John McCain is no friend to conservatives, and the list of his betrayals has grown too long for him to ever make up for them. That being said, every now and then the senile old man actually backs conservative efforts in Congress.
As reported at the Daily Mail, it appears that McCain has decided to put away his petty grudge against Trump and support the latest budget resolution, which will pave the way for the president’s tax reform plan down the line. The reason that passing the budget first is so important is because doing so will allow them to pass the all-important tax reforms with only a simple majority, rather than 60 votes.
While there is no guarantee the GOP will have enough votes come crunch time on taxes, McCain’s backing gives the party a small cushion. The self-proclaimed “Maverick” has been loathe to support any of Trump’s proposals, so while his support on the budget is great, who knows if he’ll suddenly renege on tax reform when the time comes.
Assuming the budget passes both the House and Senate, the GOP will only need 50 votes for taxes, and as it stands, they only have 52 in the Senate backing the cuts.
But McCain isn’t the only one that’s been holding out support for the budget. The ever-reliable Rand Paul has been withholding support as well. But unlike McCain, it’s because he has real conservative principles and will stick with them no matter what.
He’s upset that the budget is too liberal, that government spending is still too high. Whereas McCain just wants more money for the military, as always. Seeing how Trump likes Paul, he took him out golfing Sunday in a bid to elicit his support.
“I’ve had a great relationship with Rand Paul, and I think he’s going to be with us,” Trump said. “I think in the end he’s going to be with us. I hope John McCain’s going to be with us, we just don’t know yet,” the president said.
The problem is that Paul and McCain are polar opposites, so crafting a budget that appeals to both is nearly impossible. Tuesday morning, Paul took to Twitter to explain how his criticism of the budget differs from McCain’s and other RINOs.
“Senators McCain and Graham are torpedoing the budget by insisting on busting the budget caps for more spending,” Paul tweeted.
“I have told the White House and GOP leaders that if they simply stick to their own caps, the rest of the Budget is fine and I’ll vote yes,” Paul wrote. “It is a simple, but important, change they could easily make. The ball is in their court.“
Paul is the one in all of this that’s truly trying to reign in government spending, unlike his GOP counterparts. But his pathetic party is determined to saddle future generations with unfathomable debt because they’re too cowardly to take the harder path and do what it takes to shrink our incredible spending and debt.
The only good that can come out of this budget passing is tax reform. It does nothing to slow the growth of government or eliminate waste. So the clowns in the GOP had better not doubly screw us this time around. At the least, we better get those tax cuts, or there’s going to be a lot of fresh faces walking the halls of Congress in 2018.
Source: Daily Mail