History Made Today

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Never before in our country’s 247-year history has a Speaker of the House been ousted, removed, and forced to vacate. In a vote of 216 to 210, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been (for the moment) terminated for NOT being the Speaker of the House chamber! He was not the House Speaker for the Republican party, but by bound duty the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative to legislate and get bills, acts, and appropriations done. That was his sworn duty. Period. According to a majority of his own House Republicans, he failed and failed miserably.

Since this historic vote took place earlier this afternoon, I’ve watched and heard many interviews with Republican Representatives by the mainstream news outlets, and all of the Republican Reps kept trying to harp on the national debt of $31.4–$33 trillion. It is the typical deflect and divert tactic away from the sheer chaos today’s Republican party is in… and it is their own fault, their own catastrophe they themselves created in 2010–2016.

But nonetheless, let’s look much closer, much deeper into the context of their panicked response to McCarthy’s removal: the national debt and deficit that supposedly, according to them, was caused by Democratic administrations. Grab the microscopes.

According to the Pew Research Center, a reliable established goliath in research reporting and objective fact-checking, there are five (5) facts about our accumulation of national debt that the mainstream news outlets rarely get in-depth about.

  1. The federal government’s total public debt stood at just under $31.46 trillion as of Feb. 10th, 2023. Nearly all of that debt – about $31.38 trillion – is subject to the statutory debt limit.
  2. For several years, the nation’s debt has been bigger than its gross domestic product (GDP). Read the Pew article for more in-depth details.
  3. 21.8% of the public debt, or $6.87 trillion, is owned by another arm of the federal government itself. This includes Medicare; specialized trust funds, such as those for highways and bank deposit insurance; and civil service and military retirement programs. But the biggest chunk of those “intragovernmental holdings” belongs to Social Security.
  4. The Federal Reserve System is the single largest holder of U.S. government debt. The Fed bought Treasuries in massive quantities during the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to keep the U.S. economy from buckling under the strain of shutdowns and quarantines.
  5. Servicing the debt is one of the federal government’s biggest expenses. Most of this spending is on veterans’ benefits and services due to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is more than it will spend on elementary and secondary education, disaster relief, agriculture, science and space programs, foreign aid, and natural resources and environmental protection.

I highly recommend you read closely this Pew Research Center article.

Another source of factual data comes from ABC News May 2023 article by Alexandra Hutzler, entitled “How US national debt grew to its $31.4 trillion high.”

How did it grow to $31.4 trillion?

The national debt has grown significantly since the early 1980s under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The largest percentage increases to the debt occurred under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both of whom enacted tax cuts that led to large deficits. […]

Flashpoints that greatly contributed to the debt over the past 50 years include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic — the latter two prompting sweeping stimulus measures from Congress that cost trillions of dollars.

— alexandra hutzler, abc news, may 18, 2023 — accessed at: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-national-debt-grew-314-trillion-high/story?id=99429867

And let me add to the last point of the COVID-19 pandemic, our administration at that time, the GOP and tRump, did very little (if anything substantial) for the preparation of this country to go to WAR against a highly contagious, lethal biological virus! I repeat, tRump and his administration never took the pandemic and public health and safety measures seriously. Hence, look what happened.

Therefore my fellow Americans, when you are bombarded by political party rhetoric and propaganda on this nation’s debt and deficit like those heard today from the House chamber members scrambling and panicking to put out all the fires caused by their own Party, look deeper, look much closer into the factual data. THAT is where you will find the nectar and honey of what they speak about truthfully, or lie about, or divert with vague ambiguous half-truths.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

The Professor’s Convatorium © 2023 by Professor Taboo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

24 thoughts on “History Made Today”

      • Which means the American public is paying for the incompetency of those they elect to govern. OR
        The rich get richer while the poor get poorer, and the gap is so wide they cannot even seeveach other anymore.

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        • “Which means the American public is paying for the incompetency of those they elect to govern.”

          You’re right about that, we are paying for it. I hate to admit it but the conservatives do have a valid point when it comes to the debt. It’s reached the point where just servicing the debt, just paying the interest on what the country owes, is costing us almost as much as the entire military budget, about $800 billion this year.

