The emergence of MTG v2 is another datapoint supporting the idea that the political ground is shifting. She’s braver than most elected GOPers who are too cowardly to leave the fascist embrace of MAGA to strike out on their own. We can cheer her for taking that leap and still oppose her politics.

A similar thought, but approached from what you might call a less partisan/more principled angle: security for any congressperson of either party who agrees to face their constituents in person for a monthly Town Hall.

The ICE agent faces in the opposite direction, speaking to an obviously irate federal judge and says, "Too bad! He's outside your jurisdiction."

Here's a bit about Modern Monetary Theory if you're interested. Also, the Stephanie Kelton book on the topic is worth reading.

From that perspective, though, it's still mind boggling that they choose the political risk and societal upheaval of endangering social security and medicare over the political risk of ballooning the debt. Would people be setting Teslas on fire if the national debt were to double? 🤷

They *could* just do the tax cuts, leave government spending intact, and run up the deficit a bunch, but that would look bad politically and invite widespread pushback. It wouldn't crater the economy.

Anyway, if you accept that the government's deficit spending isn't inherently a problem, what's the remaining rationale for needing to eviscerate the government? The big one seems to be to provide political cover for tax cuts for the rich.

This is the gist of Modern Monetary Theory, and while I haven't been following the academic discussion, it strikes me that Bidenomics serves as an example of how MMT can be successfully wielded. Yes, inflation heated up, but you have to attribute some (most?) to reverberations of the pandemic.

Taxation plays a crucial role in the overall functioning of the economy, but funding government programs 100% from tax revenue isn't required because the gov't can print more if it must. Taxation keeps people interested in the dollar and can prevent unhealthy concentration of wealth (if done right).

I'm always puzzled by debt hawks who assert that the national debt will eventually destroy us. They talk about saddling our grandchildren with crushing debt, as if each one of them will eventually have to repay their share. But that's just not how it works when the gov't can print its own money.