Tag: andy biggs
GOP Sycophants Rush To Praise Trump's Gaudy $300M Ballroom Project

GOP Sycophants Rush To Praise Trump's Gaudy $300M Ballroom Project

Congressional Republicans bent over backward to defend President Donald Trump's unilateral decision to raze the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for his hideously gaudy $300 million ballroom.

Republicans mocked Democrats, who are outraged that Trump decided to demolish an entire segment of the White House to build a ballroom corruptly funded by donors who have business before the federal government.

"He put up some of his own money," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said of the project, even though we have no idea how much Trump—who notoriously stiffs his contractors—actually gave to the project. "You would think, 'Well gee whiz, at least they could agree to that, it's not even taxpayer money, it's gonna be a permanent renovation that will enhance the White House for all future presidents."

- YouTube youtu.be

Unfortunately for Scalise, Americans do not agree with that assessment, with just 23 percent of adults saying they think the ballroom will have a positive impact on the White House, according to a YouGov survey.

But Scalise continued his whiny tirade.

"They say no to everything he does," Scalise said. "Because they just are angry about the results of the election from last year."

Yes, we are angry. But it's because every day Trump does something so egregiously corrupt and illegal that it’s leading this country into banana republic territory.

"Presidents have routinely renovated and expanded the White House over the last century. The faux outrage from the Left is a deflection from the Schumer Shutdown," Trump bootlicker Rep. Andy Biggs wrote in a post on X. "Leftists are severely afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome," the Arizona Republican claimed.

Of course, those projects had approval from Congress, input from historic preservation boards, and were not funded by a corrupt pay-to-play scheme. But okay.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah also mocked Democrats' outrage.

"I’m shaking right now. The humanity!" he wrote in a sarcastic post on X that featured images from past White House renovations.

And in his haste to defend Trump, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee wrote an idiotic post on X in which he posted an image of the White House being demolished along with the text, "Someone needs to stop the @realDonaldTrump administration from destroying the @WhiteHouse. Oh wait this was during the basketball court construction during the Obama administration. #nevermind"

Of course, the photo Burchett posted was NOT from Obama's basketball court "construction"—which actually wasn't construction at all but rather converting an existing tennis court so that he could shoot some hoops while Republicans painted him as the antichrist because his skin wasn't white.

Burchett ultimately deleted the post and put in the correct time the photo took place, which was during the Truman administration. But that still doesn't make the point he thinks he's making, as Truman had to renovate the White House because it was structurally unsound. And he did so in conjunction with historic preservation boards that worked to reuse existing decorative elements in the new building, and with congressional approval and funding.

According to the Truman presidential library, "The Truman renovation retained the original walls, the third floor and the roof, while removing, and then reinstalling, the interiors within a skeleton of steel structural beams on a new concrete foundation."

Trump, meanwhile, took a literal excavator to the structure—and is now blocking the press from seeing the destruction as it unfolds.

Only one Republican had the sense to say that, actually, razing a major portion of the White House to build a gilded ballroom amid a shutdown when many federal workers aren't getting paid is not a great look.

“We’re in the middle of a shutdown," North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said. "Got a couple of other things going on that we should probably focus on ahead of a building project.”

Of course, Tillis is retiring, so he no longer has to lick Trump's boots like his fellow GOP colleagues, who are afraid that speaking out against Dear Leader will cost them their seats in Congress—or worse.

Because, say it with me now: They're all cowards.

Freedom Caucus Still Whining About Speaker McCarthy's 'Broken Promises'

Freedom Caucus Still Whining About Speaker McCarthy's 'Broken Promises'

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are still seething at Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for coming to an agreement with President Joe Biden that avoided a catastrophic default. They insist he broke promises made in order to secure that final, 15th round of balloting that put him in the speaker’s chair—promises McCarthy and his team insist didn’t happen.

The Freedom Caucus swear that McCarthy promised he would never let a bill pass with more Democratic votes than Republican. The debt ceiling agreement passed with 165 Democratic votes, and 149 from Republicans. “We were told they’d never put a bill on the floor that would take more Democrats than Rs to pass it. We were told that,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona whined last week. Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who extracted coveted seats on the powerful Rules Committee in their deal-making with McCarthy, also insist he promised them nothing would be allowed out of that committee and onto the floor unless it had the unanimous vote of all nine Republicans.

The rest of the Rules Committee and McCarthy’s team deny that he ever made those promises, and there isn’t any public evidence that he did. There is, however, that unresolved mystery of the secret documents that plenty of people said they saw circulating during that chaotic week in January, when McCarthy was wheeling and dealing his way to the gavel. Plenty of rank-and-file Republicans believed at the time that the secret addendum to the rules package governing this session existed, and felt sold out.

There is one promise that he’s not denying, and this one is most dangerous for the future stability of the government: McCarthy reportedly told the Freedom Caucus that he would roll back funding for the 2024 fiscal year to 2022 levels. Colorado Rep. Ken Buck repeated that claim on CNN last weekend. “He promised when he was running for speaker that we would use the 2022 baseline numbers as the appropriation numbers for this year, and then went back on that promise with this particular legislation, where he promised and signed into law the 2023 numbers.”

The danger in this claim, which again McCarthy isn’t denying, is in those 12 spending bills that Congress has to agree to before Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown and/or a one percent across-the-board cut to everything starting in January. The topline spending for the next fiscal year was set in this debt ceiling agreement at nearly $1.6 trillion. Where Biden and the Democrats are looking at that as $1.6 trillion in guaranteed spending, the Freedom Caucus and Republicans could very well be looking at that as a cap, with the intention of spending much less.