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          • The “debt/deficit blame” can be put on both parties, no doubt. However, it also has to be stated that those very Conservatives, over the last 20-30 yrs, amassed a much larger percentage due to these 3 factors:

            1. Conservatives/Republicans enacted huge tax cuts for the wealthiest in America AND cuts for mega American corporations. Yes, if there’s insufficient taxes coming in by the 9th wealthiest nation in the world and its own wealthy/wealthiest (including mega corporations), then it doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winning mathematician or economist to know exactly what “deficit” is. Why is our GDP lower than expenditures? Hah! Let me count the ways! 😉

            2. The pointless conventional wars in Afghanistan (20-yrs!) and Iraq (over 8-yrs!) costing the U.S. taxpayers more than $2 trillion and at least $757.8 billion, respectively! That’s effin INSANE! 😡 And are both those countries any better off today? And how about all the massive servicing of those maimed/wounded Veterans now? And for how long? And…

            3. A 2019 thru Jan. 20, 2021 Presidential Administration and White House that almost literally did NOTHING to prepare for a biological war against the COVID-19 pandemic. They and the world knew in Nov.–Dec. 2019 it was coming. And nothing but resistance and ambiguity was fed the American public by tRump and his MAGA radicals about how to fight it, protect yourself, and all those around you, family, community, work, country, and otherwise!

            Therefore, clearly the Conservative Republicans contributed greatly to this debt/deficit.

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            • There’s absolutely no doubt that the GOP is largely responsible for the fiscal mess we’re in. Reagan nearly bankrupted the country with his bizarre fiscal policies and they’ve only gotten worse since then. The Bushes were even worse than Reagan, basically putting the entire cost of the wars in Kuwait and Iraq on the country’s credit card, in a manner of speaking.

              Meanwhile they’ve decimated the tax system with ever more tax cuts for corporations and the rich, while instituting policies that have kept the income levels of the poor and middle class stagnant or even declining, decreasing the amount of income tax coming in from that source. Cutting funding and enforcement powers of the IRS to enable wealthy tax cheats to screw the country out of billions in taxes.

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  3. Well spoken, Prof! The Republicans have created numerous history-making moments for us of late: a twice-impeached (Republican) president; a former (Republican) president charged with 91+ criminal charges; and now this, a first ever removed Speaker of the House. Wow … they really want their names in lights, eh? Thanks for linking to the PEW article … not, mind you, that any of those die-hard Fox viewers could even understand it, let alone care, but we need to get the facts out there!

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  4. Once George Herbert Walker Bush stepped down from the presidency the Republican party seemed to at first gradually lose interest in the patrician image. This sped up once Gingrich crawled out of the woodwork. George W tenure seemed to be a mid-life crisis time for them. Once he had gone they moved into full jock-boy / mean-girl mode like they were the stock villain characters in a coming of age movie, only without the come-uppences.

    For some it would appear in their mindsets they equate ‘Responsibility’ with ‘Socialism’.

    Now you can all shoot me down on this one if you like, with regards to McCarthy. But there is this issue that without Democrat connivance this would not have happened. This brought to my mind the statement attributed to Napoleon ‘It is bad manners to interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake.’

    Of course they could be playing a long game and hoping the resulting ructions within the Republican Party will damage it badly in election run-up. However there was also the option of letting McCarthy know, they back him, but it comes with a big price and the Democrats will be sending the bill. Also those Republicans who do have a working relationship with Sanity and Perspective will now be sore with the Democrats and the wagons will circle. Then there’s the issue of possibly another uncertainty over the budget, which will be no good news for folk relying on that stability. It seems they might have missed an opportunity to play The Grown Ups on The Hill, more concerned with the running of the nation.

    Yes I know the Democrats have good and mighty cause to be sore and angry with McCarthy, but virtually siding with odious folk even more on the right. That might not play well to the voters.

    Just a view from across The Pond. Though maybe my focus isn’t that clear; distance and all.

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    • Now you can all shoot me down on this one if you like, with regards to McCarthy. But there is this issue that without Democrat connivance this would not have happened. This brought to my mind the statement attributed to Napoleon ‘It is bad manners to interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake.’

      I understand what you mean Roger. That’s how our “experiment of democracy” works sometimes—in back alleys and back rooms behind closed doors, etc.—and not always pretty. But I offer this other perspective too…

      There are Constitutional principles, protocols, and decorum that should or must be followed, enforced, and modeled, which all SERVE the American people, not one’s political party. They did not take an oath of office to their Republican Party. They took it to our Constitution and indirectly our Charters of Freedom. These laws and principles MUST come before party.

