#Fiscal Responsibility Act Tumblr posts

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s colleagues laughed as the California Republican mocked President Joe Biden’s age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate over the debt ceiling.

But McCarthy apparently did not bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the President chewed up the GOP’s debt limit proposal instead. Republicans aren’t laughing anymore.

“Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted on Tuesday, making clear she opposed the compromise legislation that came out of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations.

Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as President of the U.S., and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite assurances from his doctors that there’s nothing wrong with his mind. Polls have also shown that voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

During the debt limit standoff, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with Republicans, Biden was “bumbling” the U.S. toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the President for not publicly engaging as much as McCarthy has in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely, and the outlines of the deal appeared favorable to Democrats.

Asked if Biden had gotten the better of McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), replied, “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, said he believed McCarthy had simply been “misled.” He didn’t say by whom.

Even McCarthy conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”

But the Speaker has denied that he was outsmarted, touting the bill’s reductions to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits that Democrats opposed. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, in large part due to cuts to non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“How were we outsmarted? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The biggest ability to pull money back,” McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We’ve got work requirements for welfare where the Democrats said was a red line.”

Still, Biden got plenty of wins in the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than Republicans initially hoped. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements won’t reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits for unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people in their early 50s, as well as restricting states’ discretion to exempt some recipients. The CBO estimated the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.

Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, just not “anything of any consequence” — a statement that drew mocking laughter from McCarthy and his colleagues as someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the Speaker, shouted, “Loser!”

Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand SNAP’s work rules to people as old as 54 — but the White House also won changes that render the net impact of the bill inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to brand-new work requirement exemptions for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and boost federal spending by $2 billion.

The analysis was not a surprise to the White House; a senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect that the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements will stay roughly the same under this agreement.”

The deal also preserves key Democratic priorities like student loan debt relief, climate change funding, and the bulk of investments aimed at making sure the wealthy pay their taxes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) likened the bill to a “shit sandwich” that Republicans would have to eat — a sentiment shared by other Republicans planning to support the bill in a vote on Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have concerns about the legislation. Progressives, in particular, are furious that Biden was forced to negotiate over the debt limit at all, warning that he set a precedent Republicans will exploit time and time again if the debt limit isn’t abolished.

“It rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.

Still, Democrats maintain the GOP has underestimated Biden at every turn, pointing to his many legislative accomplishments in the last Congress, including bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor research, and his signing of a historic climate change bill.

“If you haven’t figured out by now that our president is in the top 1% of negotiators, you haven’t been paying attention the last two and a half years,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost.

[odinsblog]

THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT (FRA), which passed the House yesterday, makes several changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, sometimes known as food stamps). The changes would deliver Republicans a long-sought policy goal to extend one of the program’s two work requirements, which will now be imposed on older, able-bodied, childless adults aged 50 to 54. But President Biden is selling his caucus on the idea that he actually outfoxed Republicans on the deal, by pointing to exemptions from this work requirement granted to three vulnerable populations: homeless individuals, veterans, and young people recently out of foster care.

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office sided with Biden’s version of the argument. CBO estimates that the deal on the whole would actually raise SNAP participation by 78,000, leading to a slight increase (about $2.1 billion over ten years) in spending. This has triggered gloating by Democratic partisans, who believe the right-wing effort to deny food to impoverished people has been neutralized.

In the near term, the CBO score may cause more upheaval among Republicans intent on slashing funding on social programs. But it’s also a misleading evaluation of how SNAP is administered, according to anti-hunger organizations that handle outreach to the program’s users.

These organizations question many of the theoretical assumptions made by CBO in scoring the food aid provisions, which fail to take into account the reality of implementing these new policies. They instead argue that the work requirements on older Americans will lead to the largest restrictions on SNAP since welfare reform in 1996, while the exemptions fail to account for long-standing barriers to including disadvantaged populations in SNAP. Without additional funding for the withered administrative capacity at state and local agencies, many of these groups will likely not be able to participate.

"We have far more certainty about what the impacts will be of the punitive measure in the bill than we do about the potential exemptions," said Ellen Vollinger, the SNAP program director at the Food Research and Action Center.

