Republicans' phantom budget is Kevin McCarthy’s latest blunder

One of President Joe Biden’s favorite quotes comes from his father: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.” This week, as Biden introduced his 2024 budget proposal with a speech in Philadelphia, Republicans have avoided that classic Biden approach by refusing to show us a budget at all. Instead of providing us with a document that would allow us to see a contrast in values between the two political parties, all the GOP has provided Americans with is a contrast in competence.

Biden’s ambitious budget would raise taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations, particularly large corporations, while offering $1 trillion in tax credits for low- and middle-income people. It calls for billions in new spending on Medicaid, child care, affordable housing and free community college, even as it would reduce the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years. The budget has its issues — it would extend much of the poorly designed Trump tax cuts, for example. But it would “give working people a fighting chance,” as Biden said Thursday, and it provides a clear platform for the president and his party heading into the 2024 election. 

Were congressional Republicans a functioning party, we’d be able to pit the GOP-controlled House’s proposal against Biden’s. But at this point, all we can say for sure is Biden’s budget exists and the Republicans’ budget doesn’t. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, told CNN on Wednesday that the GOP’s budget release would “probably be the second week in May” before his spokesperson hastily walked back that timeline. 

A May debut for an opposition budget normally wouldn’t be unusual. But the government is projected to hit the debt limit in June, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and his fellow Republicans have insisted that they’ll raise the limit only in exchange for spending cuts. We’re not talking about a few trims — The Washington Post reports “most House Republicans are adamant … [about] major concessions on spending” from the White House.

But no matter how many times McCarthy demands Biden negotiate spending cuts, it’s meaningless without a Republican budget that outlines those cuts. (“I want to make it clear,” Biden said Thursday, “I’m ready to meet with the speaker anytime — tomorrow if he has his budget.”) We only know what won’t be in that budget: McCarthy says Republicans won’t cut spending on defense, Social Security and Medicare or raise taxes. 

Yet those limits create new problems. If Republicans can’t cut Social Security, Medicare and defense — more than half of government spending — then where do they cut? The New York Times names Medicaid, food stamps and foreign aid as the GOP’s top targets, but all of those programs poll well with Americans. They even poll well with Republicans. No wonder McCarthy and his colleagues would rather negotiate without naming any cuts. 

So we’re left, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., put it, with the GOP budget “in the witness protection program — it’s in hiding.” That absence only brightens the spotlight on the one idea the GOP has put forward for the debt ceiling-budget fight: pretending default wouldn’t cripple the economy. On Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee marked up the Default Prevention Act, which would direct the Treasury Department to make interest payments on existing debt and then prioritize some payments over others. 

Practically speaking, this is a non-starter: The Treasury’s payment systems aren’t designed to pay some obligations but not others. The idea is political malpractice, as well. Programs not qualifying for priority are as varied as Medicaid to all of Homeland Security. Even priority programs would get money only after payments are made to bondholders — which means foreign investors would be treated better than the Defense Department. Even Fox News wouldn’t be able to spin that.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, Republican legislative failures abounded — most notably, failing to repeal Obamacare and never building Trump’s border wall. While it was sensible at the time to attribute the disarray to a disastrous president, it seems the incompetence runs much deeper among Washington Republicans. McCarthy’s moves to give Jan. 6 video to Tucker Carlson and allow votes on fringe ideas like a national sales tax have blown up in his face. The investigations from Rep. James Comer’s Oversight Committee and Rep. Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee have been farcical. And now this same party wants to hold the economy hostage to force spending cuts, but without naming those cuts or even admitting that it’s holding the economy hostage in the first place. It’s an absolute circus — and the rest of us can’t leave the tent.