There are no moderate Republicans in the House of Representatives. Of course, privately, some members are horrified by the views of Mike Johnson, the new president. But what they think in the privacy of their minds is not important. What matters is what they do, and each and every one of them has supported the election of a radical extremist.
In fact, most people – I think even political journalists – are not fully aware that Johnson is more extremist than they imagine.
Much of the reporting on the Republican has understandably focused on his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Let me note, by the way, that the widely used phrase “election denial” is a euphemism that softens and diffuses the topic we are talking about. Trying to keep your party in power after losing a free and fair election, without the slightest evidence of significant fraud, is not just denial; It is a betrayal of democracy.
Johnson’s conservative views on society have also been widely reported, but I’m not sure how many people understand the extent of his bigotry. Johnson isn’t just someone who wants to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ Americans and ban same-sex marriage; It is known that he defends the criminalization of gay sex.
But the extremism of Johnson, and the party that elected him, goes beyond the rejection of democracy and the attempt to reverse decades of social progress. The new speaker of the House of Representatives has also defended an incredibly reactionary economic program.
Until his sudden rise to president, Johnson was a relatively unknown figure. But for a time he served as president of the Republican Studies Committee, a group that develops political proposals. And now that Johnson has become the face of his party, people should really take a look at the budget proposal the Committee released for 2020 during his presidency.
If you read the proposal carefully, leaving aside the often evasive language, you will realize that it calls for the elimination of the American social safety net, not only of the programs for the poor, but also of the policies that form the foundation of the financial stability of the American middle class.
Let’s start with Social Security, for which the budget calls for raising the retirement age, now set at 67, to 69 or 70, with possible additional increases as life expectancy increases.
At first glance, this might seem plausible. Until the huge decline caused by Covid, average life expectancy in the United States had increased steadily over time. But there is a huge and growing gap between the number of years that well-off Americans can expect to live and the life expectancy of lower-income groups, including not only the poor but also much of the working class. So raising the retirement age would harshly penalize the least fortunate Americans, who are precisely the people who depend most on Social Security.
Then there’s Medicare, for which the budget proposes raising the eligibility age “so that it matches the normal retirement age for Social Security and then indexing this age to life expectancy.” Translation: raise the Medicare age from 65 to 70, and then keep raising it.
But wait, there’s more. Most nonelderly Americans get health insurance through their companies. But this system relies heavily on policies that the study committee proposed eliminating. You see, benefits don’t count as taxable income, but to maintain this tax advantage, companies (generally) must insure all their employees, rather than offering benefits only to highly compensated individuals.
The commission’s budget would eliminate this incentive for broad coverage, reducing tax deductions on company contributions and offering the same deduction for insurance purchased by individuals. As a result, some companies would likely limit themselves to giving cash to their highest-paid workers, who could use it to purchase expensive individual plans, and would stop offering coverage to the rest of their workers.
And it goes without saying that the budget would impose savage cuts — $3 trillion over a decade — to Medicaid, children’s health coverage and subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford insurance under the Health Care Act. Affordable.
How many Americans would lose health insurance under these proposals? In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal the Obamacare would leave 23 million Americans uninsured. The Republican Study Committee’s proposals are much more draconian and far-reaching, so the losses would presumably be much greater.
So Mike Johnson advocates for policies on retirement, health care, and other areas that I can’t go into for lack of space, including food stamps, which would basically end American society as we know it. We would become a much crueler and less safe country, with much more misery.
I think it’s safe to say that these proposals would be hugely unpopular, if voters knew about them. But will they get to know them?
Actually, I’d like to see some focus group ask what Americans think about Johnson’s policy positions. Here’s my guess, based on past experience: Many voters will simply refuse to believe that prominent Republicans, let alone the speaker of the House of Representatives, would actually advocate such terrible things.
But they defend them and he defends them. The Republican Party has become full-blown extremist, on both economic and social issues. The question now is whether the American public will notice this.
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