The able-bodied work requirement creates a time limit for nutrition assistance of a maximum of three months over a three-year period for those who do not qualify. Research has shown that this policy is a crude tool that mostly kicks people off SNAP rather than promoting greater labor market participation.

In other words, SNAP is not designed to be a jobs program.

(continue reading)

[govtshutdown]

CRS Report IN12433 The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) in FY2025: Current Status

A CRS Insight into the act passed in June 2023 to raise the Debt Ceiling ad its impact on the new fiscal year.

[kp777]

Progressives Condemn Biden-GOP Debt Ceiling Deal as 'Cruel and Shortsighted'

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

May 28, 2023

Update:

The text of the legislation, titled the , is now available here.

Earlier:

Progressive economists and advocates warned that the tentative debt ceiling agreement reached Saturday by the White House and Republican leaders would needlessly gash nutrition aid, rental assistance, education programs, and more—all while making it easier for the wealthy to avoid taxes.

The deal, which now must win the support of both chambers of Congress, reportedly includes two years of caps on non-military federal spending, sparing a Pentagon budget replete with staggering waste and abuse.

The Associated Pressreported that the deal "would hold spending flat for 2024 and increase it by 1% for 2025," not keeping pace with inflation.

The agreement would also impose new work requirements on some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) while scaling back recently approved IRS funding, a gift to rich tax cheats.

In exchange for the spending cuts and work requirements, Republican leaders have agreed to lift the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025—a tradeoff that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is pitching as a victory to his caucus, which includes far-right members who have demanded more aggressive austerity.

President Joe Biden, for his part, called the deal "a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want."

"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors."

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Saturday night that "this is a punishing deal made worse only by the fact that there was no reason for President Biden to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy over whether or not the United States government should pay its bills," alluding to the president's executive authority.

"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors," said Owens. "The deal represents the worst of conservative budget ideology; it cuts investments in workers and families, adds onerous and wasteful new hurdles for families in need of support, and protects the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying their fair share in taxes."

The agreement comes days before the U.S. is, according to the Treasury Department, set to run out of money to pay its obligations, imperiling Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments and potentially hurling the entire global economy into chaos.

House Republicans have leveraged those alarming possibilities to secure painful federal spending cuts and aid program changes that could leave more people hungry, sick, and unable to afford housing, critics said.

"For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass," wrote Angela Hanks, chief of programs at Demos.

While legislative text has not yet been released, the deal would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients without dependents up to the age of 54, increasing the current age limit of 49. Policy analysts and anti-hunger activists have long decried SNAP time limits and work requirements as immoral and ineffective at boosting employment. (Most adult SNAP recipients already work.)

"The SNAP changes are nominally extending work requirements to ages 50 to 54. In reality, especially as the new rule is implemented, this is just an indiscriminate cull of a bunch of 50- to 54-year-olds from SNAP who won't realize there are new forms they need to fill out," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project.

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, wrote on Twitter that the agreement is "cruel and shortsighted," pointing to the work requirements and real-term cuts to rental assistance "during an already worsening homelessness crisis."

"House Rs held our nation's lowest-income people hostage in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling," Yentel continued. "The debt ceiling 'deal' could lead to tens of thousands of families losing rental assistance... Expanding ineffective work requirements and putting time limits on food assistance adds salt to the wound, further harming some of the lowest-income and most marginalized people in our country."

Read more.

[robertreich]

Trump’s Tax Scam: Why Nothing Trickled Down 

The Trump tax cuts were a YUGE scam.

But this November we have a chance to end this trickle-down hoax once and for all.

Donald Trump’s biggest legislative achievement (if you want to even call it that) was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The law permanently slashed corporate taxes and temporarily cut income tax rates mostly for rich individuals through the year 2025. The results were worse than I could have imagined.

Trump and his officials claimed the tax cuts would lead to corporations hiring more workers and would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household incomes.

What actually happened in the years since?

In AT&T’s case, the company saw its overall federal tax bill drop by 81%. It spent 31 times more on dividends and stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders than it paid it in taxes. Meanwhile, it slashed over 40,000 jobs.

That was par for the course with Trump’s tax cuts.

Like AT&T, America’s biggest corporations didn’t use their tax savings to increase productivity or reward workers. Instead, they increased their stock buybacks and dividends.

