With the announcement of a deal between the White House (I’d say Joe Biden, but he’s still on vacation) and Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the debt ceiling has come a spirited debate on the end result. Was it a good deal? Was it terrible? Was it bad but the best Republicans could hope for?
I tend to think that given the current makeup of the federal government, the mistakes that preceded this moment far outweigh the mistakes made with this specific deal. With a Democrat Senate and president, some compromise on the already watered-down House bill was always going to be the end result. Republicans should probably focus more on winning elections if they want to do big things. A crazy suggestion, I know.
Regardless, leave it to Sen. Lindsey Graham to give the worst take imaginable on the situation despite previously giving us one of the best memes of all time. Instead of expressing some discontent about the fact that the country is still headed toward fiscal disaster due to out-of-control spending, Graham is really concerned that McCarthy might not increase defense spending enough (Fox News).
“Number one, I respect Kevin McCarthy. I want to raise the debt ceiling. It would be irresponsible not to do it. I want to control spending. I’d like to have a smaller IRS. I’d like to claw back the unused COVID money. I know you can’t get the perfect – but what I will not do is adopt the Biden defense budget and call it a success,” Graham told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream. “Kevin said that the defense is fully funded. If we adopt the Biden defense budget, it increases defense spending below inflation – 3.2% increase in defense is below inflation.”
Read that last line a few times. Graham isn’t even mad that McCarthy is cutting defense spending (because he isn’t). He’s mad that McCarthy isn’t increasing it enough for his tastes. Sure, we are $31 trillion in debt, but no mind. We’ll just build enough carriers to ensure our economy doesn’t collapse in on itself or something.
That’s not to say I’m not for a strong military budget. I think most Republicans are. Yet, when I see that the Department of Defense has failed its fifth straight audit and can’t account for upwards of 60 percent of its budget, I tend to think continuing to hand out blank checks isn’t the solution. Why doesn’t Graham call for more accountability instead? How much more effectively could the current military budget be spent if there were some basic, enforced guardrails on fraud and waste? Surely, there’d be enough to clean up so that we could at least cover the cost of inflation that Graham is worried about, right?
Notice that Graham never suggests the military do better. Instead, he just wants to keep shoveling more and more money into the black hole without the slightest hint of reform, and he’s not alone within the GOP. I can’t be too hard on him, though, because while his golden calf is military spending, we’ve got other Republicans insisting we can’t make basic reforms to social security despite it, by far, being the biggest driver of the national debt. Aside from a few outspoken critics like Rand Paul and Chip Roy, most of the GOP is content to keep spending like drunken sailors no matter what the issue is.