A Battle For The Soul Of The Budget

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

President Joe Biden unveiled his budget this week, a long packet of his economic priorities, most of which has no chance of surviving in the Republican House.

Presidential budgets are always messaging documents, but it gives us some indication of where the tension points will be as Congress gets more involved. Democrats told me this week that they’re particularly fond of the revenue streams: primarily, increased taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Look no further than Rep. Greg Murphy’s (R-NC) likening of a tax on the uber wealthy to jail time to see how that’ll go over in the GOP House.

But the biggest sticking points are far more existential than granular policy: House Republicans are of a messy mix of factions, a good portion of whom won’t even pretend to write up a budget without explicitly threatening to let the country default on its debt.

Some Democrats question whether a party that has become so devoted to obstruction and hostage-taking will even be able to produce a cohesive budget at all.

“This is the difficulty: They want to cut Medicare and Social Security and then they got embarrassed when we said so,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told me. “And so now, they want to cut food assistance and Medicaid. But I imagine they will probably deny that — and so they’re not gonna put together a budget.”
 

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kate Riga

Abbott’s $878 Million Jail Wall

I spoke earlier this week with Amanda P. Aguero, mayor pro tem of Rio Bravo, Texas. Rio Bravo sits just south of Laredo along the Rio Grande river, making it a border community — and a town that may have a wall run through it, per Gov. Greg Abbott’s potentially multi-billion dollar plan.

The community relies on access to the river for fishing, recreation, land values, and its sense of self, Aguero said. “I’m a single mom of five, and I would not like my children to go down there and feel like they’re in a jail,” she told me.”

Aguero said that Abbott’s staff hasn’t contacted her about the state’s plans.

“I’m not happy about it,” she said, pointing out that the price tag for the first stretches of wall is $878 million. “It’s crazy with all the other things that we need that we’re putting the money to that.”

— Josh Kovensky

ERIC: The Next Right-Wing Bogeyman

This week, three states withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, otherwise known as ERIC, a multistate coalitional program that helps clean up voter roll data. Florida, Missouri and West Virginia joined Louisiana and Alabama as the latest states to drop from the program. Why? Because conspiracy theorists have decided George Soros owns it. (He doesn’t.)

ERIC became the newest non-existent shadowy cabal for the far right and election deniers to obsess over after The Gateway Pundit published a series of blog posts accusing the program of being a liberal conspiracy funded by Soros. Their proof rests on a $500,000 donation his foundation gave Pew Charitable Trusts, which launched the program in 2012, but neither Soros’s organization nor Pew are financially involved with ERIC today. Soros himself has never donated to it directly.

Texas appears to be next on the way out: Votebeat’s Natalia Contreras found that right-wing activists have been meeting with lawmakers to discuss the program for the past year, inspiring Republican legislators to introduce legislation seeking to withdraw from the program.

And on Friday, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced “structural changes” to the department’s Elections Division. Among them: Appointing Keith Ingram, the division’s director, to manage “an interstate voter registration crosscheck system.” Welp.

— Kaila Philo

Tucker Carlson’s ‘Bullsh*t’ Fox Segment Gets Bipartisan Condemnation 

On Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson took to his conspiracy theory swamp show to lay out his latest MAGA-landish take on the violent Jan. 6 riot, based on the exclusive access he and his team received to more than 40,000 hours of security footage from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Carlson used cherry-picked frames from the security footage to try and falsely characterize the deadly Capitol riot as a “mostly peaceful chaos” where a bunch of peaceful “sightseers” toured the Capitol building with police escorts.

His commentary sparked a firestorm of criticism from lawmakers across the aisle — including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who said “it was a mistake”  for Fox News to depict Jan. 6 the way he did.

“It’s deceptive and irresponsible,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D- MA) told TPM on Wednesday. “​​But that’s pretty much par for the course for Tucker Carlson.”

“It’s shameful,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI). “I thought it was so shameful that Jan. 6 happened and he just picked those aspects of the thousands of hours [of footage] to push out that these were just a group of tourists.”

“It’s such bullshit I can hardly stand it,” Hirono added.

— Emine Yücel 

“I am requesting to be added as a cosponsor to your bill … as well as H.R. 1391, a measure that would prevent Members of the House of Representatives who are convicted of campaign-related offenses from receiving compensation sourced from ‘biographies, media appearances, or expressive or creative works.”

That’s everybody’s favorite conman Rep. George Santos (R-NY) asking to be a co-sponsor on a bill specifically designed by his fellow New York Republicans to make sure he does not profit off his lies.

In a Tuesday morning press conference, freshman Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) — alongside Reps. Brandon Williams (R-NY) and Nick LaLota (R-NY) — introduced the “No Fortune For Fraud” Act, aimed at ensuring current or former members of Congress convicted of fraud cannot make money from book or TV deals.

“It’s very simple. If you are defrauding the American people, if you are making a mockery out of the people’s House or violating campaign finance law, you should not be able to turn it into a payday,” D’Esposito said during the press conference. “Should fraudsters, like George Santos, be indicted or convicted of crimes listed in my legislation, or legislation, they won’t be able to make money from a book deal, a TV movie, ‘Dancing With The Stars’ or the next Netflix special.”

And now the cartoon that is Santos wants to be a part of this bill. The trolling never ends.

— Emine Yücel 

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