WHAT IF THEY WIN? (UPDATED)

Given that the tide might be going out, rather than coming in, it seems to be a good time to think about just what a Republican victory in 22 days might look like.

Marjorie Taylor Greene may be only a first-term congress member, and one without any committee assignments as a result of her extreme actions, but she will be major force in the House of Representatives if there is a Republican majority.

“There’s going to be a lot of investigations,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said, describing what she anticipates if the Republicans regain the House majority this November. “I’ve talked with a lot of members about this.”

Among the fellow Republicans Greene said she had been speaking about these investigations was Kevin McCarthy. On September 23, Greene sat directly behind McCarthy in a manufacturing facility in Monongahela, Pa., as he publicly previewed what a House Republican majority’s legislative agenda would look like. Among the topics she and her colleagues have discussed is the prospect of impeaching President Joe Biden, which Greene has advocated literally since the day after Biden took office, when she filed articles of impeachment accusing Obama’s vice president of having abused his power to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. “My style would be a lot more aggressive, of course,” she said, referring to McCarthy. “For him, I think the evidence needs to be there. But I think people underestimate him, in thinking he wouldn’t do it.”

In her view, Speaker McCarthy would have little choice but to adopt her “a lot more aggressive” approach toward punishing Biden and his fellow Democrats for what she sees as their policy derelictions and for conducting a “witch hunt” against former President Trump. “I think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, he’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway. And if he doesn’t, the voters are going to be very unhappy about it. I think that’s the best way to read that. And that’s not in any way a threat at all. I just think that’s reality.” But then she added: “I don’t have to have a leadership position. I think I already have one, without having one.”

Consider that.

If you think none of this is possible, last week Republicans proposed legislation to wipe out the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices and to remove the cap on drug payments for seniors as well as remove the cap on the price of insulin. Traditionally, seniors - who are the ones who will suffer if this legislation ever becomes law - vote Republican. And they’re willing to stick the shiv in their own voters! Before the election. Why the Dims aren’t trumpeting this in every political ad they run this week is beyond me. But never underestimate the ability of the Dims to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We are in a situation where a Democrat sits in the White House and Republicans are well- positioned to take back the House in a midterm election that historically disempowers the President’s party.

Republicans have begun fleshing out their plans for a tried and true tactic: threaten global economic catastrophe in order to extort political concessions from the President.

Republican legislative terrorism has become so habitual, it’s just the particulars that change. Each time, GOP members say they won’t vote to raise or suspend the debt ceiling, the amount of money the government is authorized to borrow to meet its financial obligations. If that level is not lifted, the United States would default on its debts, sending shockwaves through the global financial system and triggering an economic crisis.

In 2011, Tea Party Republicans held the debt limit hostage, ostensibly to extract a deal that would reduce the national debt. It was a demand for debt reduction entirely on the Republicans’ terms, through slashing government programs. By 2013, they’d warmed to the tactic but switched out the ransom from narrowly defined debt reduction to demand that President Obama defund the Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement. The result was a government shut-down

This time, Republicans are laying out plans to take the debt ceiling and use it to demand cuts to Medicare and Social Security, programs that are massively popular particularly with older Americans.

Rather than pursuing these cuts during the two years Republicans had unified control under Trump, when they suspended the debt ceiling thrice without a fuss, Republicans are preparing to demand them from President Joe Biden. And if he won’t comply? The country’s resulting default on its debt will somehow also be on Biden’s head.

“If Republicans are trying to cut spending, surely he wouldn’t try to default,” said Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), a contender to chair the House Ways and Means Committee.

Polls show Republicans have paid for forcing this kind of government dysfunction. But they clearly still think it’s a winning strategy, allowing themselves to claim the mantle of “fiscal responsibility” while foisting a crisis on a Democratic administration at the same time.

As dubious as the GOP politics are, their arguments are worse.

Republicans disingenuously link the debt ceiling to future spending, that refusing to raise it will handcuff the government from wanton spending in the months to come. But that’s not what the debt ceiling is. It’s more akin to paying a credit card bill, making good on money that has already been appropriated.

Republicans are directly responsible for the debt that they decry, due to the Trump tax cuts of 2017 that ballooned deficit spending. Both parties add to the debt when they’re governing, but only Republicans decide it’s an unbearable state of affairs, as soon as a President they oppose is in office.

The hollowness of the reasoning and conviction doesn’t dilute the danger. The MAGA-fication of the Republican party only makes these threats scarier, only increases the likelihood they’ll pull the trigger, consequences be damned. Kevin McCarthy has shown little desire or ability to control the most extreme members of his caucus.

Even feigning they might pull the trigger has consequences: In 2011, the government lost its triple-A credit rating from Standard & Poor’s; experts say it hobbled the country’s economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Even well-intentioned Democrats will fail to defuse the bomb if determined Republicans decide to let it explode.

There is still a way out.

Democrats could unilaterally defang the debt limit, regardless of the midterm results. They could raise it through reconciliation to some mind-numbingly enormous number, ensuring, at the very least, a many years-long buffer. Last time the issue arose last fall, various Democratic senators expressed their enthusiasm to remove the debt ceiling from Republicans’ arsenal. But there wasn’t much consensus or energy around actually doing it.

Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) have a bill that would repeal the debt limit altogether, but it would require a filibuster carveout. And for the perhaps more realistic reconciliation tack, Democrats would still need to muster the support of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; Manchin often swallows even baseless Republican economic talking points.

If Republicans win the House, they’ll tee up priorities Democrats will find unpleasant and enraging: endless hearings to investigate everything from Hunter Biden’s very presence on this Earth to the Afghanistan pullout, dead-on-arrival, red-meaty bills targeting transgender children or banning abortion. They’ve telegraphed plans to impeach Biden, and maybe some Cabinet members.

Republicans announced today they plan to push to extend key parts of Trump’s tax cuts if they take control of Congress, aiming to force President Biden to codify trillions of dollars worth of lower taxes touted by his predecessor.

Republicans are preparing to advance legislation that would make permanent the GOP’s 2017 changes to the tax rates paid by individuals. They will also push to scrap the law’s specific tax increases on corporations that were designed to offset the cost of their enormous overall cut to the corporate tax rate.

Many economists say the GOP’s plans to expand the tax cuts flies against their promises to fight inflation and reduce the federal deficit, which have emerged as central themes of their 2022 midterm campaign rhetoric. Republicans say they believe these efforts would put Biden in a political bind, requiring him to choose between vetoing the tax cuts , thereby giving the GOP an attack line in the 2024 presidential election, or allowing Republicans to win on one of their central legislative agenda items.

Newt Gingrich said a similar strategy was successful at forcing both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to enact tax cuts that they would not have otherwise supported, after both of those Democratic presidents lost control of Congress.

Republicans are also planning to push for reductions in government spending, although the exact contours of that policy appear less clear. Bloomberg Government reported Tuesday that the four House Republicans seeking to lead the House budget committee are all exploring changes to Social Security and Medicare to reduce costs to the federal budget, seeking to use the debt ceiling or government shutdown to force the issue.

And then, of course, there’s all the “uncertainty” over “vote fraud” that Republicans wold deal with.

Not to mention they would be the party in charge of certifying the results of the 2024 election on January 6, 2025.

UPDATE: Just in case you still think “it can’t be that bad,” Qevin McQarthy announced yesterday that if Republicans win control of the House that the GOP will use raising the debt limit as leverage to force spending cuts — which could include cuts to Medicare and Social Security — and limit additional funding to Ukraine.

Just in case you were still wondering if they were a collection of backstabbing traitors or not.

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