McCarthy, maybe in a bid to recapture the hearts and minds of the Freedom Caucus, hinted at spending fights to come in the next few months, including getting all the “wokeness” out of government. No. Really.

There’s no denying that members of the Freedom Caucus were the biggest losers in the debt ceiling agreement, but they could still regroup to make that appropriations process impossible and threaten a government shutdown if they don’t see the cuts they say McCarthy promised them. The ultimate threat they have over McCarthy—the motion to vacate the chair and boot him—completely fizzled out this time around. It does, however, still exist as a possibility, and the fight over the 12 appropriations bills is a likely place for it to bubble up again.

One of the negotiators in the debt ceiling deal for McCarthy, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, acknowledged that threat on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. "I'm not ruling out anything. It depends on how reasonable each side is, obviously, in the negotiations. It's very difficult to predict.”

Between now and October 1, when the new funding agreement has to kick in, the House is scheduled to work a grand total of 36 days. That’s subject to change—they can always cancel recess and work.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Debt Ceiling Poses Major Test For McCarthy's Tiny Majority

Debt Ceiling Poses Major Test For McCarthy's Tiny Majority

Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy is facing a big test this week: marshaling his tiny majority to vote for his radical debt ceiling and budget cuts plan. He set an ambitious deadline for getting it done by the end of this week, which seems unlikely since the House doesn’t get to legislative work until Wednesday. While it’s a leadership test for him, it’s nearly as big of one for the supposed moderate Republicans, who will have this one chance to show they can—or want to—wield as much influence as the Freedom Caucus.

With his slim majority, McCarthy has just five votes to lose to try and force President Biden into his hostage-negotiating scheme. He’s threatening the full faith and credit of the nation, not to mention the global economy, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling limit without a massive set of budget cuts. Those budget cuts would hurt everyone: children, working families, veterans. That, in turn, could hurt the reelection prospects of a couple of dozen House Republicans who represent swing districts.

The debt ceiling is the congressionally imposed limit on how much the government can borrow to continue to pay the bills for money Congress has already appropriated. Those debts include paying for people in the military, Social Security and other federal pensions, and payments on foreign debt. The federal government needs to borrow money to pay its bills when its ongoing operations can’t be funded by tax and other federal revenues alone. The U.S. paying its bills—and making the payments on the debt it owes overseas—is essential.

McCarthy’s plan is the same as the one the Freedom Caucus put forward in March: Biden has to erase all the accomplishments of the past two years. As White House spokesman Andrew Bates told RealClearPolitics, “Their leadership has caved to the most extreme MAGA hardliners in their conference.”

Despite that, some of the maniacs are still holding out on McCarthy. Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona says he’s “leaning no” on the bill because it would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion. Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz doesn’t think it punishes low-income working Americans enough. It should have “more rigor” on work requirements for recipients of Medicaid and other programs, he says, making them prove that they work 30 hours a week instead of 20 as is currently in the bill.

The MAGA team holding out on their votes should be giving the so-called moderates the opening they need to show they care more about responsibly governing the country rather than appeasing the extremists. They could, but they’re not.

Like Nebraska’s Don Bacon, the “center-right” guy the traditional media runs to for quotes. He’s completely on board. The “goal is to get this on the floor next week,” he told NBC last week. “[McCarthy’s] providing a simple plan. I think it’s good policy. I think the American people are gonna like it,” said Bacon.

That doesn’t seem likely, given the majority of American people don’t think games should be played with the debt ceiling. Republicans, however, are used to ignoring popular sentiment.

South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson chairs the Main Street Caucus, supposedly a moderate, business-friendly bunch. He’s on board with McCarthy’s plan to pass the bill “before the end of April,” and is bullish on the bill. “Kevin McCarthy’s gonna get 218 votes on this deal,” he told NBC. “These are really concepts that, I think, unify the conference rather than divide us.”

They’re generally not used to ignoring Wall Street, though, and Wall Street is getting increasingly jittery. They’re not raising hell about it yet, but they’re nervous. Last week, BlackRock Vice Chair Philipp Hildebrand warned that default would undermine “a basic anchor” of the world’s financial system and “must not happen.”

“All we can do is to pray that everyone in the United States understands how important the sanctity of the sovereign signature of the leading currency, of the leading bond market, of the leading economy in the world is,” Hildebrand said.

Of course they can do more than send thoughts and prayers. They can use their massive leverage—and campaign money—on Republicans, starting with the so-called moderates. Those guys might not listen to their constituents, but they will listen to their funders.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Andy Biggs

Far-Right Lawmaker Humbled By Fact-Check On His January 6 Claims (VIDEO)

A C-SPAN news anchor recently fact-checked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) during a phone discussion. According to HuffPost, the conversation took place on March 24 during the Washington Journal program.

During the segment, one of the callers expressed concern about former President Donald Trump's desire “to pardon the traitors ... convicted of seditious conspiracy” in connection with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“Come on. What the hell’s wrong with you Republicans?” the caller asked.

Biggs, who served as one of the organizers for Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally prior to the insurrection, argued that no one had been convicted of sedition in connection with the insurrection.

“Not all were convicted of seditious treason. In fact, none were. And so that’s important to understand,” he said. “The second thing I would say is many of them were convicted of misdemeanor trespass. And I think that’s important to understand as well.”

Following the first call, Brawner pivoted back to the initial answer Biggs provided and said, “Congressman, USA Today had this headline back in November of 2022 that Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder, was found guilty of seditious conspiracy.”

“Oh, OK,” Biggs replied. “Yeah, well, I didn’t follow that case.”

Watch the video below or at this link.


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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