous concessions. But the 20 or so rebels within his own party were eventually persuaded. This comes after 15 rounds of voting since Tuesday. were eventually persuaded. This comes after 15 rounds of voting since Tuesday. This also the first time in more than a century that a nominee for speaker failed

in the first round of voting. Oof, and might I add, wowsas, and of course a bazinga to be safe. So after an entire week of very public infighting with far right Republicans, Kevin McCarthy managed to become the House Speaker after 15 rounds of voting. This, let's call it victory, was obtained only after

the Kev agreed to a large number of concessions. Specifically, he gave these ultra-conservatives special approval power that would enable them to block any legislation they didn't like, as well as the ability to allow any single lawmaker to force a vote for a new house speaker. You know how the whole problem with Congress is that they take forever to do anything

because of countless ways for individuals to slow down or stop progress? Well, good news, this makes it even worse. For example, raising the debt limit or even getting a vote to raise the debt limit is unlikely under this new dynamic. Not to mention that it's generally a bad sign when a political party with a house majority

can't even agree on who should lead them. Lord help them if they ever try to watch something on Netflix together. And I can't stress this enough. This is the first thing that they had to do. We're talking early January with several years or centuries until the next election. And there's already a near physical fight

on the House floor. And listen here, chap, you adorable little newsy chap. This is going to be the entire video. We're gonna start in January and just walk you through every notable action the GOP has taken since getting House majority. Yes, we'll give you some context as we go, and maybe I'll put some stink on it, but we're not cherry picking for just the bad stuff.

Keep in mind, there will be a big derailed train-sized elephant missing from the room, and that's only because we'll be covering that at a later date. And in the future, we will absolutely do a similar video for the Democrats. And I guarantee that in both cases, we're going to discover these two categories,

actual attempts to govern and performative partisan horse dick. And while I could give you each of those in separate sections, perhaps corresponding quite nicely with our ad breaks, I'd honestly rather do this chronologically. I think it's a better, more visceral experience for maximum sadism because I, Funky Cody J,

enjoy hurting you. You're like the Anastasia Steele to my Mr. Grey. And yes, that character's name was Anastasia Steele. And yes, I'm telling you that because I want to hurt you. Put up our first month. January, the first month. Oh yeah, solid month. It's got that J at the beginning

because it's hooking you into the rest of the year. And on J the ninth, Mr. Earl Leroy, Buddy Carter, representative for Georgia's first congressional district introduced something called the Fair Tax Act. What the Fair Tax Act would essentially do is two main things, eliminate the IRS and by extension, all taxes on income, payroll and estates, and in its place, create a blanket 23% sales tax on all items.

Although according to tax perverts, that number would be closer to 30%. Now I'm gonna be fair and or balanced and say that there are places online where you can see the predicted benefits of such a plan. Here's one of them, Wikipedia's for example, which points out that 80 economists signed a petition saying this would boost our economy.

Of course, that Wiki is only as good as its citations. And in fact, according to other experts, what we're really looking at here is a clever way to punish lower and middle-class Americans while giving the wealthy massive tax cuts. You don't really need to consult a gross book learner to realize that a huge sales tax is going to most affect the people struggling to afford stuff

while favoring the wealthy. We actually did a whole video about how being poor is more expensive than being wealthy. And I will sum it up by saying that lower income groups tend to have to buy things a lot more frequently and with a larger percentage of their income. And so this Fair Tax Act isn't actually fair at all really. This was also pointed out by a researcher

at the Tax Policy Center, which in fairness, was once deemed propaganda by the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which in even more fairness, is also against the Fair Tax Act. As they explain, this is all dependent on repealing the 16th Amendment that gives Congress the rights to tax incomes,

which almost certainly won't happen. To repeal any amendment, for example, just to pick one at random, the second one, whatever that is, you'd have to create a new amendment. For that to pass, you then need a two thirds majority vote in both the House and the Senate. Technically, those two thirds could call for a constitutional convention as well,

but that's literally never happened for any new amendment. Either way, you need at least 34 states to agree to it. And that's quite hard, especially when the country, it's very divided right now. I don't know if you've noticed, divided nation, it's a problem. And it should be noted that those economists who signed that petition did so assuming

that the 16th Amendment would be repealed. We ourselves have done a video about what a mess the IRS is, but as the Wall Street Journal also points out, this act would simply replace the IRS with not one, but two new bureaucratic entities called the Sales Tax Bureau and Excise Tax Bureau that would no doubt become underfunded and corrupt.

And unless they completely gut our tax code and successfully eliminate the 16th Amendment, we would greatly risk this sales tax hike on top of the regular taxes we already have. And so when you factor in the current uproar over inflation, this just seems like a really bad idea, right? Especially since, as we noted in that video, the tax industry is extremely big

and would almost certainly lobby against any legislation that seeks to put them out of business. Not that that is a reason not to try, but putting aside the political viability of all of this, what it still really comes down to is that this plan would screw over the lower and middle classes. And that's, it's bad. It's bad if you're a Republican

and it's bad if you're a Democrat. Even if you don't care about the middle class, this would be tying our entire tax system to commerce, which means that it could fluctuate greatly depending on our economy. If there was like a pandemic, that might affect everybody's spending. It might also disincentivize people

from buying some products like cars or expensive sex swings if there's a huge added tax. If you are perhaps claiming to like small businesses, well, this added tax will probably make people shy away from anyone who can't offer incredible discounts. It is very clearly anti small businesses. And if you do like the middle class, it generally seems very bad to link our tax system directly to our capitalist system.

