Conspiracy theorists, and if you like double talk, tie your hats! The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has taken power.
One only has to look closely at their very first days on the job to understand where they are going. And also to see the wisdom of the American system of government which contains enough checks and balances so that a single chamber of Congress cannot rule everything, despite having the last word in approving state spending.
Upon his election as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy announced his priorities: the creation of a House subcommittee on “the instrumentalization of the state against the most conservative citizens”. In English, we use the word “weaponize”, which sounds more aggressive. The committee will have to have the same budgets and resources as the one that investigated the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, it is specified.
Another priority is an investigation into the origin of COVID-19, one of the Republicans’ favorite conspiracy theories that the virus was manufactured in the laboratory specifically to harm Donald Trump. And, of course, all kinds of investigations into President Joe Biden, starting with the FBI’s examination of his son Hunter’s laptop, which has been the subject of all kinds of speculation for more than two years. .
But the FBI should also be investigated, Republicans say, for being part of the instrumentalization of the state apparatus against right-wingers.
But the very first bill passed by the Republican majority in the House is particularly representative of what will happen over the next two years.
Under the pretext that the American equivalent of the Department of Revenue – it is an agency in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – has been exploited against the conservatives, and the Republicans in particular, we want to prevent the hiring 87,000 new employees over the next 10 years.
That would have meant, according to Republicans, more than 700,000 additional audits of the tax returns of taxpayers earning less than $75,000 a year.
In fact, it is quite simply a matter of compensating for departures – 52,000 are expected in the next six years – and modernizing the IRS’s antiquated computer system. The Republican version of things is that we want to prevent the government from harassing brave taxpayers. But the reality is that it is mostly the wealthy contributors to the Republican Party who would now fly under the radar.
The Congressional Budget Office – the equivalent of our Parliamentary Budget Officer – estimates that if we don’t renew the staff at the IRS, we will end up with an increase in the deficit of the order of $114 billion in 10 years.
All this while the Republicans pride themselves on being the party of the fight against the deficit and also of law and order.
All this is without taking into account the concessions in the functioning of the House of Representatives that Kevin McCarthy had to make to be elected President on the 15e ballot.
Members of the Freedom Caucus – the ultraconservatives in the Republican caucus – now find themselves in key roles, such as deciding which bills will be debated by the House.
Even elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene – who became famous for openly admitting to being a follower of the QAnon ‘oracle’ and for claiming California wildfires were started by lasers fired from space, under the control of the wealthy Jewish Rothschild family. This had led to her being excluded from all House committees.
After endorsing McCarthy, she is now a candidate for a seat on the powerful House Oversight Committee, which can launch investigations into just about any topic.
Over the next two years, every vote on issues like raising the debt ceiling or just the budget risks becoming a political crisis. And all this while the dismissal of the President of the Chamber may be subject to a vote at the request of a single representative. Good luck, Mr. McCarthy!
The Sandro Grande affair
In recent years, CF Montreal has multiplied the blunders not on the ground, but in the offices. It seems that no one in the management has reliable antennas, with the partisans and the French-speaking community, or a minimum of political sensitivity, an essential thing in a city like Montreal.
It wasn’t always like this. Between 2007 and 2018, the Impact relied on former minister Richard Legendre as executive vice-president. And mistakes like the Grande affair or the unnecessary change of the team’s name never happened under his watch. It is a judgment like his that is still sorely lacking in the organization of CF Montreal.