Many of them, including AT&T, even ended up paying their executives more in some years than what they paid Uncle Sam.    

Those executives (along with other high earners) then got to keep more of their earnings because Trump’s tax cuts for individuals were heavily skewed toward the rich. The lowest earners? They got squat.

And many middle-income families saw their taxes go up.

And those supposed $4,000 raises, did you get one?

The bottom line is that Trump’s tax law fueled a massive transfer of wealth into the hands of the rich and powerful. Corporate profits have skyrocketed. U.S. billionaire wealth has more than DOUBLED since 2018.

The tax cuts have also added $2 trillion to the national debt so far, but that hasn’t stopped Trump and the so-called “party of fiscal responsibility” from doubling down on renewing them.

If Trump is reelected and Republicans take control of Congress, they’re planning to renew the expiring tax cuts for individuals that primarily benefited the rich. This would cost $4.6 trillion over the next decade, more than double the cost of the original tax cuts.

Trump has also threatened to lower the corporate tax rate even further from 21% to 15% — which would cost another $1 trillion.

It’s trickle-down economics on steroids.

All of this would cause the federal deficit and debt to soar — which Republicans will then use as an excuse to cut spending on government programs the rest of us rely on.

But the Democrats have their own tax plan. We can make it a reality this November. What would it do? Just the opposite of Trump’s tax plan.

ONE: It would increase taxes on wealthy individuals with incomes in excess of $400,000 a year, while cutting taxes for lower-income Americans.

TWO: It would make billionaires pay at least 25 percent of their incomes in taxes, still leaving them with plenty left over.

THREE: It would raise the corporate income tax to 28 percent, which is about what it was in 1990.

LASTLY, it would quadruple the tax on stock buybacks to get corporations to invest more of their earnings in workers’ wages and productivity instead of windfalls for investors.

So the real choice is between the Republicans’ plan to make the rich much richer, and the Democrats’ plan to make the rich pay their fair share and provide what Americans need.

Which do you want?

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Last night during a town hall with the Spanish-language news network Univision, Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris received a question from a person with Long COVID who applied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) three years ago and still hasn’t received a decision on her case.

Martha, who is 62, had a heart attack in 2020 and was later diagnosed with Long COVID, “which will disable me for the rest of my life,” she said. The disease has caused her to lose her job and become homeless. She asked Harris how disabled people could better access disability insurance.

Harris responded with a lengthy answer that advocates and many people with Long COVID said was inadequate. While the Democratic presidential nominee cited that she helped recognize Long COVID as a disability under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), the ADA only provides protection for people requesting accommodations and does not apply to benefits programs. Many criticized her for failing to answer the question or offer any immediate plans or policies that would expedite SSDI cases, fund Long COVID research, or prevent more cases of the disease.

A new National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report on Long COVID as a disability, which we covered earlier this year, will allegedly be used by the Social Security Administrion (SSA) to improve their processes for Long COVID-related applications.

Mother Jones reporterJullia Métraux wrote about Martha’s question and Harris’s response today, pointing out that over 30,000 people died on waiting lists for SSDI decisions in the fiscal year 2023.

The Sick Times and The 19th reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on how the campaign will recognize and address Long COVID response but did not receive a response.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Stephen Semler

Fully aware of the increasingly violent crackdowns on students and teachers protesting his enabling of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, Biden greenlit an even harsher police response this week.

Biden had already given police the greenlight to behave violently through his budgets. The 2020 protests against police brutality were met with rampant police brutality, but after entering office in 2021, Biden dramatically scaled up federal subsidies to police through regular appropriations legislation (for fiscal years 2022 through 2024), and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

[timeismyally]

I’ve seen a few reviews of The Secret History tonight and they all fell in the ‘the first half was good but once the mystery was revealed it meandered and didn’t go anywhere’ camp. Which just shows that most people who read The Secret History haven’t encountered Greek Tragedy before.

Unlike familiar heroes journeys or mystery novels of the 20th century, greek tragedies were typically told in two parts - the violent or tragic act shown to the audience, followed by the characters responsible meeting their fates. TSH is a modern retelling of a Greek Tragedy - Richard is the chorus witnessing the downfall of the players for what they did to Bunny, and for all the choices they made along the way.