That's a step in the wrong direction. So no matter what you believe in, it's bad. I mean, unless you're rich, you know? And if that's the case, I don't know, give us your money. You're watching this, you naughty, rich, little richy you. Give us your money, okay? Give us money. We're so, so broke.

I just keep buying those fucking Pazuzu totems. By the way, the Fair Tax Act was only one way in which the new house went after the IRS. One of their very first moves, also on Jay the Nine, was a vote to cut funding to the IRS. Something that certainly won't happen once it gets to the Democratic majority in the Senate. They just really don't like taxes or funding things,

even if it doesn't make any sense. Because another thing they did a day later was pass a rules package. This is a standard thing that happens at the beginning of every school season or whatever they call it in Congress. And part of this rules package is a standard thing that happens at the beginning of every school season or whatever they call it in Congress. And part of this rules package is a swap from the PAYGO model to the CUTGO.

PAYGO stands for pay as you go. The idea there is that any cost of new legislation would be offset by either tax increases or spending cuts. You can probably guess what CUTGO means, which is that from now on, any new legislation funding can only be replaced by spending cuts, no taxes. They hate taxes and love fiscal responsibility,

which is odd because according to the bipartisan committee for a responsible federal budget, the cut go system would only work if they did the same thing for when they cut taxes, except they didn't do that. In other words, if you want to put more money into something like Medicare or any new legislation, under this Cut-Go Rule, you'd have to cut something from the budget.

However, if you want to, I don't know, cut taxes for corporations, you don't have to offset that with something else. And so to quote this committee, "'It is not fiscally responsible to be anti-spending "'if you aren't also anti-borrowing.'" As they note, the last time a GOP-led Congress did this back in 2017, it ultimately raised the debt.

And so going back to their proposal to pull IRS funding, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this hypothetical cut would increase the deficit by over $114 billion over the next decade, which to be fair is a small fraction of our military spending. But see, here's the thing, for all my Republican viewers, my massive lick demo, as we call it,

the governing goal for conservatives is of course, small government and fiscal responsibility. And perhaps it should concern you lick demos that what we're seeing here doesn't really do either of those governing goals. Like I don't think cut go or pay go are actually that great because I'm a woke commie moralist or whatever, or to be specific, I think both methods put limitations

on what we should be trying to accomplish by focusing on spending. But besides what I think, what I find interesting is that these proposed measures really seem to be bent toward political grudges and tax cuts for the wealthy, no matter the actual effect it would have on the debt or middle class. They might look fiscally conservative,

but the more you think about them, the less sense they make. Like the plot of Inception. Oh yeah, nice ref for the 13 year old film. Sorry, I only just saw it. We're not, the hell? We're not having a conversation right now. That's not how this works.

Okay, so for example, because of what I said about the Cut-Go Rule, the new house rules are designed to make it easier to cut taxes while harder to add spending. Well, heck, that sounds good. Cutting taxes, yeah. But let's look at the last time they did that in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did on paper,

lower taxes for the middle class, although not by that much, but still that's good, slightly less taxes. But that reduction also included tax cuts for the wealthy and more notably corporations, who saw their tax rate dip from 35% to 21%. This was meant to boost productivity, which it did not. It also didn't cause corporations to shower their employees

with riches, but instead use their savings to repurchase stocks or give their executives a bunch of money. According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, what it all means is that while middle class labor income will rise a bit, it can't compare to the booming income from rich person things like property and stocks. And so that's all to say that the gap

between the stagnating middle class and the inflating upper class is growing exponentially. And so while that tax cut is pretty good, the overall tactic is making things worse for the middle class and lower classes compared to a system where we tax the rich more and use that money to help pay for things like childcare or student debt relief,

or all the many ways we could lift up the lower classes. Maybe we pay for their healthcare. Wouldn't it be great if people were healthy? But of course, as we see with these new house rules, they want to make it very hard to add any spending legislation while making it easier to cut taxes, which as you can see from recent history,

will most likely be tax cuts for corporations designed to widen inequality in this country. The promise of slightly lower taxes is very tempting, but it's a short-term reward that causes a bigger problem, like how crack cocaine will technically keep you awake to do your homework. That's not advice. Need to be clear.

Anyway, welcome to Politics 101, I guess. And while I'd love to live in a world where tax cuts were the biggest point of contention in politics, this is all terribly, terribly boring. And I promise for the rest of this video, we'll be focusing on not math stuff, but hey, we're at an ad break. And so that means we must be well into this timeline

at the fucking January 10th is where we are. Mother fucker. No, I wasn't talking to you. God, sorry, sorry. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh my, look out world, I'm thirsty for vitamins. I can feel it in my gut. I'm Cody Johnston, and I wanna tell you

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The salty ink black endless news ocean where if you consume it, you die. We were talking about how the new house rules and proposed IRS cuts, when you look a little closer, really seem to go against the GOP's usual tenets of wanting things like fiscal responsibility or small government, for example, replacing the IRS with two agencies

or making it harder and less efficient to pass legislation, or eliminating a rule that makes it easier to raise the debt limit, or, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, adding a new rule that extends the time lawmakers get to review legislation and also restricting measures to a single topic so they can't bundle in unrelated provisions to a bill.

