McCarthy’s ousting is a new low for Congress

There are many things taxing my brain today and none more, I’m afraid, than the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the US House of Representatives. In my first year as a Political Science undergraduate in the early 1970s, I was asked to submit an essay on the subject of “Is Britain Becoming Ungovernable?”.  We were of course in the heyday of trades union power and strikes in any sector you choose were daily occurrences. In Germany, the phenomenon was referred to as “APO”, ausserparliametarische Opposition, or extra-parliamentary opposition. Since the student uprisings of Paris in 1968 and the growing resistance to the Vietnam war, civil disobedience had become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life and the question posed by the professor was obviously aimed at the conundrum whether it was parliament or the “canaille” that governed the country. On January 6 2021, our transatlantic cousins were faced with the same question.

Increasingly, however, the issue of governability, or ungovernability, is no longer about parliament versus the people but parliament against itself. There is an ever-increasing number of examples of legislative deadlocks where the catfight is being carried out on the floor of the legislature and where the fronts are becoming ever more entrenched. In this country we had the months of parliamentary wrangle over Brexit legislation and the more stubborn the two sides became, the lower the respect for them fell within the populus at large. But in the greater scheme, all of that is small beer compared to what is currently taking place on Capitol Hill.

Congress has a long history of making new lows when it comes to party versus country and another one was reached on Tuesday when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of office. In the 245 year history of the Unites States, he is the first holder of the gavel to have found himself removed. And his misdemeanour was, if observed as an uninvolved outsider, none other than to ensure that the Federal administration did not close down due to lack of formal funding. The underlying issue is of course a much greater one.

Trumpism and MAGA have given the GOP a bad name and the public shenanigans of some of the Donald’s more vociferous disciples have been hugging the headlines although the issue facing Congress is of a significantly more mundane nature. The national debt is rapidly heading towards US$ 33.5 trillion. In round numbers that is roughly a quarter of a million bucks per US taxpayer or a hundred grand for every man, woman, and child. For all intents and purposes, the Treasury has to borrow one in every four dollars it spends. In the year 2000, the debt/GDP ratio was 56.07%. As at now, it is 123.77% and it is rising by the day. All the while, the cost of refinancing that debt is rising and “higher for longer” means that by the day a greater part of the federal revenue stream will need to be spent on interest payments.

Current annual tax take is in the region of US$ 4.33 trillion. A 1% increase in the overall cost of financing the debt pile would therefore chew up the better part of a further 7% of the entire tax take. Since Trump’s rise to prominence, US conservatism has been swamped by folksiness and the pushback against the profligacy of central government spending sounds like the howling of a spoilt child. It is and it is not. Debt/GDP – US$ 33 trillion vs US$ 27 trillion – might be at 123% but the economy as a whole is estimated to be indebted to the tune of US$103 trillion or in the region of 380% of GDP. President Biden has really swung the bat with his stimulus programmes although it is hard to watch him at work without thinking of Winston Spencer Churchill’s immortal line that trying to tax oneself into prosperity is like standing in a bucket and trying to lift oneself up by the handle. The same clearly applies to spending oneself into prosperity.

Please don’t get me wrong. The US has for the past couple of generations severely undertaxed itself, to which the critically crumbling infrastructure attests. I know for sure that my dear late mother was not the only one to drum into her young that it is not what one says that is important as much as how one says it. Capitol Hill has lost that skill which leaves Joe and Meghan SixPack, assuming they even watch the TV news, with the impression that they are watching an overpaid and under-scrutinised kindergarten at play.

McCarthy is now gone and the merry-go-round of trying to find a new Speaker can begin. McCarthy was already a compromise candidate who had emerged after weeks of GOP infighting, and we now face another punch up while the temporary federal funding arrangement which prevented the shutdown of government and cost McCarthy his job has a mere 45 days to run. Or as of today, 41. Were I today an American professor in a political science department, the essay I would set would be “Has the United States Become Ungoverned?”.

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