Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, everybody.
There they are doing it.
They've done it.
They are actually voting for the government to shut down and for the United States to
default on its debt and for the paychecks to start being withheld from so many government
workers.
I'm talking about Republicans.
Of course, this is not exactly winning.
This is not exactly America first.
And what we have to remember as we go through this story and go through the facts is that
they want chaos.
They are taking this sort of acceleration is burn it down approach when it comes to
Democrats currently having the White House and having the Senate and having the House.
Let's take a look at what's going on.
And, of course, it's now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is orchestrating all
of it.
Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican, has voted for the United States to default on its debt
and for the government to shut down.
They're doing it again.
And we're going we're going to look at the history of this and you will see that this
is another one of those reckless political footballs.
But this time only one side is even playing the game.
We often talk about debt and deficit.
The football is thrown back and forth.
Democrats and Republicans both play the game, although it's Republicans who don't actually
care about debt and deficit.
In this case, it's it's a football that Republicans are only tossing back and forth between themselves.
Business Insider reporting Senate Republicans led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocked
a measure on Monday evening that would have averted both a debt default and a government
shutdown, bringing the US another step closer to a financial debacle as Republicans escalate
their efforts to derail President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.
All 50 Republican senators voted against the House approved legislation that funds the
government through December third and suspends the debt ceiling until the end of next year,
heightening the brinksmanship over the federal government's ability to pay its bills.
That has roiled Congress for months.
The measure also includes twenty eight billion dollars in disaster aid funding for communities
ravaged by a recent pair of hurricanes, along with the aid to resettle Afghan refugees in
the United States.
The vote was 48 to 50, and the bill failed to clear the 60 vote threshold to end debate
known as the filibuster.
After the vote, Majority Leader Schumer assailed Senate Republicans, saying they, quote, voted
to drive our country straight to a government shutdown and the first default in the country's
history.
Now, do we think the U.S. really is ultimately going to default on its debt?
No.
No, and that's why I actually think oftentimes I think the adjectives and descriptions in
articles are are very wrong, but brinksmanship sort of is accurate here.
In this particular case, the article notes McConnell has insisted since June that Republicans
will not sign on to a debt limit hike or an increase of how much the U.S. government can
pay back its bills.
Even as he said earlier this month, it was a necessary step because America must never
default.
Wait.
If he said America must never default, why is he voting in that way?
Now, what you have to understand and remember is that they want chaos.
They basically want to at least make it seem as though they are willing to burn it down,
although in the end, I don't believe they are actually willing to do that.
They'll blame it on Democrats.
They'll say, oh, Democrats failed to negotiate a bipartisan deal.
This is often what they do.
They pulled it with the Biden covid package, even though with the Trump packages, it was
like, yeah, OK, basically do whatever you want.
They are counting on, I guess, enough Republicans and independents getting upset and saying,
wow, things went wrong.
It must be the party in power to blame.
Right.
And the sad part is to a great degree, that's exactly how it might play out.
Smart independents would realize this is Republicans sabotaging the economy or at least coming
close to sabotaging the economy to hurt Democrats.
It's extraordinarily reckless and it's all to make Joe Biden look bad and to make other
Democrats look bad.
McConnell is not bluffing in the sense that he really wants it to appear as though the
U.S. will default on its debt.
Ultimately, I don't think they will do it, but they want to divert attention away from
the damage done by Trump.
They want to divert attention away from the fact that more and more evidence is coming
out, that the, you know, maybe premeditated is not an all encompassing term, but that
the January 6th riots, at least connected to all sorts of different participants in
the Republican Party who wanted to create as much chaos as possible when it came to
the election of Joe Biden.
And as I said at the top of the segment, this debt ceiling stuff is really all Republicans
like it.
It's not really a political football in so far as it's one side that plays this game,
much like with covid stimulus.
Let's talk covid stimulus first.
Trump does covid stimulus one.
Democrats have some comments.
They have some slight disagreements.
They're worried that the implementation of some of the programs will essentially be a
slush fund, which they were right about because that's exactly the way it was.
But they weren't saying, no, no, no, we're not giving aid because a Republican is in
the White House.
Democrats did covid package one and then they did covid package.
Two Republicans said this is the patriotic thing to do.
This is the right thing to do.
Some of them are a little concerned with the exact sticker price Joe Biden takes over,
says, well, it's time for the third covid stimulus.
We're not out of this thing.
We need to do something.
And Republicans all of a sudden say, oh, this this is too expensive and these provisions
are giving money to undocumented immigrants.
The provisions were no different than the provisions under Trump covid Package one and
Trump covid Package two.
And it was Republicans who did the 180 based on who was in power.
Go back to October of 2015.
In October of twenty fifteen Senate Republicans under the leadership of Mitch McConnell, majority
leader at the time, voted to suspend the debt ceiling for two years.
They suspended the debt ceiling September of twenty seventeen Senate Republicans, under
the leadership of the majority leader Mitch McConnell, voted to suspend the debt ceiling.
Again, that got us to August of twenty nineteen.
And Senate Republicans, under the leadership of the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, voted
to suspend the debt ceiling for two years.
And now in September of twenty twenty one, now it's Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Same situation.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is blocking the Democratic majority 50/50 with Kamala
Harris.
Is the tie breaking vote except one?
You need 60, right.
But it isn't technically a Democratic majority.
Now, all of a sudden, that very same Republican Party under the leadership of the exact same
guy, Mitch McConnell said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, we can't we can't suspend the debt
ceiling.
We're going to go forward with default and with a government shutdown.
These people are pathetic.
They really are.
And when Democrats and Republicans are the same or basically the same, we talk about
it.
When they are dramatically different, we talk about it.
And this is exactly.
One of those cases, ultimately, the debt ceiling, I believe, will be raised and the U.S. is
not going to default on its debts eventually, but the damage that will be done getting to
that and the embarrassment that will be will be suffered, getting to that appears like
it will be pretty significant.