Ano, David. “Editorial Cartoon: Kevin McCarthy Holding America Hostage” 5/10/23, charcoals and graphite on heavy paper.
I have not drawn a Political Cartoon in over ten years. This is about U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying that President Joe Biden is holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling crisis, while McCarthy is the one threatening to let our country go default and go into economic disaster if he does not get the spending cuts he wants.
It should be known that Congress ALREADY passed the Federal Budget and decided how much to fund each program. The debt ceiling is NOT a time to decide on spending cuts! This is a matter of paying the country's bills we already agreed on. If he wants to propose spending cuts, then he should bring them up in October when the National Budget comes up again in Congress.
Speaker McCarthy is throwing a tantrum & is willing to let the U.S. go default & send the country into a economic disaster if he doesn't get his way. So what is in McCarthy "Limit, Save, Grow Act" plan?
• an overall cut to all non-defense spending
• blocking Biden's college loan forgiveness program
• repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and green energy tax credits
• cutting $80 billion from the IRS
• cuts food and nutrition programs to seniors, pregnant mothers, babies, and poor people (including SNAP, WIC, etc)
• adding work requirements to social welfare programs, and raising the age of "able bodied adults" from 18-50 to 18-56
• cuts to education, public schools, and Pell Grants
• ending Head Start and child care programs
• rescinding Covid-19 relief funds
• eliminating affordable housing assistance
• closing air traffic control towers
• and more
If the debt ceiling is not raised and the U.S. goes default, it would be a disaster for the U.S. economy. Immediate effects include:
• The stock market will rapidly crash and lose about a third of its value (an estimate of $12 trillion loss)
• Standard & Poor would downgrade the US credit rating. Interest rates would rise sharply. Families and businesses would also have a tougher time getting approved for loans.
• Delayed Social Security payments to 66 million retirees.
• More than 2 million federal civilian workers and around 1.4 million active-duty military members could see their paychecks delayed.
• It could trigger an economic downturn, which would prompt a spike in unemployment.
• It could start a domino effect and create a global wide recession.
Speaker McCarthy is throwing a tantrum & is willing to let the U.S. go default & send the country into a economic disaster if he doesn't get his way. So what is in McCarthy "Limit, Save, Grow Act" plan?
• an overall cut to all non-defense spending
• blocking Biden's college loan forgiveness program
• repealing the Inflation Reduction Act and green energy tax credits
• cutting $80 billion from the IRS
• cuts food and nutrition programs to seniors, pregnant mothers, babies, and poor people (including SNAP, WIC, etc)
• adding work requirements to social welfare programs, and raising the age of "able bodied adults" from 18-50 to 18-56
• cuts to education, public schools, and Pell Grants
• ending Head Start and child care programs
• rescinding Covid-19 relief funds
• eliminating affordable housing assistance
• closing air traffic control towers
• and more
The Republicans raised the debt limit three times under Trump. So obviously they don't have a problem with doing so. But now that Biden is in office, suddenly they are "fiscally responsible"??? It's political theater and trying to make Democratic Presidents look bad. Besides, the GOP are the cause of the majority of national debt we have today. In 2017, then President Donald Trump signed the "Tax Cut and Jobs Act" into law. The Joint Committee on Taxation analyzed the tax cuts and found that it would increase the deficit by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. It also did not create any jobs as total employment numbers continued to drop between 2017-2019.