That doesn't actually sound like a silly idea, but it does make the process even more time consuming. Slowing everything down doesn't really make the government small. And ultimately, they really just want the government to do what they want it to do no matter the size. Like how Ron DeSantis loves a limited government unless Disney hides a gay person in one of their films.

The House rules, for example, are going after the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics and making it way harder for them to operate. Gee, I wonder why? This new rule conveniently removed every Democrat but one from the office, but they aren't doing this for small government, and in fact, are just making a different ethics task force

on top of this one, as well as a new subcommittee investigating the origins of COVID from a clearly partisan perspective. From what anyone can tell, the plan is to look into Biden's handling of the pandemic, you know, since he was definitely the president when it all started,

as well as grill a bunch of doctors and scientists and explore various conspiracy theories around the origins, as well as go after vaccines. We don't know for sure what they will be up to, except to say that they brought on Marjorie thinks masks give you lung cancer and that COVID money went to critical race theory and was banned from social media for COVID misinformation, green.

To be one of their COVID sleuths. Wow, it's such a long nickname she has, but that's her choice. She registered the nickname and so we all have to use it. These limited government lovers actually have a bunch of new investigations that totally aren't desperate partisan attempts for attention and gain. This includes a look into Hunter Biden's laptop,

our pullout from Afghanistan, and an investigation into the quote, weaponization of the federal government, which is extremely ironic since they're literally weaponizing the federal government with most of their investigations. But I guess they think the FBI was unfair to them. And by unfair to them, I mean investigated their crimes.

So they are gonna use a bunch of resources to have a series of performative meetings about this. By the way, if you were wondering if the American people care about any of these issues, they don't, they super don't, but hey, that doesn't matter if they actually find something, right? So how are these investigations into Hunter's laptop and FBI bias against conservatives going?

Please excuse my language, this is a direct quote, but Chrissy Teigen referred to Donald Trump as a. OK, free speech. And what happened after Miss Teigen posted her tweet? What did the White House do? What did the Trump White House do? From my understanding, the White House reached out to ask that this tweet be removed. At the time, Twitter's policy included a specific example when it came to banned abuse against immigrants as they specifically included the phrase, go back to your country or go back to where you came from. Correct? Yes. That was specifically included in the content moderation guidance as an example. You brought this up to the vice president of trust and safety,

Del Harvey, correct? I did. Yes. And she overrode your assessment, didn't she? Yes, she did. And something interesting happened after she overrode your assessment. A day or two later, Twitter seemed to have changed their policies, didn't they? Yes, that trope, go back to where you came from, was removed from the content moderation guidance as an example. Oh, dang! Opposite of good, apparently. That was from the House Republicans investigation into Hunter Biden in which they brought up former Twitter employees to testify about whether the FBI ordered that company

to pull the laptop story. Not only did they find no evidence that the FBI did anything wrong, but they actually stumbled into evidence that the Trump White House badgered Twitter to remove hurtful tweets instead. And in fact, this is apparently the only evidence of government interference with free speech,

or in other words, the weaponization of the federal government. Whoops. Anyway, we're skipping around a little bit here, but this all ties to the initial choice to pursue all of these super useful investigations into how they're actually the victims, despite all the many crimes their president did. all of these super useful investigations into how they're actually the victims

despite all the many crimes their president did. Let's get back to the timeline with January 11th, Jesus fucking Christ, and see what else the House GOP has in store for us. So far, their priorities have been to launch a bunch of timely investigations and try to eliminate an entire federal agency while replacing it with two agencies for some reason.

But at least we're still technically in the realm of efforts to govern and not performative measures. More specifically, we're in J11 town, baby, and on this J of 11, The House passed two bills on abortion. The first one introduced by a representative for Louisiana's fourth congressional district, Mike, video game NPC Johnson, condemns attacks on anti-abortion clinics

and calls upon Biden to protect the rights of such facilities, which is weird because Biden is actually already doing that in a way that perhaps is bad actually. But if you were this Mike Johnson fellow, you'd think you'd be happy to know that Biden is already on the case and you wouldn't need to introduce a new bill,

would you Mike? A bill that by the way, doesn't condemn political attacks on abortion clinics. It's almost like this is totally performative and partisan. They get to say they tried and say the Dems love political violence when it doesn't pass in the Senate. Meanwhile, the second bill is somehow even sillier

as it proposes penalties for doctors who refuse to care for a baby born alive after an abortion attempt. Wow, you mean that until this bill, a doctor who refuses to help a baby born during an abortion could just get away with it? After all, why else would you introduce this bill if it was already required under federal law

for a doctor to care for a baby that's born alive after an abortion attempt? I mean, it's not like we, I don't know, already had a bill specifying this exact thing that was passed in 2002, right? We did have that. In fact, it's already illegal for a doctor to refuse care to a baby born alive.

