 But we also did something different in this family. We may have a child that Abel bodied, not married, no kids, but he's sitting on the couch collecting welfare. We're going to put work requirements on that individual. So he's going to have work requirement. He's going to get a job and it's going to make the life easier. You heard that correctly. Abel bodied children are going to be required to work thanks to new welfare requirements that are part of Speaker McCarthy's debt ceiling bill with President Joe Biden. Now, I'll be completely honest. I genuinely don't know what he means. By that, is he simply saying that if you are an able bodied adult and you are the child of somebody who is on welfare, that you're required to work in order for the entire family to qualify still, or is he saying that actual children are literally going to be required to work in order for families to qualify? I mean, that's not actually a stretch, considering that Republicans in states like Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Arkansas already rolled back child labor laws. So I mean, you honestly never know with Republicans. But one thing that we do know for sure is that some of them are already opposed to this deal that McCarthy struck with Biden, because in their opinion, it's not cruel enough. There aren't enough cuts. For example, Republican Dan Bishop tweeted, heard the call. Rhinos congratulating McCarthy for getting almost a Zippo in exchange for $4 trillion debt ceiling hike was enough to make you vomit. Ken Buck said he was appalled by McCarthy's debt ceiling surrender. Lauren Bobo claims that they got destroyed in negotiations and says that no sensible conservative can vote for this. On top of that, Nancy Mays, who likens herself as a reasonable conservative, said Republicans got outsmarted by a president who can't find his own pants. Yeah. Now, let me just say first and foremost that all of this is political theater, because as Ilhan Omar correctly pointed out, fun fact, Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling three times when Donald Trump was president with no preconditions. Kevin McCarthy voted for all three. They are creating an economic crisis and threatening default for one reason and one reason only. Joe Biden is president, and that is undeniably true. Furthermore, Republicans, as dumb as they may be, they're at least smart enough to know that it does not behoove them or anyone to not raise the debt ceiling and cause an economic crisis, because that also hurts them. It's something that doesn't just affect the peasants. Do you want to know what also tanks with the economy? They're stock portfolios. Do you think that their donors are going to be OK with that? So everybody is playing a game of pretend here, and it is deeply, deeply disingenuous, but it's not just Republicans because Democrats, they go along with the charade every single time because it gives them an opportunity to inflict even more austerity on us while having maximum plausible deniability. But we'll get to that in a moment. First, let's look at what's actually in the plan, because as Common Dreams explains, the deal would quote Greenlight, the climate killing mountain valley pipeline. There's currently pushback against this to remove it. On top of that, it would roll back the National Environmental Policy Act, freeze non-military spending, because, of course, we can never cut military spending, cut aid to families by imposing work requirements for social safety net programs, weaken the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on wealthy tax cheats. And last, but certainly not least, restarts student loan payments for millions of people. Now, the bill is 99 pages, so that is obviously not an exhaustive list. But let's be very clear. This is disastrous for working class people. And think about how idiotic this is. All non-military spending is frozen. So we can keep spending. We care about the debt. But when it comes to the military budget, unlimited blank check, baby. Now, on top of that, student loan payments will start 60 days after this is approved, assuming it is approved. And we might not even see 10 to $20,000 worth of student loan cancellations because the Supreme Court might not allow that to go through. But according to Republicans, they lost because it's not cruel enough. There isn't enough cuts. And this is so stupid because they are basically removing $20 billion plus in funding from the Internal Revenue Service, meaning that it's going to be more difficult for the government to collect additional revenue from tax dodging elites. But we're supposed to believe that these people care about the debt. It's just they are openly hypocritical. And the irony just goes right over their heads. But we're supposed to believe them that they're fiscally conservative and they care about the debt. No, this is just them trying to impose their will on all of us. And every single time Democrats end up falling for it, they take the bait. But as McCarthy tries to rally support, there's already signs of a mutiny growing within the Republican Party caucus because they just want it to be more cruel. I don't know how else to frame this. As Politico explains, with the passage vote set for Wednesday, a few Republicans have suggested using the rules committee to block the 99 page package from making it to the floor. And Representative Chip Roy of Texas further hinted at that strategy on Monday afternoon, the Texas Republican said on Twitter that an explicit agreement was made during private negotiations in January to elect McCarthy to speakership. No bill could get to the floor without unanimous Republican support on the rules committee on which Roy serves. But Republicans working to rally support for the bill are already casting doubt on Roy's claim of