Biden attacks GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s ‘thin’ Commitment to America

President Joe Biden attacked House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s ‘thin’ Commitment to American and mocked him for saying ‘with a straight face’ that he ‘will restore faith’ in American elections, in another speech attacking MAGA Republicans. 

Biden appeared before a crowd at the National Education Association headquarters in Washington Friday afternoon for a Democratic National Committee political event, where he devoted significant attention to McCarthy and House Republicans’ appearance in Pennsylvania earlier. 

‘After opposing and obstructing everything we tried to do to stop progress for the last two years, the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went to Pennsylvania and unveiled what he calls a “Commitment to America,”‘ Biden remarked. ‘That’s a thin series of policy goals with limited amount of detail that he says Republicans are going to pursue if they regain control of the Congress.’ 

‘Over the course of nearly an hour, here are a few of the things we didn’t hear,’ Biden continued. ‘We didn’t hear him mention the right to choose. We didn’t hear him mention Medicare. We didn’t hear him mention Social Security.’

What McCarthy did talk about, Biden said, was preserving Constitutional freedom. 

‘That sounds great. I’m for doing that as well, we all are,’ the president said. ‘But look at what they’ve actually done.’ 

‘The MAGA Republicans just cheered and embraced the first Supreme Court decision in our entire history, first one in our entire history, that just didn’t fail to preserve a constitutional freedom, it actually took away a fundamental right that had been granted by the same court to so many Americans – the constitutional right to choose,’ Biden pointed out. 

Republicans of all stripes have embraced the Dobbs decision – which overturned the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade and threw abortion laws back to the states. 

There’s some debate among Republicans – especially after GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a nationwide 15-week ban bill – of whether to attempt to outlaw abortion at a federal level or keep it at the state level.

‘If they win Congress, I will veto it,’ Biden said of the Graham abortion ban bill.

McCarthy’s Commitment to America does mention preserving the rights of the unborn, but during his appearance with other GOP lawmakers in Monongahela, they didn’t put their abortion stance front-and-center.  

Instead McCarthy promised that the first bill a House GOP majority would pass would be to ‘repeal 87,000 IRS agents’ – a figure Republicans took from a Treasury Department assessment of how many IRS employees could be hired using the $80 billion appropriation in the Inflation Reduction Act, to drum up opposition toward the bill. 

‘And finally, with a straight face, Kevin McCarthy says MAGA Republicans will restore faith in our elections,’ Biden continued. ‘As we say in my faith, “Bless me father for I have sinned.” Restore? Restore faith in our elections?’ the president said chuckling. 

‘MAGA Republicans refused to accept the results of the 2020 election,’ he added. 

Biden also hinted that the MAGA brand, aligned with former President Donald Trump, wasn’t potent in general elections. 

Both he and his Chief of Staff Ron Klain have predicted in recent days that the Democrats could keep control of the House and the Senate. 

Historically, the party in the White House loses seats during a first midterm election cycle. 

‘You see the MAGA Republican program being adapted by all these folks in the primary and then once they get out of the primary they’re trying like hell to get out from under that,’ Biden said.