The thing that's so rare that state records have it occurring roughly 0.02% at the most. I don't know, brah, but it seems like no matter what your political leanings are, nothing I've described here is very effective. Like even if you were extremely into forced births, you'd probably realize that these bills don't do anything. You might also be frustrated that they are doing

so many investigations that are A, pointless, and B, blowing up in their face. And perhaps, just perhaps, you might see that the House GOP appear so obsessed with partisan political battles that they aren't even trying to accomplish anything here. You see that, right? You hypothetical right-leaning person

who is watching this with a critical eye? Congratulations on definitely existing. Shout out to the lick demos. A very good demonstration of the GOP going after partisan issues instead of actually governing just so happens to be from the end of January, J27 to be exact. You see, last year, the House actually managed

to pass a bunch of bipartisan antitrust bills targeting big tech companies. Those were serious acts of legislation, perhaps not obsessed with the culture war. But now that Twitter and Facebook have been roped into this GOP fury over censorship, the new Republican-led house is breaking off of those bipartisan efforts to specifically focus

on personal grievances they have with tech companies. For starters, the House Judiciary Committee under Jim Jordan has put libertarian tech company founder Thomas Massey, only guy to vote against condemning antisemitism by the way, in charge of the antitrust subcommittee. As you can probably imagine, Massey isn't a fan of antitrust laws.

And I guess based on that other nay vote, the Jews? Nor is Jim Jordan, about antitrust laws, I mean, probably only that, who had spoken out over those past bipartisan efforts. And so instead of actually going after these companies, he is expected to focus on superficial culture war issues instead, most likely because behind the scenes,

Jordan is pretty friendly with big tech. His campaign was donated to by Google after all. And so in other words, one of the only bipartisan efforts into antitrust measures is being hamstrung in exchange for petty partisan squabbling specifically so that the government doesn't actually challenge the power of these big corporations,

specifically because the people in power are being lobbied to look the other way. I'm not editorializing here, that's just what is happening. So if there were a running theme to this last January, it's the GOP house doing absolutely nothing effective in terms of any governing or even pushing their own political agenda. Did anything I described, no matter your political party,

seem effective from any angle? Does it not seem like they are being distracted by their own culture and partisan wars instead of actually doing effective lawmaking? But good news, February is a whole new month. February, the one that's hard to spell. The J's weren't great, right? Let's be honest here and admit that. But we've shaken off the cobwebs and now we can roll up our sleeves and really get our entire fists into the stuff that matters. My amendment gives the committee the opportunity to begin each of its meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I'd like to offer an amendment to the amendment, adding in the second paragraph where the chair may designate an individual to lead the Pledge of Allegiance to add the following language. Provided, however, the pledge shall not be led by an individual who supported an insurrection against the government of the United States in any way. I'm asking Mr. Gates, will you now accept the amendment? Well, I'm concerned that you may be disqualifying too many of your own members, Mr. Cicely. I'm not concerned about that at all. These people are so embarrassing. Okay, so fucking great. On February 1st, Matt, somehow not in jail, Gates,

led an amendment to require the House Judiciary Committee to recite the Pledge of Allegiance that then sparked a near hour long debate that boiled down to two grown men saying, "'I know you are, but what am I?' Not that there's really a winner in this, but Gates did eventually get his way, having the Pledge of Allegiance cited

by Staff Sergeant Corey Ryan Beekman, who he referred to as an American hero, and who, and this is real life, Gates would later learn is a murderer. As in Corey Ryan Beekman was literally arrested for killing one person and wounding another and is only not in jail because a witness refused to testify.

So that's how February began. And boy, I can't imagine it's gonna get any more embarrassing and performative than that, right? He asked knowing that on February 2nd, the House Republicans would hold a vote to quote, "'Denounce the horrors of socialism,' which as you all know, is an extremely pressing issue right now.

What with all the socialists running around and pushing old people down. I can't stress this enough. I'm just saying aloud what the GOP house is doing with their time. I guess this was supposed to be some kind of gotcha for the Democrats who mostly agreed to vote in favor of the anti-socialism measure anyway,

because of course they did. Okay, so we're more than a month in and they've done very little, even in terms of performative politics. This is pretty weak. Like seriously, reading the Pledge of Allegiance? What are we, six? What are we, one third of Matt Gaetz's preferred

dating range? Okay, can we please get some real stuff done instead of reciting textbook patriotic cliches like we're buying time in a social studies book report? How much longer can they stretch until actually doing something real? We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.

Are you fucking me right now? Is this a prank show? Am I on camera? Oh, I am, okay. So after an hour debating the Pledge of Allegiance, on February 7th, McCarthy and other GOP House members spent 43 minutes reciting the Constitution. And I really feel like I should remind you all

that we're the ones paying these people. Dude makes nearly 200,000 bucks a year on salary. And assuming he worked the same hours per year as most people, which he definitely doesn't, but assuming he did, that means we the people just paid him like a hundred bucks to stand there and read what is ostensibly his job description. And then like $43,000 for everyone else to listen.

