Global Courant 2023-05-23 15:00:00
The prevailing account says Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is walking a tightrope over a shark tank during the debt ceiling talks, swinging precariously between federal bankruptcy on the one hand and the loss of his Speakership on the other.
The ruling account may be completely wrong.
As McCarthy and President Biden race to reach an agreement on extending the government’s borrowing powers, the Speaker has defied the doubts his rocky path to the gavel brought, building confidence among his conservative naysayers and a seemingly comfortable space created to battle Biden over the terms of the debt ceiling increase.
McCarthy dragged Biden to the negotiating table, which the president resisted for months. He has brushed off all tax cuts demanded by Democrats in past battles over the debt limit. And the Speaker’s success last month in pushing a Republican debt-ceiling package through the House — despite a slim GOP majority — has garnered even some of his staunchest conservative detractors.
Those conservatives say they see no attempt to strip McCarthy of his gavel, even as they resist any compromise with Biden.
“No one is talking about that,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) recently told MSNBC. “We support our Speaker. We want him to be successful because the country needs him to be successful.”
“Literally no one but the press is talking about removing McCarthy right now,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) Monday on Twitter.
That dynamic could pave the way for a compromise much like the debt-ceiling deals of recent years, when liberals rejected the legislation because they cut too much, conservatives opposed it because they didn’t cut enough — and a motley combination of moderates and leadership allies in both parties came together to pass the bill and avoid a default.
“We are very well versed in the mechanisms for getting there,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (RN.C.), one of the Republicans leading talks with the White House.
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McCarthy is not blind to that dynamic, acknowledging Monday that House Republicans would never get everything they wanted given Democrats’ control of the White House and Senate — the same divided powers that ruled similar debt-ceiling battles between former President Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and more recently between former President Trump and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“It happens over and over again,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol shortly before a meeting with Biden at the White House. “That’s what a divided government does.”
Still, McCarthy’s challenge isn’t just in negotiating a bipartisan compromise, it’s also in putting on the House floor a bill that can win Biden’s support without angering the Conservatives enough to try to make the Speaker of the House to get power.
“McCarthy’s skepticism has been in the air for a long time now, and this time there’s a kind of dark cloud hanging over the procedure,” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“It’s easy to imagine him disappearing, and Kevin McCarthy shows that once again, the doubters will realize he’s capable of more than they thought,” he continued. “But you can just as easily imagine that it will be very difficult if Republicans really start tearing each other to pieces.”
McCarthy has dismissed the idea of an internal GOP revolt and predicted he can strike a deal that both avoids default and wins at least half of his conservative-heavy conference — a stipulation known informally as the Hastert Rule.
“I firmly believe that whatever we’re negotiating now, a majority of Republicans will see[will]put us on the right path,” he said Monday.
Still, the removal process was made easier by the rule changes McCarthy agreed to in January as a condition of gaining enough conservative support to win the gavel — changes that allow a single legislator to begin the process of evicting the presidency. And Democrats aren’t so sure McCarthy would vote on a bipartisan debt ceiling if his seat is up for grabs.
“That’s the big unknown,” said Representative John B. Larson (D-Conn.), a 25-year veteran of Capitol Hill, noting that the threat to leave the Speakership is more explicit this year than in the past. . “If it wasn’t, if it was Paul Ryan or John Boehner, you could say, ‘Okay, I can figure out how that will turn out.’ But this is an unknown that we haven’t had before.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar (California), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, was even more skeptical.
“If Kevin McCarthy is forced to choose between retaining power in his Speakership or moving us closer to default, we know he will choose default,” Aguilar told reporters earlier this month.
Still, Democratic leaders will have their own challenges in the debate, as any compromise will necessarily include some of the budget cuts and other policy changes that Republicans are demanding.
Indeed, Biden has already indicated that he is open to a 2024 spending freeze, allowing for reforms to accelerate energy projects and an expansion of job requirements for some social benefit programs. All of these provisions are met with opposition from liberals in Congress, and their inclusion will test the ability of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.), the newly installed Democratic leader, to rally his members in support of their ally of the White House.
Democratic support will be critical to the bill’s success, as a number of conservatives say they will not vote for anything less than the House GOP bill. And Democrats are already warning that their support will also have limits.
“Let’s face it, the majority of votes to pass this in the House will come from the Democratic side. So we can’t make a deal that is so focused on Republican policy priorities, and yet when it comes to the vote, the House Democrats are expected to do the heavy lifting,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), a senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told CNN Sunday night.
“That’s honestly just not going to happen.”
McCarthy’s conservative opponents gave the Speaker high marks throughout the debate, while pressuring him to stand. Still, “I didn’t hear anyone talk about a motion to leave, except reporters who asked me about it,” Good told The Hill.
In addition, any conservative attempt to overthrow McCarthy would necessarily require the support of virtually all minority Democrats, as the speaker would likely be backed by the vast majority of his GOP conference — a move many Democrats say they simply wouldn’t take. to take.
“I don’t think there is any interest on the part of the Democrats in fueling the uncertainty and chaos,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). “That doesn’t help any of us.”
Emily Brooks contributed.
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