U.S. House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA

Political sausage-making is obviously messy work, but it is not often that it gets as ugly as it has been since the Republican Party won a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives last November and took charge in January this year. And they are paid handsomely for doing it.

Taxpayers pay each member $174,000 a year, apart from free health care, office space, staff, travel and postage allowances. That means, that, without the perks, the 222 Republican members receive a total of $38,628,000 annually. That alone should require that they go about doing the people’s business, but they have not.

It is understandable that there will always be differences between Republicans and Democrats that need to be ironed out. After all, regardless, of what some politicians have claimed, especially former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, successful politics involves compromise. It is the original “art of the deal,” which is the name of Trump’s book on business success, though, for him, evidently not in politics. He refuses to accept his 2020 loss and DeSantis has staked his political future on the slogan “Never Back Down.” That works in an autocracy, not a democracy.

Meanwhile, House Republicans, it quickly became evident, are at war with themselves. It took 15 attempts spread over four days in January for them to elect a Speaker, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy. And it happened only after the holdouts traded their support for the right of any one of them to challenge his leadership.

McCarthy has, therefore, been spending a lot of time just trying to hold together a slim majority which comprises so-called moderates, a radical Freedom Caucus and an even more radical batch of five or so young members whom the New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser dubbed the Toddler Caucus. He has not been very successful, failing to win approval for even a procedural vote to bring to the House a temporary spending bill to keep the federal government open beyond the end of this month. He has also failed to come up with a bill to fund the military. And all of that in the face of the reality that the Democratic-controlled Senate has to approve any House bill and Democratic President Joe Biden can wield his veto powers.

Where much of the Republicans have been showing some solidarity is in their staunch support of Trump, who wants a government shutdown. He posted on his Truth Social media platform: “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State.” Trump, who faces four indictments containing 91 criminal counts, could not help adding, “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. … Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz quickly posted on X, formerly Twitter, an image of Trump’s message, adding, “Trump Opposes the Continuing Resolution. Hold the line.”

This is not the first time that the federal government would shut down because of congressional wrangling. It happened 14 times since 1981 for periods ranging from one day to 35 days in 2018-2019. What makes this one particularly notable is that the reason is not a dispute between the two parties but Republican infighting.

Press reports have indicated that acrimony among Republicans is so strong that some of them have cursed at one another in private discussions. Some have called this form of sausagemaking a “s—it show” and a “clown show.”

With no agreement by the end of last week, McCarthy told reporters, “I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate. This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down. That doesn’t work.”

And these are the folks who hope voters will not only sustain their House majority in elections next year but also put them in charge of the Senate – and Trump back in the White House. Still, polls are indicating that Trump and President Joe Biden are tied at this point in the presidential campaign.

A lot of the anti-Biden sentiment centers on his age he is now 80 but that is merely a red herring. Another is that Vice President Kamala Harris will not be able to handle the presidency if something happens to Biden in a second term. Surprisingly, even Democrats, including African Americans, are falling for this scam, without seeming to realize that they are falling victim to Republican propaganda.

Polls also indicate 20 percent of African American voters currently support Trump, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reported on September 19. That is an astonishing rise over 2020 when it was eight percent. “No Republican presidential candidate in the past 50 years has approached receiving 20 percent of the Black vote,” Blake noted. “Since Republicans took 18 percent in 1972 and 16 percent in 1976, according to exit polls, they haven’t taken more than 12 percent of Black voters. Their average share over the past 50 years is nine percent — about half of where Trump currently sits in the polls.”

It appears that voters are not as worried about an obvious inability of Republicans to govern as they are about economic factors such as the cost of gas and groceries and, unsurprisingly, are swayed more by the politics of now. Biden and Democrats have scored legislative victories in that regard but the President has also been pursuing big-picture policies geared, where he has had major success, even though his term started during the COVID-19 pandemic and he has also had to contend with the aftermath of a coup attempt which federal authorities accuse Trump of instigating.

NPR’s Dustin Jones noted in January that Biden’s accomplishments include passage of a nearly $2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act which allocates $369 billion to deal with climate change, a $2,000 annual cap for out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients; $80 billion for hiring more agents for the Internal Revenue Service agents and modernizing its technology.

A $1.9 trillion American Rescue bill, a response to COVID-19, provided $1,400 to low- to medium income families to help pay for basic necessities. A $300 a week federal unemployment benefit was provided to nearly 10 million people who were jobless at the time, the child tax credit program was temporarily extended, $7.25 billion was allocated for small business loans and $128 billion provided in grants for state educational agencies.

A $1 trillion infrastructure bill provides $284 billion for transportation, such as repairing bridges and roadways, public transit and airports, $65 billion for broadband internet for rural communities, $73 billion for power infrastructure and $55 billion for clean drinking water.

Biden also signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 which allocates nearly $53 billion to boost domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips, used in cellphones, laptops, gaming consoles, washing machines and automobiles.

That is how effective political sausage-making is done. The problem is that some of the projects will show results over time and voters want their sausage now. Meanwhile, the media has been providing almost round-theclock coverage of Trump’s legal problems, certainly far exceeding the exposure given to Biden’s achievements, in addition to his age.

Biden and his allies still have more than a year to persuade voters to change their minds and not take for granted that their achievements will speak for themselves. And those who are flirting with Trump and his fellow Republicans would do well to remember this advice in “The Old Man and Death” which the Greek storyteller Aesop wrote some 3,000 years ago: “Be careful what you wish for.”