It really does seem like they are stretching for time, doesn't it? And to be fair to them, any bill they pass is doomed to be performative because the Democrats have the Senate and White House, nothing they do really matters. But what's amazing is that despite their predicament, you would think that they would be able to pass legislation

within their own party, right? Like maybe the house GOP bills won't result in anything, but they should still be able to make those bills as a unified group, if only to demonstrate their governing ability or at the very least their governing intentions. But I think the reason they're so obsessed with these performative stunts is because,

as we would learn in the month of February, they couldn't even manage to stop fighting amongst themselves. After all, this entire thing began with a fight nearly breaking out and Kevin McCarthy ceding tons of power to get his vote. And so for example, a bill was introduced to require firearm background checks

to report if the buyer is in the United States illegally. Seems like an easy one for Republicans, except in this case, their hate for immigrants was conflicting directly with their love for firearms. And the far right lawmakers within their own party ended up blocking the bill. No Democrats needed. It would happen again, this time with an immigration bill

that the more mainstream GOP feared went too far and would end all asylum. Remember, border security was a big deal for Republicans during the midterms. They all ran on it. So you'd think they could at least do something performative to show that they are trying. And yet on February 23rd, they once again would fail

to pass a border security bill amongst themselves. Remember, this has nothing to do with Democrats getting in the way. This squarely comes down to the so-called rhinos representing the establishment conservatives and the MAGA Republicans who refuse to cede any ground. It's like if a group of bank robbers took turns taking each other hostage.

Also in late F is when McCarthy released the January 6th tapes exclusively to Tucker Carlson, which sure feels like part of some kind of ransom deal. It's fun how he's trying to claim he's doing this because the footage quote, "'belongs to the American public' as if Tuckums is going to impartially pass on the tapes in the pursuit of truth, which he did not.

Terrible government we have is my entire point. This is all very pathetic and sad is my additional point." So that's the timeline. But luckily for you, there's more show. And after the break, we're going to zoom out to the larger GOPN. Look at this internal battle that's going on. Perhaps look at the Senate while we're here. You know, if we're feeling a little naughty, which we stay tuned to find out if we are or aren't. Hmm. You know, a postage stamp is a lot like a small business.

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To answer that cliffhanger of whether or not we're naughty. Maybe. Okay, so up until this point, we've talked about the internal battle within the GOP-led house and how it's pretty much resulted in a series of performative measures mixed with completely ineffective legislation.

To be fair, so fair that it'll make your tits explode, it's not like this wouldn't also be the case if the roles were reversed. If Democrats only had control of the House, a lot of their actions would most likely be performative as all hell, and recognizing that doesn't really take away from the point of this video, which I will get to. But what I think is unique to the Republicans

is how chaotic things have gotten within their own party, not just in the House. What we're seeing here in the House feels like a microcosm for the larger issue they are having, which can be summed up nicely with this image, followed by this image, followed by this headline. And just for fun, let's follow it up

with this unrelated image. Summer baby, look at him, what a prick. See, while he certainly wasn't the inventor of it, Trump boosted a very toxic philosophy on the far right. Specifically, the absolute refusal to work with the other side or even acknowledge objective reality if it meant conceding even a little bit. He was the king of partisan politics,

triggering the libs and so on. And for him, it actually worked at first. I mean, let's be honest, Trump's Trumpy Trumpism got him a single election, but doesn't look like a viable long-term strategy. But separating the man from the message, I think the GOP was really hoping that the midterms

would tell them if Trumpism is a viable strategy. And I think they didn't get their answer. It really varied depending on the area. Some Trump backed candidates failed miserably, while in other places, anti-Trump lawmakers were replaced with pro-MAGA ones. We got Ron DeSantis over there bravely fighting gay teenagers,

and who appears to be weird neck and weird neck with Trump. But only sometimes. He was ahead, and now Trump is ahead. And in fact, Ron is now trailing behind Joe Biden, and that guy is a sack of wet bread. Hey, imagine if the Democrats actually ran an exciting candidate next election. What a neat idea they totally won't do.

Ah, the power of imagination. But what that shows is that while both DeSantis and Trump are courting a whole lot of MAGA talking points, it's still not really enough to get them far ahead of one of the most boring Democrats ever. But putting aside the next election, the other thing that Republicans, at least the serious ones,

probably want to accomplish is anything. Constituents tend to favor you more if you do your job and actually help them. But in order to do that, they would then have to work with Democrats. So there's this conflict between the hard rights, trigger the libs, MAGA base, and the need to actually accomplish goals for the areas they represent. For example.

Pressing for a timeline on cleanup at Jana Elementary. For years, we've reported about the issues on the Florissant campus due to radioactive waste. Well, today we spoke to Republican Senator Josh Hawley. He's proposing a bill that would put $21 million toward cleanup at Jana and schools just like it nationwide. So first of all, fucking what? There was an elementary school in Missouri that found World War II era radioactive waste on the premises?