A tragedy is never about the whodunnit, or the why, tragedies act as a warning of what will happen to you should you follow the same path. It’s why it is so fucking brilliant; it’s satire of everything wrong with academia and fiscal elitism told through the vessel of an academic pursuit typically reserved for those who are a part of that elitist class.

I think you need a basic understanding of Greek Tragedy to realise just how brilliant it is. Thank god for Greek Theatre in second year uni - a semester of Antigone didn’t have much of an impact then, but it certainly helped me appreciate a fantastic novel.

[itsjustpoopeh]

and another controversial thing for me to say...

Karen was both right AND wrong in that fight with Hen

yeah, Hen needs to stop playing the martyr and actually request some of those special days off. that's what PTO is for actually. none of this "well other people" aht aht aht they should have planned ahead too. when the fiscal year rolls around you put in your requests for the whole year like a responsible adult and fuck anybody who doesn't like it. it's Management's job to ensure adequate staffing and people are always looking for overtime. chimney's had a kid for years now and Halloween falls on the same date every year he can request it like a grown up or suffer the consequences

BUT ALSO

Karen you've been married to a firefighter for over a decade and you know the shift schedule as well as she does, why'd you wait until the day of to start this fight? if you didn't think of it till then, well, that's equally on you. if you're pulling that passive aggressive "she should just know" crap then don't you're too smart and too beautiful for that nonsense. and why are you acting like she's never off holidays? LAFD is on a Kelley schedule, so she'd only be working the holiday like every third year or so.

y'all are too grown and too married to not be having the "when should I schedule my days off for next year?" discussion every December. sit down with both your calendars and get it together

[tomorrowusa]

We need to smash the mythology of Republicans being fiscally responsible and good at economics. Shoveling vast amounts of money into the pockets of venal oligarchs who don't need it is not good for the country.

Former president Donald Trump approved almost twice as much borrowing as current President Joe Biden during his four years in office, according to the Committee for a Responsible Budget (CFRB). Trump, who presided over the federal government from 2016 to 2020, approved $8.4 trillion in new ten-year debt. But incumbent president Biden, who defeated Trump four years ago, has approved $4.3 trillion in new borrowing, said a new report by the committee. As for reducing the budget deficit, Trump cut it by $443 billion. The Biden administration has reduced it by $1.9 trillion. The U.S. is sitting on a total of $34.73 trillion in national debt, accrued over the country's history, according to government data.

I often say that Republicans create a mess when in office. And when they're voted out, the Republicans then try to make a campaign issue out of Democrats not cleaning up the Republican mess quickly enough.

During the Trump years, his tax cuts added $1.9 trillion in U.S. debt, while the budget passed in 2018 and 2019 generated borrowing of $2.1 trillion. Those two policy moves contributed some of the largest debt increases during Trump's tenure. Over the last three and a half years, under Biden, some of the largest contributors to the national debt included the appropriations bills of fiscal year 2022 and 2023 that generated $1.4 trillion of borrowing, while the American Rescue Plan Act was responsible for $2.1 trillion in debt, according to CFRB.

The Trump tax breaks for the filthy rich will automatically expire in a few years. That's why multi-billionaires are ignoring Trump's dictatorial behavior and criminality and are dropping HŪGE donations into Trump's campaign coffers so that he can renew their tax breaks if he gets back into office. Their rapacious greed is downright pathological.

When those tax breaks expire, provided Biden wins, the debt will then level off as it did during the Clinton administration after Democrats raised taxes on the filthy rich. Bill Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus.

As long as we're talking economics, a reminder that 90.9% of all recessions of the past 71 years began under Republicans.

... just sayin'.

[olderthannetfic]

I know with social media the way it is, and how horrible the us political climate is, that this sort of response to Audrey as an OTW candidate was probably just a ticking time bomb. But damn, I went to her actual Twitter, and honestly? She seems like one of those old-style, fiscal conservative Republicans who may want to change things from within the party, however unlikely that may be. She literally pointed out how small govt means less govt messing with our rights, and how the current Republican national party is hypocritical about that.

So many of her typical tweetings (?) are pretty socially progressive. If she's in deep south Missouri, it may be that she had to run Republican for any chance of changing things for the better in her local area.

