In 2024, a Republican Leader Can’t Get It Wrong Against Repeach of the U.S. Immigration Secretary Lee Harvey Mayorkas
So showing voters in 2024 that GOP governance addressed key problems like inflation and the economy will be important. McCarthy announced he would set up a select committee to examine China’s growing threat, which could unite both the parties, but his recent rhetoric has focused on investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives’ interest in impeaching DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Title 42 allows border authorities to turn away migrants at the US-Mexico border, despite Trump’s claims of a federal emergency. In fiscal year 2022, amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere, US border encounters topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million were turned away under Title 42.
“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy said. It doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be used at any other time.
“I’m very supportive of Ukraine,” McCarthy said. I think there needs to be accountability in the future. … You always need, not a blank check, but make sure the resources are going to where it is needed. And make sure Congress, and the Senate, have the ability to debate it openly.”
Republican sources say that even if McCarthy’s offers are accepted, it would still not get him the 218 votes he needs to be speaker. While these concessions could attract some new support, other opponents have raised different concerns that have yet to be fully addressed.
McCarthy is against the idea, but he might need to compromise or give ground in order to get the necessary votes in order to become speaker. The GOP leader has spoken to several individuals who have spoken out against him, one of which is a GOP Representative from South Carolina namedRalph Norman, who spoke to CNN.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: If you want to stay in the United States, you can go to Congress without paying the $fentanyl$
He said it was a good idea to stay in Mexico while waiting for the outcome of their immigration proceedings in the United States.
To help stem the flow of fentanyl coming across the border, McCarthy said “you first do a very frontal attack on China to stop the poison from coming,” and then “provide the resources that the border agents need” and “make sure that fentanyl anytime anybody who wants to move it, you can prosecute him for the death penalty.”
The difficulty for lawmakers like Stefanik and McCarthy will come next year when they face calls among hardline Republicans to refuse raising the debt ceiling without steep federal spending cuts.
If you are going to give a person a higher limit, wouldn’t you first want to change their behavior so they don’t keep raising it? he said. “You shouldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna let you keep spending money.’ No household should do that.
McCarthy’s comment blindsided McConnell, according to multiple senators. While the House GOP leader had signaled privately – including at a White House meeting – that he’d be open to a large spending deal to finish this year’s business, Republicans were not expecting him to take aim at McConnell even if he publicly came out against the package. McConnell worked behind the scenes to cut a huge funding deal that cleared McCarthy’s path for the next Congress, but as he worked his way through it, the House GOP leader became very opposed to it.
When pressed on whether he’s willing to risk a default by using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, McCarthy insisted that wouldn’t happen: “People talk about risking it. You don’t have to take a risk.
To that end, McCarthy has vowed to reinstate freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to her committee assignments, despite being stripped of her assignments by Democrats last year for her inflammatory remarks.
When asked if he has any restrictions about which committees Greene can serve, McCarthy – who will have a direct say in doling out those assignments – said “no.” She wants to sit on the House Oversight Committee which will play a major role in GOP-led investigations in a majority.
Every other member will have committees to serve on. Members request different committees and as we go through the steering committee, we’ll look at it,” he said. “She can put through the committees she wants, just like any other member in our conference that gets elected.”
Greene is not the only member who has spouted conspiracy theories or incendiary rhetoric. Most recently, some Republicans have mocked the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, or peddled fringe conspiracy theories about the incident.
The California Democrat Candidate That Never Knew: Retributions for Kevin McCarthy and the Foes of the Freedom Caucus
“The first thing I’ll ask the president to do is not to call half the nation idiots or say things about them because they have a difference of opinion,” he said. “I think leadership matters, and I think it probably starts with the president. And it will start with the speaker as well.”
There is not a strong alternative to the California Republican’s candidacy that he has going for him. The leader of the Freedom Caucus has launched a long shot bid.
If politics is the art of the possible, McCarthy is acting in a way that will allow him to be able to reach power even if the speaker’s gavel turns into a poisoned chalice and requires him to infringe democratic values to keep it.