Seems bad. I mean, unless we got a bunch of little X-Men out of it. Did we? It's not possible. It's actually very dangerous. Don't joke about it. Okay, well, we'll see. And this Josh Hawley fellow is correct

to want to clean it up. And in fact, wants the effort to extend to any elementary school that has this problem, which I sure hope isn't a common one actually. Again, unless we get X-Men, which sounds like, sounds like it's fake. All right, well, whatever. Except the cleaning is going to cost money, you see, isn't it?

And so going back to that news clip. We asked Senator Hawley exactly how he plans to fund that bill considering his party proposes federal spending cuts. This Justice for Janna bill obviously has a lot of people talking. How do you plan to get funding for this, especially since Republicans want to cut spending? Well, the bill would appropriate $21 million, I believe it is. It creates a fund that would be available not just

to Jana Elementary, but to any other school around the country that's faced this kind of situation where the federal government has essentially created a nuclear waste site near a school. Hey now, he didn't answer that question at all, did he? How does Josh Hawley, a Republican, plan to get this money when his own party is so adamantly against spending? Well, here's the amount of money that it costs is my answer to that, apparently.

It's almost as if when it comes to his own local community, he recognizes that you need to spend money in order to fix things. And perhaps it's bad to draw this hard line against any spending. Hawley's only ally in this happens to be a Democrat who also represents that state, which means that in order to accomplish something real,

a goal that needs to happen, they have to actually work with each other, like coworkers who get paid to do their fucking job. But then compare that to all the other recent things that Josh Hawley does that gets way more attention, accusing the DOJ of spying on Catholics, proposing that America bans TikTok. There's this balance where in order to stay afloat,

they feel like they have to do loud culture war things while quietly trying to govern. Like if you hypothetically showed public solidarity to MAGA insurrectionists who were trying to attack those same coworkers while actually running from them when you thought no one was looking. Just another example of the power of imagination. Look it up, it's really good stuff.

Even when proposing an objectively good idea like banning lawmakers from trading stocks, Hawley presented that in a partisan package by calling it the Pelosi Act, as if only Democrats are doing that, which is super not the case. It's like having to wrap a pill in bacon so your dog will eat it,

except the bacon is more pills because you don't actually want the dog to eat the pill. You want to make it seem like you're trying to do something, wrap it up in partisan nonsense so it doesn't pass and blame Democrats for it not happening. The more they say the word woke, the more they can go after the evil Dems, the more they feel like they are reaching their base.

Not to mention that it hides what they're actually doing. Biden's push to build more computer chip factories, totally woke. Why? Because he wants to spend some of that money ensuring the factories have unions and childcare. How woke of him. Military spending, you say?

Well, make sure we cut all the woke stuff. For the record, they don't really seem to define what that means, but McCarthy has pointed to efforts to look for alternative fuel sources and diversity in recruitment. So it's all just the same unpopular shit in a new package, anti-union, anti-environment, and I guess anti-non-white people,

all conveniently under a vague term that they can use to do whatever they need, even if these things contradict each other. In fact, military spending is a good place to really see the internal conflict. Republicans love military spending, right? But darn it, thanks to wokeness and also Ukraine, a lot of the far-right lawmakers now want to see budget cuts

for the Pentagon, ironically aligning them with progressives for entirely different reasons. To fight the woke, one must first become the woke. And going back to Josh Hawley and his proposal to spend money on school cleanup, there's an even more notable conflict between their broad policies and beliefs and what actually needs to get done.

No better way to see that than how they talk about social security and Medicare. For all of his faults, and he has a lot of them, Hawley has been clear that he doesn't think social security or Medicare should be considered when talking about the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling, if you're horny for info, okay, is the legal limit for how much debt

the government can accumulate. If we go over that limit, we're basically saying that we can't pay back our debt and pushing the economy into a recession. We avoid this by having Congress vote to raise that limit. And because the GOP has the House, their vote is needed to do this, which gives them their only edge.

This is pretty much the only thing they get to negotiate on. And so of course, their conditions for raising the ceiling is that we also make spending cuts. Keep in mind, those cuts don't help the debt ceiling. That's money we already spent, but because they are into fiscal responsibility, they make this a part of the conversation. It's sort of like if you got to raise your credit limit

by promising that you'd reduce your personal spending, the problem is of course, figuring out what spending to cut. Going back to that credit card analogy, that might be easy if you were buying frivolous items, but what if everything you spend your money on was important, you know, suddenly you have to decide between cutting your rent or utilities or food or Hummel figurine purchases,

and there's just no easy answer there. I mean, unless we lowered defense spending, but of course we're not gonna do that. Josh Hawley knows his party won't allow that. And what's incredible right now is that the GOP doesn't really seem to know or agree on what to cut. They have this bargaining chip and no idea how to spend it,

which is why when asked what we should cut, he went on to say, quote, namely, we have got to stop these woke policies. We have got to stop this kind of radical agenda that is so unpopular with the American people that is bankrupting the country and costing us jobs, particularly blue collar jobs. And what policies do you mean?

Are you going to specify? Can we have a list? Do you have polling data about the unpopularity of those policies? What jobs, Josh? See, the debt ceiling is one of the only big talking points these GOP sad sacks have right now. But they don't seem to have any idea

what they actually want to cut, something they don't even need to do. Some of their ideas include cutting pandemic aid or once again, the IRS, but that's not really enough. So if you aren't cutting the military budget, since that conflicts with your ideology, the only other thing to go after is social security and Medicare,

but that's not popular and can be used against them politically, which is probably why Joe Biden called them out on it during the State of the Union. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's a majority.

