Speaker Johnson’s First and Last Hurrah

November 20, 2023

by David Stockman LewRockwell.com

It’s a good thing the House GOP elected a “real” Republican leader the other day. In his debut action the new GOP Speaker kept the government open, by golly, and did so with a huge majority of, well, Democrats!

That’s right. Among the 336 votes for Johnson’s “no cuts” continuing resolution 209 or 62% were Democrats. By contrast, among the 95 nay votes, 98% were cast by Republicans. We’d guess the two Dems who voted “nay” may possibly be color blind.

Voting Station on US House Floor

In any event, the public debt weighed in at $16.4 trillion in 2013, and it had taken 226 years to get there. Now, in single decade that figure has doubled to $33.2 trillion and we are just getting started. Given the built-in policy deficits and another overdue recession in the next year or two, we will be at the $50 trillion mark well before the end of the current decade.