“He’s a desperate guy whose vote share is dropping with every subsequent vote and I’m ready to vote all night, all week, all month, and never for that person,” Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman leading the “Never Kevin” caucus, said.
While discussions over retributions for McCarthy’s foes, which have not been previously reported, have not gone beyond casual conversations among rank-and-file members, the threat shows how Republicans – particularly moderates – are wrestling with ways to act as a counterweight to the so-called “Never Kevin” movement, which is threatening to derail the California Republican’s speakership bid.
“If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). One GOP lawmaker said that it would probably be scalaise.
Scalise has not commented on whether he would join the race if McCarthy isn’t able to get votes.
“No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. Kevin has had a lot of conversations with the members who have expressed concerns.
In order to be the lead of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan said he would not be jumping into the speaker race even though Gaetz was urging him to do so.
“I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. You will see more of it.
The hard no votes that were strategic in nature began to make their public statements after McCarthy’s win. Pressure on the Republican leader to cut a deal increased after an additional group formalized their demands to McCarthy in a letter.
While hardliners have laid out a lengthy list of demands for GOP leadership, with a slim margin, moderate lawmakers – largely known as the party’s majority makers – know they can exert equal influence over everything from legislation to investigations. And moderates want to flex their muscles starting with the speaker’s race, which they hope will set the tone for their new majority – even as they struggle to settle on their best options to counter conservative hardliners without causing the same chaos they’ve accused McCarthy’s critics of creating.
The California Republican had told his members in Sunday’s call that after weeks of negotiations, he has agreed to a threshold as low as five people to trigger a vote on ousting the speaker at any given time, known as the “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair, and pitched it as a “compromise.” CNN first reported last week that he was supportive of that threshold.
“I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘why can’t you guys just get things done?’”
McCarthy delayed the GOP’s internal elections for committee chairmanships as he scrambles to lock down speaker’s votes. There was some speculation that one of the members competing for a gavel, Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, may retire early if he doesn’t win, which would make McCarthy’s math problem even tougher. Buchanan categorically disagreed with the notion.
McCarthy needs all the holdouts that would accept the new proposals, but they would not win over them. The GOP leader has had weeks to get his majority solidified, but still cannot do it. Any incoming speaker who has proven so incapable of getting his coalition in line will be perennially at risk of being swept out of office.
Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.
Joyce said that some members have inquired about running, but he denied it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”
New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next House Democratic leader, said, “there are no behind-the-scenes conversations” that he has had with Republicans to put up an alternative candidate. But he refused to rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes.
Jeffries said the Democrats are starting to organize the conference. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”
Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.
That would have to be done with the assistance of five Republicans and every single Democrat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”
In Arkansas nearly a decade ago, minority Democrats in the legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to get a GOP speaker of their choice, according to Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.
The Trouble with the New Congress: Implications for the Budget Problem, the American Economy, and the House of Representative Correspondence to Senator McConnell
“I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.
The discussion of changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”
The government funding standoff gripping Washington is a sign that the capital will once again be in a governing cold war between congressional Republicans and a Democratic White House.
The idea of a new group of people coming into the country to make things happen is in tatters. The mess in the new House on Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that every tough vote, and even easy ones, in the new House could be gummed up by the reality of a dysfunctional majority when small groups of members could shut the chamber down.
Some of these clashes, like disputes over funding social programs and the need to raise the government’s borrowing limit next year, threaten to shut the government or badly damage the US economy. The government shutdown threat that was part of the holiday season for the Obama administration came back after Republicans gained control of Congress. The government was shut down for 35 days during the holiday season in the fall, due to a dispute over border wall funding, leaving federal workers without pay and putting services on hold.
The problem with the omnibus bills is that they have only been able to get the president to sign one bill because it has been so cluttered with spending and not much else.
In a sign of rising political pressure, a group of Republican senators wrote to McConnell last week, urging him to block a spending bill and a short-term funding package in order to keep the government open.
McConnell last week commented that they don’t have agreements to do virtually anything on a funding bill and that is how he explained their stance. … We are running out of time because we don’t have an exact agreement on how much we will spend.
The GOP House could make McConnell’s life more difficult next year if he tries to manage his party in the Senate because of his comments about how he plans to preside over a confrontation with the White House.