Now, he may be old and his balls probably don't work, but he isn't wrong. Some Republicans have absolutely gone after Social Security and Medicare, and they often couch it in weasel words to make it seem like that's not what they're proposing. Paul Ryan ran on nerfing those programs, and he was nominated for vice president.

And here's what appears to be some kind of sickly amoeba comparing Social Security to a Ponzi scheme. What does the word Ponzi scheme mean? A Ponzi scheme is a system. If you and I cooked up a Ponzi scheme, we would have current people pay into it. Right. We would take the money and we would pay it out to other recipients. That's the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

Right. In the English language, that is exactly how Social Security operates. So I'm going to take that as a yes, that you believe that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. I think there is an effort to treat that as rhetoric, but there's no doubt that's what it is. Big thanks to the amoeba who doesn't know what Ponzi schemes are and doesn't know how Social Security works apparently.

Good thing that creature has not been voted into office. But what Dusty Bald Biden is probably referring to is Rick Scott's absolutely terrible plan to sunset all programs every five years unless lawmakers stop what they are doing and revote for those programs to remain. Because small government is definitely when you throw more bureaucracy into the process.

Besides the plan seeming ignorant of how the government has operated since forever, Biden's pressure made Scott hastily remove social security and Medicare from that proposal. McCarthy has also said that these programs are off the table, but no one finds that reassuring considering how little power he clearly has and you know, history of words said by people in his party.

So we're back to square one with the GOP having no idea what to cut. And I really can't stress enough how much this specific problem shows a direct conflict with what America needs and what the GOP's strict policies are. By fetishizing these unmalleable rules, they are limiting the actual power the government can have.

That Cut-Go system I mentioned earlier is a good example. You can raise taxes or you can cut spending with the PAYGO system, but you can't do both those things with Cut-Go. It's a very myopic view of governing that makes them unable to handle looming problems. Right now, social security and Medicare are slowly running out of money.

The reason why is a combination of Americans living longer and more notably, our tax rates dropping since those programs were signed into law. The answer is obvious. You have to find money to give to those programs and the easiest way to do that is to raise taxes. Perhaps on the people who can afford to pay more. Oh, wow, what a fucking idea.

But their ideology says that they can't raise taxes. And if they are unwilling to look at the military, there's nothing to cut either. I mean, they would love to cut the social safety net programs, but they know they can't. A lot of their ideas, like this one from the Republican Study Committee, boils down to them simply wanting to raise the ages

and put a bunch of restrictions on these programs that seem to do very little except piss people off. Probably not a lot of steam behind a candidate telling people they have to work harder and get older before they get the thing they were guaranteed earlier. And so ultimately, they just kinda short circuit and start talking about wokeness. Russ Vought, who was the former head of office

of management of budget under Trump has become a very big influence when it comes to the GOP's budget planning. And why shouldn't he be? Because the debt exploded by over $5 trillion on his watch? That's actually, that's a good reason why he shouldn't be. Nonetheless, old Russie is pushing a plan that includes 2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid,

over 600 billion in cuts to the Affordable Care Act, 400 billion cuts to food stamps, and a bunch more cuts to the state and labor departments, as well as cuts to education. It is a bad plan, and it almost completely relies on fantasy. For example, Russ estimates that cutting these programs will boost the workforce.

His reason given to directly quote his proposal is that the combined elements of the proposal spending reforms, which include reforms to means tested welfare programs and entitlements will ensure that Americans are empowered and encouraged to manage their way through job transitions and ultimately return to the workforce

to provide for their families and households. In other more meaningful words, by denying people a safety net, he thinks that will force them to go back to work, a thing that is objectively not true. Also, it's not like unemployment is even a pressing issue right now. So I'm unsure who exactly he imagines

being forced back into work. Feel free to look into all the other assessments of this plan and how it's very obviously gibberish. For example, its projected growth is like 10 times higher than any realistic projection. But the main reason I brought it up is because of the title of this budget plan, which is, no fucking joke,

a commitment to end woke and weaponized government. You know how all the best budget plans use the word woke literally 77 times in it, as well as mentioned critical race theory 18 times? Putting aside your views on CRT, do you think that has a really big and important impact on our budget? And that's how monumentally unserious this has gotten.

The debate over the debt ceiling and budget cuts is being hijacked by GOP freaks rambling about wokeness. And I think the reason why is because at least right now, they truly have no serious ideas. Anti-wokeness is like a rodeo clown desperately trying to distract everyone from the sobbing cowboy, or more accurately, a rambling old guy playing his greatest hits of personal grievances

and fear mongering. They are people that don't get it. Although in some cases they get it, they get it for their wallets. But we can't do that. We can't let that happen. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists.

We will throw off the political class that hates our country. They actually hate our country. I will totally obliterate the deep state. Hunter Biden is a criminal and nothing happened to him. Nothing happened. And hence it's called the laptop from hell. And Miranda Devine did a great book on that. And she actually thanked me. She said, I got the name from Trump. But Biden openly held back a billion dollar taxpayer, taxpayer money. The racist Manhattan Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the United States.

