Pay Us Back: Republicans Owe Taxpayers $4.5 Million Dollars for Phony Benghazi Probe

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:14 pm

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Republicans have been going on for years, well, actually only since a Democrat took over the White House, about deficits. The deficit, they scream hysterically, will kill our children! Therefore, we need to stop feeding the children in poverty today, as well as taking money from senior citizens and our veterans. We just can’t afford these things, they tell us. We must be responsible.

But then last night Speaker-in-Hopes House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spilled the Benghazi beans on Fox News as he was desperately attempting to do what poor, put-upon Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has been doing for years — calming the crazies on Fox News while selling total baloney to the public. McCarthy hasn’t Boehner’s presence or control, so when pushed about what he has done for conservatives, McCarthy proudly preened on about the fake Benghazi investigations being a political tool to steal the White House from Hillary Clinton in 2016.

McCarthy admitted that the Benghazi committee helped erode Clinton’s “unbeatable” aura. Huh.

It’s not as if we didn’t know this was the agenda, we’ve been writing this for years here at Politicus. And just yesterday we discussed the outrageous fact that the Benghazi probe has gone on longer than the Watergate probe.

But the party that sells itself as “fiscally responsible”, in spite of their claim that “deficits don’t matter” when they were in charge, would definitely want to reimburse taxpayers the $4.5 million they have spent on lowering former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers and manufacturing sound bites for free campaign ads against her, which they will all use since Republicans always have to run “against” a person since they can’t run on their own ideas.

We know they will never pay the taxpayers back, but it makes their justification for austerity transparent as the attempt to inflict their ideology without debate that it is. As we face yet another Republican shutdown due to their refusal to actually negotiate a budget the correct way, lest they lose the power to hold the country hostage, they should be called out for their wasteful spending. If we have $4.5 million to spend so Republicans can commit fraud against the people while manufacturing lies about a woman who has almost consistently been the “most admired” woman in the world for ten years, then we don’t need to be cutting SNAP or stealing from Social Security. Certainly not first on the list.

No, first on the list would be unnecessary spending, and campaign ads for Republicans are unnecessary spending. Not only is this an abuse of power that would have to be investigated by Republicans since they’re the majority (and we all know Republicans don’t hold themselves accountable so that’s not going to happen, unlike the weak-willed Democrats who would have already tossed themselves out of office), but it’s a total waste of money because it’s not going to work.

No matter what Republicans do, they do not have a single viable candidate. They are currently running Donald Trump first in the polls, so let’s just be honest — they’re up a creek without a paddle right now. The chances of them getting a sane candidate without the baggage of a last name and a team that started the Iraq invasion on a lie are slim, because their base won’t have it. The few candidates they have who are marketable to the public aren’t even making a blip in their primary polls. Poor Governor Kasich (R-OH), the lone person who could debate Hillary Clinton without looking like a complete lunatic, stands no chance. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FLA), for all of his compelling personal story and background, can’t hold it together in public and comes off like an infant. He’s just not ready.

So this Benghazi probe fraud is worse than just an abuse of power, it’s a total waste of money. Republicans would have been better served to have taken their 2012 post mortem to heart and worked on adjusting their current party of top 2% strategy to fit with the actual values of what used to be the Republican party. There are plenty of moderates who would vote for that party, but that party has turned into the Donald Trump Sarah Palin circus. It’s really hard to justify even taking them seriously at this point.

We want our $4.5 million back and barring that, I’m calling laughingstock on the next Republican to use “deficits” as an excuse to cut funding for programs they don’t like.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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