Debt ceiling

From our perspective the spending deal was no victory, but another “fear The Turtle” moment in which the not-so-subtle big spending hand of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell manipulated the White House and the House Republican Leadership into once again abandoning any pretense of fiscal restraint.

This is a bad deal for the president. It’s a bad deal for conservatives. Most importantly, it’s a bad deal for the forgotten men and women who voted to shake up Washington, D.C. when they sent President Trump to the White House. This is not draining the swamp — it’s feeding the swamp and entrenching the status quo. Every single party involved in these negotiations should immediately go back to the drawing board and negotiate a better deal for working families and the country. We should come together, find bipartisan ways to cut spending, balance our budget and get our crumbling fiscal house on a sustainable foundation for the future.

President Trump and conservatives won a big victory in the Supreme Court’s Wall ruling and in the otherwise disastrous spending bill, but we must be prepared to renew the immigration fight when Congress returns in September and takes-up the next round of spending bills.

Principles matter in elections, and with all four legs of the 2016 big table coalition working full throttle on his behalf Donald Trump is a shoo-in for reelection, but a stool or table supported only by the one leg of Donald Trump’s outsized personality is likely to crash on Election Day.

The Trump administration projected in March that this year’s deficit will hit $1.1 trillion, up from last year’s deficit of $779 billion – a figure comparable to the Obama-era deficit. After months of urging congressional and administration negotiators to prioritize reductions in spending, the Conservative Action Project has come out in opposition to this irresponsible bipartisan budget deal.

The voters who want fiscal responsibility who powered the Tea Party Wave and the Trump Movement haven’t gone away. While they may grudgingly support President Trump in 2020 against a Far-Left progressive Democrat, congressional Republicans who think they can spend their way to reelection will face the wrath of those voters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, “We’ll have offers on the table when we find somebody that’s not crazy to deal with…” judging by what the Democrats’ leaders are saying it looks like it is going to be a long shutdown, if it can’t end until someone who is not crazy represents them at the negotiating table.

Much as we dislike the substance of the Democrats’ promises, as Republican Rep. Tom Reed’s flirtation with voting for the Democratic rules package demonstrates, it is hard to argue with the appeal of politicians who actually do what they say they will do, even if what they promise is a disaster waiting to happen.

We urge CHQ readers to call the toll-free Capitol Switchboard (1-866-220-0044) to ask for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Tell Rep. McCarthy that the Freedom Caucus is right: We support funding our troops, however, growing the size of government by 13 percent is not what the voters sent Republicans to Congress to do.

While Erik Prince’s views on the conservative agenda need to be explored further before we can make any kind of endorsement, we do know a lot of things we don’t like about Senator John Barrasso, and first among them is his crony relationship with Mitch McConnell.

The central message of the poll is “dance with the one who brung ya,” and more specifically, dance with the Trump voters and their agenda.

If democracy, as Freedom House contends, is in global retreat, one reason may be that, in our new age, legislatures, split into hostile blocs checkmating one another, cannot act with the dispatch impatient peoples now demand of their rulers. In the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Congress was a rival to even strong presidents. Those days are long gone.

December, is the traditional time when Congress packages bad legislation into midnight “Omnibus” bills that are laden with pork and funding for anti-conservative programs and policy.

President Trump shouldn’t get suckered into owning the debt ceiling increase, because it is Congress that holds the purse strings and Congress that authorizes and appropriates the vast deficit spending that has driven the debt past $20 trillion.

Mnuchin has made it clear he isn't a fan of legislation that would prioritize which payments get made and which don't if the debt ceiling couldn't be raised in time. But in reality, Treasury is already widely expected to forgo some normal federal spending in the event it can't borrow any more, in order to make sure it keeps up debt service payments.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are poised to stand in the way of lifting the nation's borrowing limit next month, increasing the chances of real problems for House and Senate leaders as they try to increase the debt ceiling by an end-of-September deadline. House and Senate conservatives have long insisted that debt ceiling increases be accompanied by spending reforms, and that hasn't changed this year, even under a Republican president who is insisting on a "clean" debt ceiling increase.

All presidents want a clean debt ceiling increase. The only way automatic debt ceiling increases will stop is if grassroots conservatives turn out and demand that spending be cut, as President Trump’s budget proposed, and that Congress implement debt reforms now.

The Boehner – Ryan policy of governing via continuing resolution means that federal spending remains on auto-pilot, with no opportunity – other than the debt ceiling vote – for conservatives to have any chance of cutting spending.

Any Republican that votes to bring the #ZombieBudget to the Floor deserves a Primary election challenge. We urge you to call your Representative, the House switchboard is 1-866-220-0044, tell him or her you demand a NO vote on the rule to bring the #ZombieBudget to the House floor and an end to the secret deals with Obama to increase spending and the debt ceiling and burden our children and grandchildren with billions of dollars of new Establishment Republican debt.

The suspense -- or rather, the suspension -- is over. The U.S. debt ceiling has been reset at $18.113 trillion, the Treasury Department said Tuesday. That new limit on public debt is about $1 trillion above where it stood in February 2014, when lawmakers decided to "suspend" the ceiling through this past weekend.