The 2016 Biden-McClenn omnibus spending package is in the works; it is a political exercise in the House of Representatives
Democrats are determined to get a government funding bill passed in the final days of their party’s House majority and are also gearing up for the battles that will unfold at the beginning of next year.
A senior Biden administration official warned last week that a funding deal that lasted a year would be disastrous for key programs.
And on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, implied that Republicans were trying to jam Democrats at the end of this year to kickstart their effort in the new GOP House to slash spending on vital social programs.
“Republicans see it as an opportunity to hold us hostage and get demands that, under normal circumstances, they would not,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
They have said they want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and they have not been shy about that.
Biden sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin up to Capitol Hill last week to brief senators on the war in Ukraine. Republicans complained that the two secretaries spent time lobbying for an omnibus spending bill while they were not present.
It was not worth their time. It was a waste of our time,” Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy told reporters. He said that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had asked Blinken and Austin to explain why the new spending bill was so necessary. “I knew as soon as Chuck said that. … this is just a political exercise,” Kennedy said.
John Thune, No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters last week that people might be singing to each other during the holiday season.
After McConnell declared on Tuesday that the deal in the works was “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told the House Republicans his stance on the spending package. Top congressional negotiators announced Tuesday evening that an agreement has been reached for a framework that should allow lawmakers to complete a sweeping full-year government funding package.
It was just the latest split between two GOP leaders who have been at odds over a range of issues this past Congress. Legislation to bolster the nation’s infrastructure, new gun safety programs and a ramp up of semi-conductor chip production all became law with McConnell’s support and over McCarthy’s opposition.
Asked if he were aware that McConnell felt blindsided by McCarthy’s Fox News rejoinder, Thune said: “Yeah,” while adding: “I think he’s reflecting what’s happening in the House, and he’s, as best I can (tell), trying to make sure he’s representative of the views of the House Republicans.”
After the White House meeting where he said that continuing resolutions to fund the government were not where he wanted to be, McCarthy’s office declined to comment. But the California Republican also warned that a short-term patch to kick the issue until the new Congress might be necessary if Democrats “don’t want to work with us,” adding: “We can get this work done in January as well.”
The House GOP majority is stuck at a stalemate after opposition to McCarthy from a group of conservatives. The fight in the first day of the new Congress has thrown the new House GOP majority into disarray and undermined the party’s agenda.
The detractors are not known. Some of the chamber’s hard-right lawmakers are among the 20 House Republicans who voted against Mr. McCarthy. Most denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, and almost all are members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus.
Off the House floor on Tuesday, McCarthy sidestepped a question about McConnell’s support for the emerging funding package and instead pointed his finger back at Democrats.
The Kentucky Republican told reporters that they are on defense. “We’re dealing with the cards that were dealt to us.” He said that they were able to keep their hands off of Democrats attempts to raise money for domestic programs.
Even as McCarthy signals his staunch opposition to the massive spending package, some of his critics are complaining about how the process is playing out.
“You’ve got Mitch McConnell preparing to roll the House right now on additional trillions of dollars in spending,” said Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. How does something change here? I’m interested to hear but I do not think anything is changing.
Republican sources believe House GOP leaders will whip against the omnibus bill as well as the one- week short-term spending patch, which was formally whipping against by the House GOP leadership. Both packages are likely to be voted for by McConnell.
Reply to Greene: Bringing out the f* out of the Republican Party and the Ubiquity of Fuentes
The member said that they have a variety of styles. “The dynamic is different. McCarthy is fighting for his political life.”
The GOP’s shrunken House majority would mean a shaky governing mandate for any party at any time in American history. And the ideological struggle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would have made even a more comfortable majority volatile.
But it also reflected Greene’s growing personal power, after she broke with some radical GOP members and lined up to support McCarthy’s speakership. After coming to Congress as a fringe figure, and quickly losing her committee assignments over her past retweets of violent rhetoric against Democrats, Greene now promises to be one of the most prominent faces of the new GOP majority. She is free to make comments that are offensive to people, without fear of censure from her party’s leader. And it also shows that while Trump’s power may be waning elsewhere after a lackluster launch of his 2024 campaign, his influence over his followers in the House, like Greene, remains strong.
