A band of House conservatives Friday voted down a GOP bill to avoid a government shutdown. The vote marked a significant — and embarrassing — defeat for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) …

  • Nahvi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You seem to be misunderstanding the Hastert Rule. The rule does not say that the bill has to be passable without bipartisan support. It says that the Republican portion has to represent a majority of their party. I didn't say it had to be so friendly to Democrats that most Republicans wouldn't vote for it.

    Also, McCarthy's Speakership won't survive turning his back on the Freedom Caucus anyways, unless the Democrats decide to back him. So there is no reason he has to follow that rule at all, if he's going to cross the aisle. Hastert himself broke the rule a dozen times according to your link.

    In this case there are 221 Republicans, they would only 111 to have a majority of the party on board. Sure a true bipartisan bill would be great, but they only really need 18 democrats willing to vote along with 200 Republicans or as many Democrats as 107 with only 111 Republicans. There is a lot of wiggle room if both sides have members willing to cross the aisle.

    The real problem is finding enough Side A-ers that would be willing to have their names alongside them crazy Side B-ers.

    • SolNine@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I understand your point, and you are accurate about the majority, my apologies, however; (and I did look this up and couldn't find an answer) how many of the bills passed by the house have been brought to the floor during the 118th congress were only brought forth with enough votes to pass them with GOP only votes? Are there any exceptions? Would they even bring one to the floor? It seems effectually this rule has been taken to an extreme. It appears today, McCarthy finally put on his big boy pants and is proposing a 45 day clean spending bill, but it's just kicking the can down the road again.

      Many of the items put in the majority of bills that could normally pass with bipartisan support are non-starters for Democrats. These insane "anti-woke" (whatever the hell that means), policies and support/proliferation of Russian propaganda resulting in our neglect of Ukraine aid are not in our nations best interest.

      It's amazing to me that under GOP control they will cut taxes, spend like lunatics, blow up the deficit, and then their constituents buy into the "fiscal conservatism" ploy, hook, line and sinker as soon as they are the opposition party. It's baffling to me. No one, especially me, disagrees with the fact that our national deficit is way beyond egregious, but shutting down the government, defaulting on debt, crashing the economy, harming our military service members, and ruining our currency and credit rating is political terrorism.

      No one is willing to take on our defense spending issues, and I'm not talking about supplying our troops, I'm talking about only having one company that provides parts or equipment with no competition, changing absurd prices, and the same goes with much of our investment into equipment development. I cant recall if it's the JSF or the F22, but while they are publicly funded programs the US doesn't even own the patent rights and can't allow for competition for replacement parts etc. It's insane, our defense budget is so out of wack it needs a complete overhaul.