Dances With Wolves 🌻 🌻 🌻

Spin Cycle:  Over the weekend President Biden and Kevin McCarthy reached a deal on raising the debt ceiling in an amount sufficient to push the next debt ceiling cha cha off two years until after the 2024 election. In exchange for raising the ceiling, the two sides agreed on a budget that doesn’t cut non-defense spending but instead keeps it flat in 2024, increasing it by 1% in 2025; keeps veteran’s health care including funding for toxic pit related illness; claws back $30 billion of unspent COVID money but keeps the $5 billion allocated for the development of the updated COVID vaccine and new COVID treatments; cuts only $1.4 billion of the $60 billion increase in IRS funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act: expands work requirements for food assistance by raising existing age requirements from 49 to 54 years, less than what Republicans had included in their House bill and more than what Democrats wanted but Democrats also won expanded benefits for veterans, homeless people and young people aging out of foster care; and speeds up environmental approval of energy projects, giving special preference to projects in Joe Manchin’s West Virginia.  In addition, Republicans failed to put the kibosh on Biden’s efforts to provide student loan relief but got an agreement to end the COVID pause in payments that Biden had already said would end in August. The budget deal does not include the Medicaid work requirements that Republicans wanted, nor does it eliminate clean air energy tax credits.  McCarthy who’s spinning the deal as a major win for Republicans even though he conceded more than he won despite his assertion that he made no concessions plans to bring the deal up for a vote in the House on Wednesday. He’s not going to get his whole caucus on board as some never vote for debt ceiling increases and many on the right including Trump are already complaining about his concessions, the ones he said he didn’t grant.  For their part Democrats except for some on the left side of left are quietly content with the deal, not that most will admit that yet because the deal’s not done until it’s voted on in both Houses and everyone knows that McCarthy’s family and even Mitch McConnell’s includes quite a few Shivs. Despite his smiling demeanor and hockey stick in the air posturing, McCarthy’s remaining days as Speaker could be numbered.

Texas Hold’em: Were it not for the debt ceiling tango, Texas would be front and center in the news right now because over the weekend by a vote of 121 to 23 the state’s Republican led house impeached the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton, who won reelection in November has played fast and loose with the law for years.  He was previously indicted for securities fraud but somehow or other none of his “criming” seemed to matter, nor did it get in the way of his suing the Biden administration for everything that irked the right, not just policies but election denier Paxton also sued to try to upend 2020 presidential election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin.  What finally got him was his efforts to settle a lawsuit with four former employees of his office who had accused him of using his authority to benefit Nate Paul, a real estate investor who had donated tens of thousands to his campaign.  One of the charges against Paxton involves allegations that real estate investor Paul gave a job to a woman that Paxton was having an affair with, in exchange for legal services. Pursuant to Texas law Paxton has to step down pending the results of a hearing and vote in the State’s Senate.  Paxton’s wife Angela who describes herself as a loyal pistol packing mama is one of the 31 Texas Senators who will determine his fate. Conflict of interest, but it’s Texas so it probably won’t matter.

People and Politics:  Doug Mastriano, the far-right Pennsylvania politician, bigoted election denier who was trounced by Josh Shapiro in 2022’s state gubernatorial race will not be running for Senator in 2024. As a result, Republicans will likely back more mainstream, albeit not too mainstream candidate, hedge funder Dave McCormick who lost to Mehmet Oz who then lost to now Senator John Fetterman during the last cycle in an attempt to unseat incumbent Democrat Bob Casey.  Right now, Casey is polling ahead of McCormick but it’s early, Pennsylvania is considered a swing state and McCormick has bigly bucks.  Things continue to go downhill at CPAC.  Late last week, Bob Beauprez, the American Conservative Union’s long-time treasurer resigned saying that he was not fully informed about money being paid for accused crotch grabber Chairman Matt Schlapp’s legal defense and as a result could not deliver a financial report with any confidence. He compared his role to “that of a mushroom” as in “being kept in the dark and fed lots of manure.”  As to manure and treasurers, George of many names Santos is now serving as his own, which isn’t all that surprising since the person who signed his last financial filings existed only in Santos’ mind.