I do not support Republicans as a whole. I think they ARE dragging the country to a horrific, fundamentalist grave. But she is an individual, and from what I can tell, supportive of lgbtq rights and freedom of speech on the internet. I likely would not have voted for her anyway, but nothing she has done or said so far has earned her the hate and vitriol she has received over such a short period.

Tiffany was ALSO not a CCP spy working for the Chinese govt. She was literally not even in confirmed to BE in China for fucks sake. Chinese people have been leaving the country in droves! Was she a good fit for the board? Hell no! But she wasn't voted in, was she?

I'm just so exhausted of people assuming the absolute worst and going on a hate campaign based off their own misinformed assumptions. This is not helping anyone see the "left" or "proshippers" or whatever our "side" is, as reasonable, helpful people.

I'm exhausted of defending people whose positions I don't even agree with, because the people I do "agree" with are acting so abhorrently.

What are your thoughts on this?

--

Yeah, that's my read on her in the context of local US politics. Running as an independent and then a Republican where she is is typical of people with her type of platform. It doesn't make her Fundie Satan.

Like Tiffany, there are plenty of different reasons not to vote for her, so we don't need to worry so much about the minutia of her political stances. Only if she were a great candidate but with a couple of red flags would we need to dig into this.

Like I said last year, working for OTW means having people assume the worst constantly and come for you with pitchforks. There are reasons it's not attractive above and beyond internal mismanagement. It's hard to get enough people to run for Board to even have a contested election. We usually do these days, but in the past, we often didn't. It was just people taking turns to jump on the grenade.

This kind of response to someone agreeing to the worst job in OTW just reaffirms that it's not worth it and discourages future candidates.

I think everyone should chillax and vote in somebody else.

ETA: and while this has been sitting in the queue, it has become a moot point anyway.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Rep. Jim McGovern, a leading anti-hunger lawmaker in the House, expressed anger Tuesday that the debt ceiling legislation negotiated by Republicans and the Biden administration targets food benefits for older adults while doing nothing to raise taxes on the wealthy or rein in military spending.

During a House Rules Committee hearing on the bill, McGovern (D-Mass.)—the panel's top Democrat—slammed his Republican colleagues for claiming to care about the deficit but refusing to look to the Department of Defense, a paragon of wasteful spending and fraud, for savings. The White House and Republicans ultimately agreed to increase military spending for the coming fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Republicans rejected White House proposals to close tax loopholes exploited by the rich.

Instead, McGovern said Tuesday, the GOP insists Congress has to "cut funding that helps the most vulnerable in this country."

"Give me a goddamn break," he added.

McGovern voiced particular alarm over the bill's expansion of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements to include adults between the ages of 50 and 54, a Republican demand. Analysts and campaigners say the change, which would sunset in 2030, could put hundreds of thousands of older adults at risk of losing food aid.

White House officials and President Joe Biden himself have defended the new requirements by pointing to the legislation's proposed expansion of SNAP benefits for veterans, kids leaving foster care, and people experiencing housing insecurity.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Biden brushed aside progressives' warnings that the bill could cause some people to go hungry, calling such concerns "ridiculous."

McGovern pushed back during Tuesday's hearing, saying that "improving benefits for some does not justify putting 700,000 older adults at risk of losing critical, lifesaving food benefits."

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published an assessment late Tuesday that concludes the debt ceiling bill, titled the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, would lead to roughly 78,000 people gaining SNAP benefits "in an average month, on net (an increase of about 0.2% in the total number of people receiving SNAP benefits)."

But observers cautioned that the CBO's estimate hinges on ensuring that vulnerable people, particularly those who are homeless, are aware they are exempt from SNAP work requirements and able to navigate the program's bureaucracy.

"This is HIGHLY theoretical," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote of the CBO analysis. "There's no funding to identify eligible people without benefits or to help them apply or find the necessary documentation. I obviously haven't seen the model but it seems like wishful thinking to me."

"How are we exactly a) informing homeless individuals that 1 of the 2 work requirements for SNAP [has] been lifted, b) helping them collect and submit the documents that prove they meet the income test, and so on?" Dayen asked.

After a nearly six-hour hearing, the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee voted Tuesday to send the debt ceiling legislation to the full House for a vote, which could come as soon as Wednesday evening.