      That said, your comment as a whole Roger is well made. Thank you Sir. 🙂

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      • Spot on PT. They took an oath to serve the American Public, and did it with fingers crossed behind their collective back and a supressed snigger.
        As you say Politics is never pretty (It wouldn’t work otherwise) but this lot have turned it into something close to obscenity.

        Thank you for your kind words.
        Let us hope in a couple of years The USA can look back collectively sigh and say ‘Phew! That was too close for comfort. Let’s be more careful,’

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    • Well said, Roger. I’ve long said that you guys across the pond see our situation more clearly than we do sometimes. That old, “Can’t see the forest for the trees” thing. I, too, thought that while yes, McCarthy has been a liar and a terrible Speaker, it may be a case of “the devil you know …” and we could end up with even worse, such as Jim (Gym) Jordan who has a history of contributing to the sexual abuse of college athletes and is a Trumpeter from the word go.

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      • Ali put up a very good case Jill on your recent Congressional CHOAS post as to why the Democrats chose this moment to aid in the downfall of McCarthy.

        I guess there might be a difference of approach in overall politics between the two nations. The UK’s scene as I said to Ali is a ‘Mean Streets’ place. ‘The Means Justifies The End’. Folk will get ditched or held in ‘hock’ depending on the situation.
        Afterall we were given:
        1. In the 16th Century the title ‘Perfidious Albion’
        2. In the 19th Century ‘Of course the Sun Never Sets on The British Empire. God would never trust a Briton in the dark’

        Corbyn, Johnson, Truss, Farage – see what we do to outsiders who muscle in? We’ll tear them down if they don’t play the game.
        Trump and his ilk would not have lasted in the UK scene.

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        • I agree with all that Ali said, but I still think we’re likely to end up with someone even worse than McCarthy. The way it’s looking as of tonight … in case you hadn’t heard … there’s a decent chance that Donald Trump will actually become the speaker. There’s no way in hell that should be possible, but the Republicans seem to be trying to clear the obstacles to make it happen, and it seems that Trump has agreed to it. If that happens, then yes, I would have preferred to have stuck with McCarthy. Sigh. Would you mind if I borrow your tower for a while?

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          • There is obviously a grouping of Republicans who do not have the faintest idea about how The USA is supposed to work.
            If that should happen then does he still run for president? He can’t be both. Who will take his place as the action toy nominee? And will they have a hope against Biden (Incumbent carries weight- sometimes)?
            Then there is the matter that the deterioration of the slim co-operation between both sides will evaporate.
            Then the chance cities and states will disavowed intent to work with Congress.
            As for what will happen on the streets of the USA is quite another matter.
            Oh yes and the small matter of putting an idiot into the Speaker’s chair, someone with no clue as to how Congress works.

            Meanwhile in the Kremlin as Putin broods one of his aides will say
            ‘Never mind Mr President. Just look at the USA. It will all work out for us in the end,’

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            • He can still run for president while serving as Speaker, but would have to give up the speakership if he were elected. But, thankfully, it seems he won’t be in the running for the Speaker position after all, and that he has backed Jim (Gym) Jordan instead. Jordan is an arsehole, but then so are the others who have thrown their hat in the ring. Worse yet, there will likely be no consensus and the battle for Speaker will go on for some time … time that is ticking rapidly toward another government shutdown!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

              Oh yes, I’m sure that Putin is gloating over the turmoil that is defining our nation today. I can picture him rubbing his fat hands together and chortling gleefully. He and Donnie probably have nightly phone conversations.

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            • And so it goes on. These folk of independent wealth, egos but very small senses of responsibility and general character slither about the place.
              In comparison they make General James Mattoon Scott – as played by Burt Lancaster in Seven Days in May
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
              simply a reasonable guy who got a bit misguided.

              Donald Trump – the one action toy Putin bothered to buy from the USA.
              Although if that ex-occupant of the Whitehouse fails this time around Putin will disown him. Putin has no time for folk who do not deliver to his bidding (consciously or unconsciously)

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          • If he’s Speaker, can he still run for President? If so, how would he divide his time between his speaker duties and campaigning. I can’t imagine since he LOVES the adoration of the crowds!

            It’s truly sad that the U.S. has come to this. Such antics are the territory of CHILDREN … not (supposedly) leaders of this country.

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