And you'll get some good principals then. Who loves the children more than the parents? If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to fire that principal immediately and select someone new. Continuing the work of our 1776 Commission, we will teach our values and promote our history and our traditions. How do you do it? I could never do it. This is one of the toughest guys.

I said, maybe you could. He said, it? I could never do it. This is one of the toughest guys. I said, maybe you could. He said, nope, I couldn't do it. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. But I do it for you, and that's what I'm doing it for. I do it for you.. . . .

. Thank you very much. That's Trump, Donald Trump, former president Donald Trump, speaking this year at CPAC and it really shows the problem. He went on for like two hours like that, just recapping all of his usual talking points and adding a few new ones in the mix.

And like, did any of that hit on any serious issues facing this country? Or was it perhaps a speech made from the last Republican president and current favorite for 2024, entirely based around the exact same spite and emotional talking points as always. That's pretty much how this last CPAC went.

Just a best of compilation of GOP infighting, right-wing grifts and gripes about the liberal woke boogeyman coming for your family. In case you didn't notice, the liberal media's heads are exploding about my run for president. We understand based on the testimony of Chris Wray the other day,

that apparently like practicing Catholics are domestic terrorists. Just like concerned mothers, not wanting their children to be indoctrinated with critical race theory, not wanting their children to be pressured intorinated with critical race theory, not wanting their children to be pressured into permanent life-altering sex change surgeries by their rainbow-haired teacher without parental involvement or consent. I'm running for president to stop America's downward spiral toward socialism and end the

self-loathing that has taken over our country. I'm running for president to renew an America that's strong and proud, not weak and woke. The left has told us something that should put fear in the heart of every parent, and not just parents, every single person. They've said they're coming for our children, many of them because these victims of this billion dollar industry that mutilates the genitals of children, many of these victims have diagnoses of autism, mental illness, they have depression, they have anxiety, they have psychosis. The number one thing that we can do to make sure that our values exist into the future is fueling the patriot economy.

Just this week, I mean, this wasn't even going to be my speech until yesterday. I started a news app with my friend Taylor Butterwich. The liberal lefties want to eat your kids' genitals. Better fight back by purchasing my news app. It's just the same old stuff. Wokeness, the left, and very few actual serious ideas about how to run the country, or at the very least, keep the country running. Really, the only issue they seem extremely passionate about

is making trans people's lives either way worse or fucking non-existent. I'm going to be introducing my bill, the Protect Children's Innocence Act, that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender affirming care on children. Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.

The whole preposterous ideology at every level. Wow, what a bunch of Nazi freaks. Instead of thinking about the problems actually affecting Americans, they are waging a singular war based on propaganda against an already vulnerable group. And so on top of not having any solutions, they are actually creating additional problems.

And I honestly think they are doing this, besides the fact that they are aforementioned Nazi freaks, because this hate is all they have to offer. They're in turmoil, fighting with the most extreme members of their party who seem to care more about the culture war than actually governing. And this has gotten to a point

that I honestly don't think they care about actual issues. It's pretty ironic that one of these weirdos is proposing a national divorce between Democrats and Republicans when the actual separation needed is clearly within the conservative party. Like I know I said that the Democrats would be just as performative if they only had the House,

but at least they would still try and focus on serious issues. And I know that because if you recall, they were in that exact position when Trump was in charge. And despite doing a whole lot of performative things, they still managed to pass a lot of bills, serious bills aimed at helping Americans, including the PPP loans.

And they did this with much less infighting and bizarre rants about imaginary enemies. And can't stress this enough, the Democrats aren't Nazi fucking freaks obsessed with eradicating the quote, "'Ideology' of trans people. That ideology being simply that trans people want to exist." But sure, it's totally not calling for genocide, you,

what's the word? Ah, Nazi freak! Anyway, that's why I wanted to give an unflinching look at what they're doing in the house right now. Because when you actually look directly at it, it's pretty fucking grotesque. Like looking into an anus. And much like an anus, you have to look at it

to make sure it's working right. And folks, this anus is sick. This anus is a weird Nazi at worst, and at best, completely unable to propose solutions that would actually help the American people, who largely speaking, just want freedom and happiness and not to be genocided and desserts like cannolis. And they want to elect serious people

that also care about their lives and can, you know, govern. And right now the GOP has no idea how to actually do that. And so in conclusion, I guess, holy moly, check out this anus nazioli. Wow, so a bad finish too then, huh? All right, hey, she's, Holy moly, check out this anus nazioli. Wow, so a bad finish too then, huh? All right, hey, she's just laughing. She's always laughing at me. which means that she thinks I'm funny.

Oh yes, I love you too. I in response to you saying how proud of me you are. Thanks for watching the video. Make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel that the video's on. We've got a podcast called Even More News. We've got this show, Some More News as a podcast where all the podcasts are. Look over there where the podcasts are.

We've got merch at a merch store with merchy kind of images on merchandise. Check out our patreon.com slash the more news and check out... I didn't plan this.