• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Government Ethics>
  3. january 6>

A different kind of assault on the Capitol

Eliza Newlin Carney
https://twitter.com/ElizaRules?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
January 06, 2023
A different kind of assault on the Capitol

Trump flags fly as rioters take over the steps of the Capitol on the East Front on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress works to certify the electoral college votes.

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Two years ago, extremists attacked the physical citadel of democracy. Today, extremists are assaulting the institutional pillars of Congress, in an offensive that could inflict even more lasting damage.

Consider the demands that hard-right conservatives opposed to California Republican Kevin McCarthy as Speaker have made, some of them already proposed as House rules:


·A balanced federal budget with no deficit spending, an objective that, however worthy over the long term, could upend the economy if it’s imposed overnight or shuts down the government.

·More freedom to eliminate federal offices and fire government workers, potentially decimating the nonpartisan civil service that serves as a cornerstone of effective governance and a functioning democracy.

· Defund the Internal Revenue Service, making it easier for the super rich to evade taxes, and harder for the government to fund its operations—and balance the budget.

· Gut the House ethics panel, officially the bipartisan Office of Congressional Ethics, making it harder to hire staff and imposing term limits that would effectively oust most of the panel’s Democratic-appointed members.

The anti-McCarthy brigade, led by such Freedom Caucus firebrands as Andy Biggs, of Arizona, Matt Gaetz, of Florida, and Virginia’s Bob Good, casts its agenda as a bid to bring back “deliberation and input by the body” that serves as “the people’s voice.” That’s how several of them put it in a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining their concerns that also called for re-opening the legislative process to allow House members more time to read and amend bills.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Allowing more time to read bills sounds reasonable enough, but that same letter also made clear the economic chaos conservatives could unleash if they refuse to raise the debt limit or approve a federal budget. The letter urges using “Must-Pass” legislation to “Check the Biden Administration,” leveraging appropriations bills, for one, to “utilize the power of the purse to actually stop the border insurgency, restore energy freedom, and/or block the hiring of more IRS personnel to harass Americans.”

The real agenda of the group blocking McCarthy, which has grown to some 20 lawmakers, is to slash the size and reach of the federal government, an ideological crusade that has been building since the days of former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and the Tea Party movement launched in 2009. Now, with a new crop of far-Right Republicans bolstering the Freedom Caucus, the GOP lurch to the right is nearing its logical conclusion with full dysfunction in the House.

Is this worse than the loss of seven lives in connection with the January 6 assault on the Capitol two years ago, and a president who, according to the House select committee that investigated that attack, violated the law on several fronts in seeking to overturn the 2020 election?

It remains to be seen whether far-right House members succeed in dismantling key ethics, governance and economic safeguards that aim to keep American government transparent, accountable and functional. But the successes of the January 6 committee, on the second anniversary of that assault, are ominously overshadowed today by a House minority’s determination to interfere with Congress through institutional, if not physical, destruction.

From Your Site Articles
  • ​Images of the day a president's mob sought to defeat democracy ›
  • Where democracy won in 2022 ›
  • Eliza Newlin Carney ›
  • Jan. 6, 2021: Brought to you by conflict profiteers ›
  • How the Jan. 6 anniversary and voting rights are tied together ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Eliza Newlin Carney | C-SPAN.org ›
  • Eliza Newlin Carney – Washington Writer ›
january 6

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
03 February

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
03 February

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Lawrence Goldstone
02 February

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Katherine Kapustka
02 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February
Videos

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
30 January
Recommended
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed
Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Podcasts
Video: The dignity index

Video: The dignity index

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Ron DeSantis and the rise of political racism

Big Picture
Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Curriculum regulations and book bans: Modern day anti-literacy laws?

Big Picture