McCarthy was in leadership throughout this period and knew the dangers in dealing with this fringe group bent on sowing chaos in Congress. In fact, some of the same characters behind the chaos this week were among the group that fragged McCarthy in 2015 when he last tried to become speaker (and failed). The ignoble tactic of holding the GOP agenda hostage has become an ignoble one for the rabble rousers.
The same dynamic was at play when McCarthy declined to directly criticize the ex-president for meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes at a dinner also featuring Kanye West, the rapper now known as Ye, who has recently made a string of antisemitic remarks. In a histrionic performance at the White House after meeting Biden and other congressional leaders last month, the House Republican leader falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes four times, when he hadn’t done so once.
The Five Families of the House: What Will You Do if We Give up on McCarthy’s Implications? A Conversation with Gaetz
McCarthy threatened that he would block bills in the next congress if senators voted for the spending package. He also suggested Republicans are doing McCarthy a favor by passing this year’s spending bill now rather than leave it to next year, when Republicans will take control of the House.
And during a recent meeting involving Republicans who all sit on the same committee, there was a “heated discussion” about offering a resolution to remove McCarthy holdouts from their panel assignments if they don’t back down, according to lawmakers familiar with the situation. It may not be the best move at the moment.
The dynamic offers a preview of the tensions between the moderate and MAGA wings that are likely to spill over next year with a razor-thin House majority. The House Republicans who identify as centrist or part of the GOP’s governing wing feel confident following the election, when many extremists candidates failed.
Nancy Mace said that people don’t need to double down on failed policies. The way the midterms were was that people who were left of center were the most successful.
“From a governing perspective, it’s important that Republicans don’t start January 3 by going face down and not having some clarity as to what we’re going to be able to accomplish” GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas told CNN. The trust and confidence that the American people have in us must be demonstrated, even though it was a slim majority.
GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the handful of Republican lawmakers to come out in firm opposition to McCarthy as speaker, also acknowledged the reality of a narrowly divided House.
“We are in a community of common fate,” he told CNN. “We have to acknowledge that the ship isn’t going anywhere if five people won’t row in that direction. That is true on impeachment, on the speakership vote, on the budget, and on policy choices.
McCarthy’s Friday afternoon call was with the so-called “Five Families,” who represent the various ideological groups in the House GOP. The California Republican outlined some of the demands from the right he was willing to give in to, such as establishing a broad investigative panel to centralize probes into the Biden administration.
The House Freedom Caucus: A fun night out in Burchett’s Capitol Hill office despite the high-stakes negotiations
“Some of the questions that remain unanswered is what other deals are going to be cut, you know, what guarantees, what concessions are going to be made?” Womack asked. “We got to be careful that we don’t give a lot of that leverage away.”
McCarthy held a forum for his members to continue discussing possible rules changes at the conference-wide meeting on Wednesday despite there being still no resolution on the controversial motion to give up the chair.
A majority of members are still preaching unity and emphasizing that the private deal-making part of the process will come to fruition when the congress begins in January. To that end, the Republican Governance Group recently sent a letter urging their colleagues to unite behind McCarthy.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise that Republicans are out there having conversations and talking about different points of view,” GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida told CNN.
Even amid the high-stakes negotiations, members from competing factions have had time to have some fun with one another. Burchett hosted a Christmas party in his office this week, where all corners of Capitol Hill came together, including some anti-McCarthy lawmakers. Amid the Mountain Dew fountain and “charcuterie plate” consisting of Cheez Whiz and Ritz crackers, Burchett at one point rode the skateboard of Gaetz’s wife.
Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican who identifies himself as part of the governing wing, said at the end of the day, the various factions actually agree on most things and dismissed the idea it would be tense next year.
There is not an enormous amount of drama, according to Moore. “I’ve met with House Freedom Caucus members to chat on what we agree on. It is an enormous amount.
