The cash raised will go towards funding the GOP lawmakers’ personal future campaigns, Politico reported.
Members of the GOP convention within the Home of Representatives met on Tuesday to debate points referring to the debt ceiling disaster — although a lot of their time was centered on auctioning off a used tube of lip balm for marketing campaign fundraising.
Politico reporter Olivia Beavers revealed on her Twitter feed that, throughout the Republican convention on Tuesday afternoon, $100,000 was raised by auctioning lip balm that was utilized by Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California). The winner of the public sale was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, along with the lip balm, also won access to McCarthy for her donors and supporters.
Greene referred to as it an “honor” to win each the chapstick and direct entry to the Speaker.
The $100,000 raised within the public sale will benefit the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the marketing campaign arm of Republicans within the Home.
Democrats, in the meantime, expressed dismay with Republicans for not utilizing the time for its scheduled function — addressing the debt ceiling.
“They [are] doing this insane chapstick shit whereas the nation teeters on default. Wild,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota).
“Spending $100,000 on chapstick whereas working extra time to intestine the packages that working households depend on,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-New York) said. “GOP priorities in a nutshell.”
Republicans have additionally been criticized for demanding the federal authorities deal with the disaster by gutting social spending packages moderately than taxing the wealthy.
In an op-ed for Truthout earlier this month, Sasha Abramsky famous that the controversy on the debt ceiling is a manufactured disaster, particularly when a easy resolution — elevating taxes on the rich — can be utilized to repair many of the drawback with out slicing packages meant to assist these in want.
Republicans “are mistaken in blaming anti-poverty packages, environmental investments, abroad support, federal schooling spending and all their common bugbears, for the U.S.’s funds being so out of whack,” Abramsky wrote.
As a substitute of cuts to the social security internet, the reply is easy: Tax the wealthy.
The present disaster exists, Abramsky defined, as a result of “U.S. leaders select to spend way more on the army than do different nations, and in addition as a result of over the past a number of a long time the U.S. has constantly under-taxed prosperous American people and lowered the company tax fee that firms should pay.”
“There’s loads of cash to be tapped on the high to fund social packages and, on the similar time, to start out paying down the nationwide debt,” Abramsky added. “However what there isn’t is a bipartisan political will to go down this extra equitable path.”
Certainly, tax cuts by former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, which largely benefited the ultra-wealthy, are principally in charge for the present debt disaster, Truthout information author Sharon Zhang reported again in March.
Had such tax cuts not been carried out from 2000 onward, “the nationwide debt would stay steady indefinitely,” Zhang wrote.
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