Month: May 2023

These are the numbers to think about in thinking about the chance that legislation to raise the debt ceiling can be passed, will pass in the Congress, the 2-house Congress.

They are 435,222, 218, 213, 210, 3, 4, 5, 1, 48, 43, 51 and 60 and for good measure, 7 and 9.*

Sounds like a multi-state lottery, doesn’t it? In fact it is. It is a 50-state lottery in which the winner or loser to be is 1 nation and 340 million of us, we Americans.

There are 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republicans have 222 of them. George Santos sits in 1 of them.

Democrats hold 213 seats.

It takes 218 votes to pass a bill in the House, the simplest, barest majority. With Santos, the Republicans have 4 votes to spare, without him 3; and as 4 is 1 more than 3 he remains, because the Republicans need him. In 2 years Santos is likely to be in federal prison. For now he stays in the federal House.

The Democrats in any case are always 5 votes short of being able to control anything, except maybe on a very long shot this time.

The bill that is the basis for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s discussions with President Biden passed in April with that bare 218 votes, all Republicans of course.

The other 4 Republicans refused to vote for it, saying it was not enough. They declared they would never vote for anything less though by its very definition, somethng less is guaranteed to come out of the present negotiation.

The Speaker therefore needs every one of those 218 votes in his Conference, which he managed to get over the objections of many only by convincing them they needed to present a united front. It is telling that the last of the 218 to post a yes vote on the Speaker’s bill was Santos.

But the Speaker knows, the President knows, everyone knows that McCarthy cannot get 218 votes again, not hardly and that he will need votes from Democrats.

How many? One report says the White House calculates it could be as many as 100 Democrats needed to combine with what would be a rump of the Republican conference to get to 218. That is a lot. Indeed it is as big an ask as there is in politics -which is all about asking – to ask big numbers of Democrats to rescue against interest a fuddled, fumbling Republican conference.

So far 210 Democrats have signed what in the parlance of House rules is called a Discharge Petition, which is a device to move legislation to the floor. The petition seeks to force a vote on a bill called a “clean debt ceiling lift”, that is one with no conditions.

If a discharge petition gets 218 votes the legislation to which it pertains must be brought to a vote by the full House, even over the objection of the Speaker who otherwise controls what gets a vote.

At last report 3 Democratic signatures were missing, owing to absence from Washington not opposition to the petition. Effectively then the petition has 213 signatures.

Democrats thus need the signatures of 5 Republicans to bring the petition to bear and force a clean debt ceiling bill vote. The terms of such a bill would set a a new cap on the debt limit and define the period for which it would be valid, presumably at least past the 2024 presidential and congressional elections. No one who isn’t crazy wants to do this again in an election year, in any election year.

Does that mean any 5 Republicans could combine to negotiate separately with House Democrats and their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York? Yes, and who knows but that could be going on in the background now, as likely as anything else. From reporting, there is not 1 much less are there 5 House Republicans who would support a clean debt ceiling lift. But could there be 5 willing to unite behind and talk with Democrats about less onerous demands than McCarthy is pressing?

Are there 5 such Republicans? Maybe Mr. Jeffries knows, we sure don’t. But if the aroma of any such talks is in the air in D.C., so far the bloodhounds of the Washington Press corps and the cable TV news chatterers and clamorers have not scented so much as a whiff of it.

Ok, so far we have covered and explained the significance in all this of 435, 222, 218, 213, 4, 3 and 5. What about 1?

Among the concessions to the extremists in his already extreme party to get their votes on a 15th ballot to elect him Speaker, McCarthy agreed that if so much as 1 member of the House requested reconsideration to remove him from the speakership, it would be enough to cause the full House to take up the question. So his 4 vote majority is, really, sort of just 1 vote.

This makes him? Choose your bad analogy: A lion without a roar, an empty vessel, a toothless tiger, a 55 pound lightweight, a shadow of a man, a dog with no bite, humpty dumpty on the wall. You get the idea. Everyone knows already McCarthy can’t deliver even if no one, including him, yet knows what it is he will finally take back to his conference. Any way you cut it, he doesn’t have and won’t have the votes of 218 Republicans, not nearly.

Then there is the Senate. As to that august body, think of this as a poker hand. I’ll see you a Sinema, raise you a Manchin and hope you don’t have a McConnell up your sleeve and a 9 tops everything.

That is because Democrats presumably have 51 of the Senate seats or 51 votes anyway counting 48 Democrats and 3 independents, 1 of whom is the always unpredictable Kirsten Sinema of Arizona while 1 of their own is the man ever poised behind your back, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – both of them in tenuous reelection situations next year.

Another is Sen. Diane Feinstein of California who in a harsh but necessarily realistic assessment is here today, sort of, but might not be tomorrow. Cruel? Washington is a very cruel place.

But – but the fillibuster. Oh right there’s that.

To take up any bill to bring the debt ceiling to a vote requires 60 votes in the Senate. Only then can it be passed by a simple majority of 51 votes. The last time it was raised in 2021, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, making one of his usual surgical political calculations, waived the 60 vote requirement and the debt ceiling was raised with Democratic votes only at a time when Democrats controlled both houses.

Ask yourself, why would 9 Republicans vote yes so they could then vote no and lose? Makes no sense right? Right.

