Why Congressional Republicans do not deserve your vote

Here we have the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Trump stooge, saying that, if Republicans get control of Congress again, they will try to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act, a widely-popular law pushed by the Biden administration to give the nation’s chip manufacturing and semiconductor industries a boost. It’s one of the few bills that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate. President Biden signed it into law in August 2022.

Johnson had to walk back his comment later, but this guy revealed what we already know: Given the chance, Republicans in the madhouse House will try to reverse everything Biden did, no matter how effective or popular, to please Trump, should he tragically win the presidential election. A vote for any Republican, including Maryland’s Larry Hogan, is a vote for a do-nothing Congress and one that will stifle or reverse the progress made under Biden.

And, given another chance, Republicans will even stretch back again to try and kill Obamacare, though repeals of the Affordable Care Act have failed dozens of times over the last decade.

This is crazy talk. The CHIPS Act has sparked hundreds of billions of dollars of investments and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. It’s been a big part of the Biden-Harris economy, which is in full-blown recovery and described by The Economist as “the envy of the world.”

From Steven Rattner, economics reporter and analyst:

• Despite the steep drop in the jobs-added number for October, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%.
  — Trump thinks this economy is in the toilet. In fact, under Joe Biden, it grew faster than it did under Donald Trump.
  — Inflation declined to 2.1% in September, miraculously nearing the Fed’s 2% target rate amid strong economic growth numbers.
  — The S&P has grown 51% since Biden took office, surpassing the markets of other rich countries, as well as Trump’s growth at the same time in his presidency.
  — The Biden administration spurred a steep increase in investment in the US, and the Inflation Reduction Act fueled a renaissance of American industry and robust GDP growth.

Republicans deserve almost no credit for any of it. Just as a reminder:

No Republican in either the House or Senate voted for Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a comprehensive spending package designed to increase manufacturing jobs, advance clean energy and other climate initiatives, extend Obamacare subsidies and lower prescription drug prices.

No Republican in either the House or Senate voted for the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s first big initiative, to further help Americans emerge from the pandemic with billions for vaccines, to help schools reopen safely, to extend unemployment benefits, help low-income families with children — you know, all that good stuff that Democrats see as vital and Republicans generally see as reckless spending.

Of course, Republicans are not the only ones who just say no.

For instance, in 2017, when Trump was president, not a single Democrat agreed with Republicans on the major tax cuts they enacted — a revival of Reagan-era trickle-down economics that promised job growth and increased productivity. The Trump administration claimed the cuts would “pay for themselves.” Two years later, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the cuts would increase the national debt by $1.9 trillion and the “pay for themselves” claim has been debunked.

When Republicans come around and support progressive spending and new laws, only a few side with Democrats.

The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, pushed by Biden and congressional Democrats, passed with the support of 13 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but getting 32 votes from just-say-no Republicans in a closely divided Congress was considered a major achievement.

The bipartisan gun safety bill, the first of its kind in three decades, that passed the Senate in June 2022 by a 65-33 vote. With so many mass shootings, including the slaying of 19 school children in Texas and 10 shoppers in a New York supermarket, Congress finally took some action, providing millions of dollars to the states for mental health and school security programs. It made the juvenile records of gun buyers under age 21 part of required background checks and provided incentives for the enactment of local “red flag” laws to keep guns away from people considered dangerous.

And enough Republicans sided with Democrats to send much-needed military aid to Ukraine for its existential fight against the Russian invasion. (Alas, Maryland’s lone Republican in Congress, Rep. Andy “Dr. Do Nothing” Harris, was not one of them.)

With this track record, and with the U.S. economy firing on all cylinders now, I don’t know why anyone would waste a vote on a Republican for Congress. Partisanship aside, it makes no practical sense.