Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confronts an immediate test to his leadership after a bruising four-day fight with Republican rebels in which he finally won the gavel but at great political cost.
(Bloomberg) — Newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confronts an immediate test to his leadership after a bruising four-day fight with Republican rebels in which he finally won the gavel but at great political cost.
McCarthy is ushering in Republican control of the House with his own power diminished and his party still riven by infighting over the deal he cut to secure his position.
The divisions are bound to reverberate over the coming months as Congress confronts critical decisions on spending and an all-but-certain fight over raising the federal debt limit that risks triggering a market-rattling standoff.
A group of senior GOP lawmakers is set to meet behind closed doors at 10 a.m. Monday to dole out assignments for House committees, which are key to writing bills and will set the stage for multiple investigations of President Joe Biden and his administration Republicans have vowed to conduct.
McCarthy promised some plum positions to the dissidents who stalled his election as speaker, including three votes on the powerful rules committee that would give them the ability to bottle up legislation and set the terms for votes.
“What we have extracted are promises from the speaker to make sure we have ideological diversity and representation among these committees,” Texas Representative Chip Roy, who was among the Republican rebels during last week’s speaker election, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The broader GOP agenda — including spending cuts, strengthening border security and countering “woke indoctrination” in schools and businesses — is destined to fall victim to gridlock with Democrats still in control of the Senate and Biden wielding the power of a presidential veto.
Still, there are wider implications for the nation. McCarthy gave in to demands from GOP hard-liners to cap fiscal year 2024 spending across the government at 2022 levels, which would mean significant cuts of $130 billion to many programs — potentially including defense. The same group wants to use the federal debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to force spending cuts.
The issue will come to a head sometime after July 1 when the $31 trillion limit will need to be raised to prevent a default on debt payments. Roy said both parties should start negotiating terms for the increase now so it doesn’t go down to the wire.
“Let’s get in the room now,” he said.
The Biden administration and Democrats said Republicans must raise the debt limit without strings attached.
“Attempts to exploit the debt ceiling as leverage will not work,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “There will be no hostage-taking.”
McCarthy also committed to a set of rules for the House, which also will be voted on Monday, that lets any member call for a vote to oust him. With Republicans holding only a slim 222-212 advantage, it would take only a few GOP defectors to join with Democrats to remove McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.
But it’s not clear that the rules package has enough support to pass when it’s taken up on Monday. Democrats are expected to unite against it, and there may be some Republican absences in the narrowly divided chamber on Monday.
At least two Republicans from swing districts — Tony Gonzales of Texas and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — said Sunday they may not support it.
And a more informal list of other items that McCarthy agreed to, including promises for a vote on lawmaker term limits and cutting down on bill amendments, is also causing tension.
Mace said she likes the rules changes, but is wary about the deals that were made with the GOP dissidents behind closed doors.
“We don‘t know what they got or didn’t get,” Mace said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “We don‘t have any idea what promises were made or what gentleman‘s handshakes were made. We just have no idea at this point.”
More chaos would open Republicans up to new Democratic attacks and further weaken McCarthy. Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican and McCarthy ally, acknowledged last week’s drama was damaging.
“There was no reason for us to keep voting, keep voting, keep allowing these speeches that just degraded and diminished and insulted Kevin McCarthy,” he said on CNN. “It seemed very, very pointless.”
–With assistance from Erik Wasson.
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