To Editor:
It looks like the House Republican Freedom Caucus (“HRFC”) will put the man in the cannon and light the fuse. The Speaker will not escape unscathed, but oh! The lovely smell of Apocalypse Now - napalm, sulfur, smoke, perhaps a fire! Who needs to govern when you can have a war?
The HRFC remains inconsolable over McCarthy’s deal with President Biden on the debt ceiling in June. They refuse any budget proposal that uses that negotiated figure. They had the entire summer to work with Democrats to frame a budget. As the House has been occupied with ranting and raving at the AG, perpetually investigating impeachment, etc., decrying Trump’s legal woes, Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) told reporters, “We allowed ourselves to basically get so distracted with all the other shiny things that we didn’t actually get ahead of our real job, which is to be appropriators.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) accused the HRFC of straying from Reagan philosophy: “take 80% and make a deal. But these folks [demand] 100% and would prefer zero versus getting 95%. Literally, some of these guys have been offered about everything. The goal post moves every day.”

The House Republicans know full well that any bill must be bipartisan since Democrats control the Senate and the Presidency. The point is, the HRFC doesn’t want a deal. What do they want?

Matt Gaetz endorsed a video of Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), which reflected his own belief that, "the only way you're gonna get any change in this town is through force." Speaker McCarthy said of his Party, “They don’t know what they want.” Of course they know. Trump commanded (all caps) Unless You Get Everything, Shut It Down!” He and the HRFC want an actual revolution, or at least “mass dysfunction,” to alter our form of government.

To ensure dysfunction, Republicans have released their 2024 Budget Proposal which is nothing short of rapacious. In an increasingly inequitable economy, it is miserly toward those needing social services, and remarkably charitable to the appallingly wealthy who are sustaining the imbalance. The HRFC vows no compromise, and believes they will bury the Democrats in a government shutdown and achieve their one-Party system.

On the Democratic side, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted for bribery by the DOJ. "Over $480,000 in cash and gold bars - much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe – [were] discovered in the home." Menendez invoked the popular meme of “weaponization of the DOJ” because he’s Latino and was poor as a child.
One commentator accused, “There goes Biden, weaponizing the Justice Department again to prosecute senior political leaders in his own Party.”
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.