McGovern and every other Democrat on the panel voted no.

Ahead of Tuesday's committee vote, McGovern called the latest standoff over the debt ceiling an "all-time high in recklessness and stupidity" and said Republicans "manufactured" a "crisis that risks the full faith and credit of the United States."

"Republicans are unfit to govern," said McGovern, one of the lawmakers who—to no avail—urged Biden to use his 14th Amendment authority to unilaterally avert a debt ceiling catastrophe.

"This bill could have been a lot more awful than it is," McGovern added. "I didn't come to Congress to hurt people. And when I listen to my Republican friends, what is clear to me is that we don't share the same values."

[valtsv]

lmao people in your inbox acting like all Britain is a homogenous place where all white people are rich and happy is so weird. this is a pretty fucked up country where xenophobia is rampant and classism is so deeply ingrained in the political structure that even the labour party is fiscally conservative. like they hate Britain but also think it’s a really good place to be somehow. ffs it’s one of the last european monarchy it’s Not a good place to live without generational wealth.

it’s so much more complex than white people vs everyone else when britain is notorioue for colonizing other whites they deem inferior like uhhh the rest of the UK. like @anon I assure you the crown and the politicians coming from outrageous generation wealth don’t give a fuck about the poor people living in uninsulated government housing near charcoal burning plants. you’re delusional if you genuinely believe such a system doesn’t replicate extreme inequalities at home too. the working class never saw a penny for the colonization of other countries. yeah the country as a whole now benefits from ex-colonies being poorer and less stable cause capitalism, but let’s not pretend every white in britain actually benefits from capitalism.

white brits can be aware of the privilege of being white in a western country and also know that the system doesn’t give a fuck about them. white immigrants in britain know they’re white and also that tories would rather they be locked in company towns while the posh billionaires reap the benefits.

it’s not about defending white people it’s about how useless and counterproductive it is to target the people who are in no way responsible for your oppression when the real culprits are right there. jokes about tasteless pub food doesn’t do shit for the rich sons of white women dressed in blood diamonds. they also think it’s funny to degrade working class food.

yep! and those jokes affect EVERYONE who they apply to regardless of whether they're white or nonwhite, cisgender or trans, born in the country or an immigrant, etc. so it's completely pointless trying to justify your mockery by saying you're "only" targeting the "bad people" because that's just not how it works. it's so exhausting trying to explain that and being told you're just "making excuses for white/ablebodied/cis/etc. people".

[govtshutdown]

Get your popcorn (or your tissues)

[kp777]

The debt ceiling deal isn’t perfect but it’s the only one – and it must pass

[usafphantom2]

Surplus A-10 Warthogs Could End Up In The Jordanian Air Force

If Jordan is truly interested in the A-10s it would boost its ground-attack capacity and it could open the door to transfers elsewhere.

Joseph Trevithick Updated on Jul 10, 2024 1:37 PM EDT

The Senate Armed Services Committee has directed the Pentagon to look into the possibility of transferring retired A-10 Warthog ground attack jets to Jordan.

USAF

Jordan has emerged as a possible future operator of A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft. The U.S. Air Force is planning to stop flying the venerable Warthogs operationally before the end of the decade. The impending retirement of the type in U.S. service has already prompted discussions about sending A-10s elsewhere, including to Ukraine.

On Monday, the Senate Armed Services Committee formally directed the Pentagon to look into transferring A-10s to Jordan. This came in a report accompanying a new draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the upcoming 2025 Fiscal Year. As of the beginning of the year, the Air Force still had around 218 A-10s in service spread across active duty, reserve, and Air National Guard units.

An A-10, seen here firing its iconic 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon. USAF An A-10 fires its famous 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon during training. USAF

Specifically, “the committee directs the Secretary of Defense to report to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives, not later than February 1, 2025, on the feasibility and advisability of transferring retiring A-10 aircraft to Jordan,” the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report says. “The report should include an analysis of Jordan’s ability to maintain the aircraft on their own.”

How active Jordan’s interest in acquiring A-10s might be and when the country first started eyeing the Warthogs is unknown, but it is hard to imagine this matter being raised at all if there wasn’t a real desire for the aircraft. The War Zone has reached out to the Jordanian government for more information. Before the Senate published its recent report, Colombia and Ukraine were the only countries known to have expressed interest on any level in acquiring A-10s in the past.

