Newsletter January 13, 2024

…[O]n Thursday, our President, Russ Vought, walked us all through the current situation surrounding an agreement made by Speaker Johnson with Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The explanation for why it is such a bad deal is fairly complicated, and there was no way to easily get through that call and explain it. If you got lost, and had trouble following it all, don’t worry, you weren’t alone. We spent a lot of time over the last few weeks unpacking it ourselves so that we could fully understand it, before being able to assess what should be done.

 

I’m going to attempt to provide an easier to understand version, and then I’m going to follow up with a second more technical version so that once you’ve digested the simple contours, you’ll know how to talk about this with your member of Congress. There is a window here to put pressure on Congress and impact the process.

 

Version 1: Short version – This is the language of a post on social media, with additional edits, I used to simply state how Republican leadership was surrendering the fight in DC…

 

“If I were a Republican who wanted to do everything I could to pretend to fight but just give Democrats what they want in the process, I would:

1. Abandon a full-year CR (continuing resolution… basically a government funding bill that sets spending at previously approved levels, a continuation of previous spending) that by a stroke of luck and previously agreed to sequesters, would result in $73 billion in cuts to woke and weaponized non-defense discretionary spending, but which protects previous increases to the topline of defense spending, and INSTEAD agree to a “spending deal” with Democrats that spends $100 billion more than a simple yearlong CR as outlined above would.

2. By agreeing to a spending deal that Democrats want, it also removes leverage to use spending to attain serious border security reforms, like HR2 (which would significantly move the needle on securing the border and forcing the hand of the Biden admin).

3. In order to headpat conservatives and keep them at bay on border security, you release a “bi-partisan” border security agreement that does nothing to actually change the situation on the border and doesn’t adopt any of the most important provisions of HR2, but it’s a border security bill so it’s hard for conservatives to message against it after they’ve been highlighting the problem for years.

4. To further headpat conservatives, you arrange a big border visit and say tough things about the border to gaslight Americans and make them think you are taking it seriously.

5. Given conservatives will point out that the “bi-partisan” border security bill does nothing to actually move the needle on the border and all it does is take the pressure off of Democrats, Mayorkas, and Biden in a campaign year and gives them wiggle room to continue to do nothing and makes it harder to pin the issue on them and hold them accountable with voters, you then deploy the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board to put out an editorial saying that if Republicans don’t embrace these “incremental” border security reforms, they are intentionally making the border more dangerous (even though it’s untrue) for political gain and therefore make conservatives, not the lawless Biden admin, and not the feckless Republican caucus, the bad guys.

If I wanted to set up the process to lose and hand Democrats victories and a glide path through 2024 to escape important electoral scrutiny, I’d do the above things. Through a turn of fortunate events, leverage on impacting the federal spending fight has emerged. Before we get to the part about Speaker Johnson not embracing this leverage, I’ll briefly explain it.

 

For more info and analysis go here, here, and here to hear Russ Vought interviews with Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.