He said the emotions are high right now. There are many opinions about how to deal with funding the government while we are running up against a holiday. I am aware of that. But in the end, I think it’ll get done and I think it will set the stage for next year and it seems to be at least in the House next year, that would be an advantage for them. They’ll start with a clean slate.
We are in the silly season of a campaign. After you get elected, that is over for most of us. But he’s running for speaker of the House, so the silliness is still evident,” he said.
Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Chip Roy condemn the Senate Appropriations Committee’s golden opportunity to end the Republican-led midterm budget crisis
The Ethics and Public policy Center has a fellow named Patrick T. Brown, who is based in Washington, DC. He was a former senior policy adviser to the Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views that are expressed are of his own. You have the right to view more opinions on CNN.
The 4,155-page omnibus spending bill negotiated by the Senate Appropriations Committee was released Monday night, and Congress hopes to have it passed by Christmas.
Devotees of good government have plenty of reason to complain about the process. Forcing lawmakers to vote for bills that no one could have read in their entirety has become a crutch Congress relies on too often, even to just keep the lights on.
This product will benefit the Republicans by ridding them of a potential stumbling block in early 2023.
In light of the Senate GOP support for this assault on the American people, 13 House members, among them Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, released a letter excoriating Senate GOP leadership. They promised to oppose “any legislative priority of those senators who vote for this bill – including the Republican leader,” and that sentiment was endorsed via tweet by McCarthy.
Republicans don’t have to embrace the “lame-duck” deal to appreciate the silver lining. Without an appropriations deal, the federal government would have been facing a temporary extension of funding that would expire early next year. That would have been a golden opportunity for the firebrand caucus of the GOP to inaugurate their time in the House majority by provoking a government shutdown.
GOP leaders failed to achieve much, if any, policy change after three Republican-led shutdowns in the 21st century. There’s very little reason to believe this go-round would be any different, and some members may be secretly breathing a sigh of relief to have that taken off the table.
Republicans have enough to complain about but there is reason to be frustrated that negotiations that could have given parents and families assistance didn’t happen.
For example, many progressives hoped to resurrect the Biden-era expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), which was always a fool’s errand, as the lack of work requirements in the credit were a non-starter for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, not to mention many Republicans. But for most of the year, the White House’s stated bargaining position was that CTC expansion had to be done with no work requirements, only to reverse course at the last minute.
Democrats should have had serious talks with the Republicans over the past year who had proposed differing versions of pro- family tax reform. Perhaps the upcoming era of divided governance will give Democrats time to explore areas of common ground.
Legislation that would have brought clarity to the legal landscape surrounding accommodating expectant mothers in the workplace fell victim to partisan squabbling. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which was endorsed by conservative pro-life groups and left-leaning women’s organizations, got caught up in questions about whether business could be forced to provide benefits to women who choose abortion.
And, of course, there is a whole slew of pork barrel spending, ranging from the offensive to the absurd, that Republicans will take no small deal of pleasure in running against, such as $575 million in grants for “family planning/reproductive health” in the name of biodiversity, or $3 million for bee-friendly highways.
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing good in the omnibus. Congress provided funding for a task force, a hotline on maternal health, and a study on the impact of tech use on teen mental health outcomes as part of the big-ticket items that keep the government functioning.
They increased funding for the child care block grant, reauthorized the evidence-based maternal and early childhood home visiting program and extended funding for low-income mothers for up to a year after birth under Medicaid.
The Case for a Better House: Providing for the Defense Forces a Breakdown or A Breakdown, or for the Future of the Government
For now, avoiding at least one self-inflicted wound may be the best parting gift Republicans could ask for from an era of unified Democratic control. And the fact that 21 GOP senators voted yes on a procedural motion to advance the deal suggests many in the upper chamber know that.
The annual dash to fund the government is starting to sound like a bad Christmas gift, with 12 spending bills, 1.7 trillion pages, a single massive end-of-year vote and a lifeline for the lobster industry.
This is the bizarre way your government works. Rather than pass spending bills in regular order or throughout the year, the leaders on Capitol Hill punt on the process until the last possible moment when it’s vote “yes” or shut down the government.
