Making a Wave Out of the Chaotic Churn in Congress
Oct. 5, 2023, (EIRNS) —The accusation by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and others, that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had made a secret deal with President Joe Biden to revive new military aid to Ukraine, was not the cause of McCarthy’s ouster on Oct. 2. Nor was the volatility of the GOP caucus new: The two previous Republican Speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, had both resigned before they could be “vacated” from the job.
The strong shock to NATO’s Ukrainiacs was delivered by the Sept. 30 vote for a 45-day continuing resolution (CR), which allowed no new military aid to Ukraine—and not by McCarthy ouster. Moreover, a relationship between the removal of the very mediocre Speaker McCarthy and the Sept. 30 CR vote is not clear. What Gaetz has made clear, as sponsor of the move to “vacate the chair,” is the relationship between his action and ongoing U.S. economic self-destruction.
Consider what happened: On Sept. 30, a 126-90 majority of Republicans and all but 1 Democrat voted for a CR which clearly deleted any new Ukraine aid, at least for 45 days. What “stunned official Washington,” commented Politico, was that House Democrats all backed it. Then Joe Biden, on Oct. 1, said he expected “Speaker McCarthy to keep his commitment to secure passage and support needed” to fund Ukraine militarily. This highly public Presidential claim of a “commitment” or “secret promise” by McCarthy to Biden, was as suspect as Biden himself. It made for a good incendiary device under McCarthy’s chair.
What then? The same Democrats who had just voted unanimously for McCarthy’s CR with no Ukraine aid, voted unanimously on Oct. 2 to oust McCarthy “because he broke his promise” to Biden. It was claimed that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was “whipping” them, although on the day of the vote she was in California at a viewing for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It appears likely that McCarthy was ousted at Biden’s instigation, for the sin of putting up a 45-day CR with no new Ukraine aid, and the sin of Ukraine President Zelenskyy not being allowed to address the House. But the ousting of McCarthy by unanimous Democrats prevented McCarthy, or anyone else, from carrying out the supposed “promise” to the White House to put up a Ukraine aid supplemental immediately!
Effect on the Republicans was nil. The half-dozen or so Republican Freedom Caucus members who would have voted to vacate the chair before Biden’s “promise” statement, voted for it afterward. But others among the strongest opponents of U.S. military aid to Ukraine—Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Kevin Herd, for example—supported McCarthy by voting against “vacating the chair.” And by the way, these four opponents of NATO’s war had also voted against the Sept. 30 continuing resolution which denied new aid to Ukraine.
As EIR Daily Alert reported in its Oct. 3 issue, Rep. Matt Gaetz made one very clear statement, that the developments driving the rapidly growing ferment among Members of Congress were the continuing $2 trillion-plus deficits every year out to 2030, the downgrades of U.S. debt, Federal Reserve insanity, the resulting de-dollarization, the rise of the BRICS—all these were causing the Congressional chaos for which he was accused (which, though he didn’t say it, also fosters Executive dictatorship).
Amid these chaotic swells striking the shores of Congress, there are powerful “whitecaps” of opposition to NATO’s war and to the U.S. permanent-war defense budget. We want that to become a massive wave.