Because on this 9 of the 49 Senate Republicans have to be persuaded to yes and no more than 40 can vote no to get a debt ceiling increase of any kind passed by the Senate. Still, only 1 of them, McConnell, has the influence to make that happen if he chooses and is satisfied. So far he has been and is silent.

Right now 43 Republicans have declared they will oppose a vote on a debt ceiling without conditions to which they agree. So even if 5 Republicans join 213 Democrats to get a vote and then pass a clean debt ceiling bill or even one with lesser conditions in the House, it is, as they say in Washington, dead on arrival in the Senate unless 9 Republicans agree to join 48 Democrats and 3 independents to get to 60.

But at best there are only 7 Republicans who so far have not declared themselves on that one. So, another number, unlucky 7, which even if it could be added to theirs only gets Democrats to 58, 2 too short.

These then are the many, many, many numbers and equations bouncing around in the talks between the House majority, mind you a decidedly slim majority, and the White House with the filibuster flim flam bound Senate watching and waiting.

But they are not mere numbers on paper, they are not just an equation to be or that can be solved by math.

These numbers are incarnate, they are people – and people in this situation who are politiicans, who might very well not be able to get to the 2 most important numbers- 218 and 60 – no matter how they calculate.

Dauting, isn’t it?

-0-

* It is customary in writing style to spell out single digit numbers except for this writing the numerical figures have been used for consistency and emphasis.

The case of the death of Jordan Neely in a chokehold while on an F Train in the New York City subway has become a cause celebre as has the case of Christopher Penny, the man now charged with manslaughter in his death.

It is already reverberating in politics with potential to make serious damned if you do/damned if you don’t problems for Democrats wheras it is an easy call for Republicans aboard the train of just and justifiable deserts.

A story in the New York Times today (MAY 13, 2023) describes Neely’s presence on a list of the most severe cases of anti-social and/or mentally ill homeless people in New York City that is maintined and reviewed by city authorities weekly – weekly as in every week.

Actually, as the story explains, there are two lists, one of homless people like Neely living mostly in and on the subways and the other of homeless people living on the streets. Together in that city of 8 million people they contain fewer than 125 names betwen them.

If you did not know Jordan Neely, if Christopher Penny did not know him, if New York Mayor Eric Adams did not know him, the city knew him all too well.

Yes, the City of New York knew who Neely was. It knew of his more than 40 arrests, violent behaviour, the assault he made on a woman more than twice his age in a subway car when without provocation he smashed his fist into her face hard enough to break her nose and occipital bones. It knew notwithstanding as in that case for one, that again and again he had been released by its courts onto its streets and subways.

It knew of his many flights from hospitals and treatment facilities and who his family is, where they live in the city and that they had abandoned him as a problem for society in the form of the City of New York.

The Times artricle repeats the reports it and other news sources have provided of his purported talent as an immitator of the late pop star Michael Jackson, reporting that he “performed” Jackson’s “Moonwalk” dance for subway passengers.

But that is likely not quite so, not the way that happened. Much more likely if you have been on a subway is that he did not dance his dance for subway passengers but despite them. Much more likely is that he imposed his performances on them, a captive audience with nowhere to go on a train hurtling between subway stops or, worse, delayed between them (it happens).

Whether he announced- as so many unwanted subway “performers” have done now for decades before engaging in acrobatics on subway cars – whether he announced “It’s Showtime!!!” is irrelevant. It is entirely likely no one asked him to perform his dance, or hardly wanted it. He just did it and no doubt then begged for tips or, perhaps, pressed for them.

Note that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority which operates the subways has rules governing public busker performances. With prior approval the MTA permits them in stations at specific locations for specific periods of time. It does not allow them on its trains.

Did the system and its efforts to help Neely, as amply recorded in the accompanying Times story, fail him? Perhaps it can first be said his family failed him, failed him utterly, and is it just as true as not to say he in turn failed the system that gave him so many, many chances for rescue and recovery?

If a man wanders the countryside declaring himself the son of god could that be true? Anything can be – especially if it can’t be proved or disproved. Or, these days, could it be simply that he is off his meds? Today, that definitely can be proved and discernably so.

Whatever the facts of Neely’s demise and whether a jury of Manhattan residents (it will be hard if not impossible to find 12 who are not or have not been subway riders) finds a crime in those facts, there was ittle redemptive or redeemable in the husk of a man in the state into which he had fallen.

He should have been in an institution unless and until he could be restored to and maintained with sufficient mental balance. But more than four decades ago we as a society concluded, through our politicians and the laws they enacted, to shutter most long term facilities, the ones we colloquially called insane asylums, and reintroduce medicated mentally ill people into our communities on the theory they would be better cared for and do better themselves in society than in such places. Like others, both the States of New York and New Jersey did that.

If this event in the lives of Neely and Penny is the result, if the disturbingly sad story about a homeless man in San Diego, also told today in The Times, is the result then it was what? Then it was to be expected and so expectations have been met.

The next time someone on a subway in NYC announces, “It’s Showtime!!!” tell him no, no wants the show, they just want to get to their stops.

But, of course, doing that, doing that could get you killed, and that – THAT is what is really crazy.