You've Got To Be Kidding, Kevin!

McCarthy wants Joe Biden to repeal his presidency.

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Note: This site can also be accessed by entering FeathersOfHope.net in your browser window.

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For new readers, here are links to a few previous posts that will bring you up to date on what the Feathers of Hope network has been doing :

Wait, Exactly How Will We Do This? — (January 28)

Replacing McCarthy - A Progress Report — (February 16)

Moderate Republicans? Really? — (March 2)

Spread The Word, Write or Call Today — (April 6)

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Feathers of Hope is a network of ordinary citizens committed to advocating for the removal and replacement of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, thereby diminishing the power and influence of MAGA extremists in the chamber.

We are urging moderate Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives to form a temporary bipartisan majority voting bloc for the purpose of passing a motion to “vacate the chair” and elect a new Republican Speaker who owes nothing to the minority MAGA group.

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Speaker McCarthy has finally unveiled his long-promised debt ceiling bill. 

While massive spending cuts are proposed within its 320 pages, this is not at all a serious plan to reduce the deficit or balance the budget.  Rather it’s an attempt to extort a reversal of already enacted legislation by threatening to default on America’s national debt. 

The bulk of it focuses on ending provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 -- one of the two defining legislative achievements of the first half of Biden's first term. The breath-taking scope and sheer audacity of such an effort by the party out of power guarantees its imediate irrelevance.

Lest there be any doubt about how un-serious this document is, consider the proposed budget cuts for the IRS.  The IRS is one agency that brings far more money into the government than it spends.  So, cutting the IRS budget actually costs money and adds to the deficit -- in this case to the tune of $114 billion, according to the CBO.

And as if to add an exclamation point here, last week several of the MAGA Freedom Caucus members introduced a separate bill to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorizes collection of a federal income tax in the first place.

It's still not certain whether there will even be enough Republican votes to pass this fantasy-politics wish list.  But in the event that Mr. McCarthy's colleagues do decide to go ahead and vote for it, so as to not embarrass their impotent "leader", the whole exercise is all just for show anyway.  The Senate won't give it a moment's consideration and the President is busy doing other things.

People often say that insanity is repeating the same action while expecting a different result.  Now Kevin McCarthy has just given us a second definition:  threatening to do the very thing he explicitly and very publicly vowed would never happen.

Just last week, in a heavily hyped speech to a group of Wall Street investors at the New Your Stock Exchange, the Speaker reassured everyone listening that "Defaulting on our debt is not an option."

In other words, all the strutting and fretting we hear from him this week signifies nothing.   The proposal will never become law.  But the longer this charade continues without a debt limit raise, the more his lack of authority and the weakness of his Speakership is exposed.

Since there will never be 218 Republican votes for a realistic debt limit bill, and "defaulting on our debt is not an option," an alliance of mainstream Republicans and Democrats will have to form a bipartisan majority to do the job. Urging that bipartisan majority to then follow-up by replacing Kevin McCarthy with a moderate Republican Speaker who owes nothing to the MAGA extremists, is the task we’ve taken upon ourselves.

At Feathers of Hope, we've been preparing for this moment since January.  Every day, the need to replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker becomes more apparent.  It's crucial that all of us continue calling and writing to Members of the House and members of the media.

Repeat and follow-up calls are as important as the first one. You can also mention our effort in the comments sections of whatever media you subscribe to. We want the prospect of McCarthy’s removal and replacement to become a regular part of the national media narrative.

House Members’ contact information, along with thumbnail bios can be found here: Now's The Time .

Suggested guidelines and media contact info can be found here: Spread The Word and here: Spring Break is Over