McCarthy’s “Default on America Act” Squeezes Through the House
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s catastrophic credit scam bill—newly dubbed the “Default on America Act”—barely squeezed through the U.S. House on a razor-thin 217-215 vote, with several Republicans and all Democrats voting ‘no.’
The bill would slash investments in clean energy, protections for public health, and controls on air and water pollution. Those would all be parts of the staggering price demanded by MAGA Republicans for avoiding default on the national debt and the worldwide recession that such a default would trigger.
Prior to the House vote, the national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) circulated a letter to House members detailing the catastrophic consequences which the provisions of the Default on America Act would have on the American economy, job creation, clean energy development, and public health. The letter cautioned House members that LCV would likely include the vote on this terrible bill as part of its National Environmental Scorecard for 2023.
“LCV urges you to vote NO on the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023, a.k.a. the “Default on America Act,” which would require giveaways to the oil and gas industry and other polluters in exchange for not causing an economic default crisis from the federal government failing to pay its past expenses. The extreme and sweeping Default on America Act would repeal the clean energy tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, impose ten years of draconian spending caps for environmental and other programs, and pass unrelated and harmful policies that would gut public input to federal permitting decisions, worsen environmental injustice, and stymie any administration’s actions to safeguard communities, consumers, workers, and the environment, while only raising the debt limit until March 2024,” said the letter.After the vote, LCV and Climate Power announced the start of a series of targeted ads exposing the damage which would be done to the people of districts represented by some of the House members who voted for the bill. These ads highlight specific job-creating projects in those representatives’ districts that could be in jeopardy if the provisions of the Default on America Act they supported actually became law.