a secret promise. So when you hear Chip Roy speak, it seems as if he's out for blood. And to be clear, he is right. He would love to inflict more pain and suffering on the American people with even more austerity. But again, all of this completely calculated because even if he wants there to be more cuts in reality, Republicans like Chip Roy, he has to pretend to be against this deal regardless, even if he got everything that he wanted. Since this is a bill between Rhino McCarthy and Communist Biden, he just has to oppose it no matter what to pander to his far right base of support who expects him to stand up to Biden and McCarthy. So all of this, again, it's nothing more than branding for these folks. But even though Republicans are screeching the loudest, it's progressives who should really feel the most angry because they really were the ones who got screwed over. And what makes matters worse is that all of this could have been avoided. Because as the Hill explains, Senator Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, this was from last week, called for President Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment in order to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default on the nation's credit as White House and House GOP negotiators race to strike a deal. In my view, there is only one option. President Joe Biden has the authority and the responsibility under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to avoid a default. Sanders wrote, this is not a radical idea, making sure that the United States continues to pay its bills, regardless of whether the statutory increase in the debt ceiling is raised or not is an idea that has been supported by Republicans and Democrats. According to section four of the 14th Amendment known as the Public Debt Clause, the validity of the public debt of the U.S., authorized by law, shall not be questioned. The section was ratified to ensure the U.S. paid debts incurred during the Civil War. The problem, however, is that the White House decided to rule this out for no good reason, and in doing so, they shot themselves in the feet. But I mean, look, that's fine because the Treasury can mint platinum coins. There are other things that you can do. Matt Brunig of the People's Policy Project recommended that Biden sells zero principal bonds. But I mean, even if all of this, the 14th Amendment minting a platinum coin, zero principal bonds, if all of this sounds legally questionable to you and you don't think that Biden has the authority to do any of this, well, ask yourself this question. Why didn't Congress raise the debt back in December when Democrats still had control of the House? I mean, if you genuinely believe that we have to follow tradition and manually raise the debt limit each and every single time, why did Democrats choose to wait knowing that Republicans would try to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States? I mean, why if you're a Democrat, would you give Republicans the opportunity to hold the entire economy hostage, especially when you know that they're bad faith negotiators and they're going to try to get as much as they possibly can out of this to throw red meat to their base? The answer is pretty simple. It's because Biden, at least when it comes to most economic issues, he agrees with Republicans, maybe not fully. But when it comes to austerity, don't be surprised to learn that Biden also supports austerity. He has throughout the totality of his fucking career. And when it comes to debt talks, Democrats love to impose self-inflicted wounds because the party has been taken over by neoliberals. It's that simple. Biden is using debt ceiling talks as a shield to push through policies that he knows are unpopular policies that he knows the base would not support that would hurt Democrats in the next election. I mean, take student loan repayments, for example. He has been wanting to restart student loan repayments for a very long time, but he keeps postponing them due to pressure from the base, pressure from progressives, and he knows that this would be very unpopular with young voters who especially delivered Democrats a victory in the midterm elections. But if you want to do something and you know it's going to be unpopular, well, what do you do? You can use the debt ceiling negotiations to push it through. You can say, look, I didn't screw you over. It was McCarthy. Blame him. None of these politicians care about you. And that's because most Americans, they're not savvy enough to understand the dynamics at play in Washington. Americans don't realize that elites use propaganda and cultural war issues to turn us all against each other. And we're so distracted fighting each other that we don't even realize that the rich are robbing us blind. But not everyone is stupid because many Americans, they know what they're doing. They know who they're voting for. They're so hateful that they will gladly vote against their own economic self-interests just to screw over immigrants or queer people. I mean, it's a sad situation all around. But in closing, just remember that when it comes to negotiations over our made up debt limit, keep in mind, it is all political theater by both sides, and that is very insufferable, but that is the reality of twenty twenty three America where nothing is real and we have a bunch of opportunistic politicians who don't care about the working people in this country. They just care about furthering their own career. Period. Full stop. Like everywhere, there's good, you see them all the time. I mean, it's constant. My children are about mama, go, go, go, go. I turn on TV. There's clothes in the background. Every TV show news media. Play, play, play, play. They're everywhere, play, play, play. Play, play, play, play, play, play.