At a hearing before members of the House Armed Services Committee in April, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall did mention that he was aware of one country that had expressed interest in potentially acquiring A-10s, but that he was not aware of any active discussions in this regard at that time. At that same hearing, he also alluded to the country in question not being Ukraine. The Air Force declined to identify the country Kendall was referring to in response to subsequent questions from The War Zone.

Ukrainian authorities very publicly looked into getting A-10s soon after Russia launched its all-out invasion in February 2022. At that time, U.S. officials pushed back on that request, citing the general condition of the approximately 100 Warthogs then in storage. Many of the A-10s then in storage at the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, especially dozens of older A variants, are non-flyable and could not be reasonably returned to service due to heavy cannibalization for spare parts over the years. The Warthog has been out of production since 1984, which has created supply chain complexities for the aging jets. There is also a question of what it would take to train pilots to fly these aircraft and maintainers to support them.

An example of the condition of some of the A-10s at the boneyard. USAF / J.M. Eddins Jr

At the same time, as the Air Force now moves toward retiring its A-10s for good, the Warthogs going to the Bone Yard will include newer A-10Cs that have received significant life-extension modifications, including new reinforced wings, and other deep upgrades in recent years. Best known for its iconic 30mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon, the Warthog today is a capable precision strike platform that can employ a broad array of munitions. The GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) just got added to the jet’s arsenal last year. The aircraft also still retains the design’s other trademark features, including its ability to loiter over particular areas for extended periods of time.

An A-10C armed with a mixture of GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), laser-guided Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets, and AIM-9M Sidewinder air-to-air missiles at an undisclosed location in the Middle East in November 2023. USAF

For Jordan, a major U.S. ally in the Middle East in counter-terrorism and other operations, A-10s could give its Air Force a valuable boost in close air support and general air-to-ground capabilities if the jets can be reasonably sustained. Jordan is also currently actively engaged in a counter-drug campaign along its border with Syria, which has reportedly involved air strikes. The Warthogs are particularly well suited to supporting lower-intensity operations in permissive airspace and could also be used to conduct armed surveillance and border patrol missions.

The Royal Jordanian Air Force’s fixed-wing aerial combat fleets currently consist of nearly 60 F-16AM/BM Viper fighters and smaller numbers of turboprop light attack aircraft. Some years ago now, the country put its pocket fleet of CN-235 and C-295 cargo aircraft that have been converted into gunships up for sale and the current status of those aircraft is unclear. As such, the infusion of A-10s could also expand the service’s ground attack capacity, which could help free up the F-16s for other missions, including against aerial threats. Just in April, Jordanian F-16s shot down a number of Iranian drones headed toward Israel as part of larger reprisal strikes.

A Jordanian single-seat F-16AM Viper, in front, flies together with one of the country’s two-seat F-16BMs. USAF

“The committee appreciates the long-standing alliance between the United States and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan… The committee commends Jordan for [the] defense of its air space [against Iranian threats headed for Israel] on the night of April 13, 2024,” a separate section of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s recently released report says. “The committee also recognizes the need for additional critical capabilities, including F-16 aircraft, to counter growing air threats, including unmanned aerial systems, within Jordan and across the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.”

Jordan is currently in the process of acquiring a dozen new Block 70 F-16C/D Vipers.

A further section in the report also calls on the Pentagon to help Jordan otherwise expand its air and missile defenses with a particular focus on countering threats from Iran and its regional proxies.

Whether or not the Pentagon ultimately concludes that it would be both feasible and advisable to transfer A-10s to Jordan, or if the country actively pursues the acquisition of Warthogs regardless, remains to be seen. The Senate just raising the possibility of sending A-10s to Jordan could well reignite discussions about other potential future operators, especially Ukraine. Other interested parties could emerge if a fleet of Jordanian A-10s looks increasingly viable.

If nothing else, the Senate’s recently published report points to the potential for a new chapter in the A-10’s story even as the Air Force moves to retire the Warthog before 2030.

If it is deemed to be workable, sending A-10s to Jordan could be a welcome addition to that country’s air force that also opens up new possibilities for the Warthogs after they leave Air Force service.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com