Democrats are the ringleaders this year, but next year it will be Republicans in charge of the House and they’ll have to either make good on pledges never to do it this way again or we’ll find members of Congress and senators right back here again, aching to be home for the holidays rather than voting on things they should have done earlier in the year.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy could use a magic minute on the House floor where he could draw out the last-minute work. The California Republican is hoping to become speaker and has promised not to allow government funding to work this way.
There are a lot of threats in recent memory. Donald Trump promised to veto allomnibus bills and endure a government shutdown before signing them all into law.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said a great result that helped the American people.
The senator from Kentucky said on the Senate floor that there were only two options this week. “Give our armed forces the resources and certainty that they need or we will deny it to them.”
McConnell focused on defense spending, but there was a lot more, including billions earmarked by lawmakers for their home states and districts.
The return of the earmarking progress, now called Community Project Funding, allows even those lawmakers who will vote against the omnibus to direct spending back home. On her website, upstate New York Republican Rep. Elise Spisak lists her requests for appropriations. Taxpayers give money for a wastewater plant in Rhode Island, a police station in Moriah, and a daycare facility in Ogdensburg. But she’s expected to join other House Republicans and oppose the final bill.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/politics/government-funding-bill-analysis/index.html
What can we learn from MAGA? Hardliners confront Schumer and McCarthy on Sunday’s phone call to the House Minority Causality Working Group
Schumer said he will wait to negotiate with McCarthy on that topic until next year, but had this warning that the House GOP leader must listen to more moderate Republicans.
“There is a large chunk of Republicans, perhaps a majority in the House and the Senate who are not MAGA,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. “And this election showed them – I’ve talked to them – that following MAGA is like Thelma and Louise, going over a cliff.”
Legislators are often distracted by other matters, so things like judicial nominations get delayed until the last minute.
But mostly, it seems like leaders have found it’s easier to ram something through when the vote is framed as must-pass There is only one thing standing between them and the holidays.
McCarthy made one last pitch for the job of speaker by releasing the final rules package later that evening and also writing a letter to his colleauges with more promises about how he would govern as speaker.
Not long after Sunday’s call, a group of nine hardliners – who had outlined their demands to McCarthy last month – put out a new letter saying some of the concessions he announced are insufficient and making clear they’re still not sold on him, though they did say progress is being made.
In a letter obtained by CNN, members state that there are no means to measure whether promises are kept or broken.
Moderates on Sunday’s call expressed their frustration and said they would only swallow the concession if it would get McCarthy the votes. They worry some of the hardliners will not negotiate in good faith and that they won’t get through, a sentiment reinforced during Sunday’s call.
The South Dakota congressman said he was unhappy with the low threshold, but he would swallow it if it helped McCarthy win the speakership. Other members made clear that the rules package that was negotiated will be off the table if McCarthy’s critics end up tanking his speakership bid.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida pressed McCarthy on whether this concession on the motion to vacate will win him the 218 votes. But he did not directly answer, though McCarthy said earlier on the call that people were “slowly” moving in the right direction.
They’ll talk to McCarthy after that and hopefully close up a deal, according to the Ohio Republican.
Lawmakers worked over the weekend to make sure the rules package is perfect. McCarthy informed the Republicans on the conference call on Sunday that he had agreed to the five-person threshold on the motion to leave, which he claimed was a compromise.
The package released late Sunday includes giving five Republicans the power to call for a vote on deposing the sitting speaker; restoring the ability to zero out a government official’s salary; giving lawmakers 72 hours to a read bill before it comes to the floor; and creating a new select commit to investigative the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and the FBI.
The rules package does not change the process for discharge petitions, which allows lawmakers to circumvent leadership and force a bill to the floor if it has the support of 218 lawmakers.
The rules package prohibits remote hearings and allows the House Ethics Committee to act on ethic complaints from the public.
Four days before the vote on the House speaker, the California Republican attempted to convince his critics that he deserved their support, despite having made concessions to make it easier to oust the speaker.
While congratulations are in order to Speaker McCarthy, the role has been considerably weakened due to the reported concessions he made during this unseemly political shakedown. Clearly, the hardliners exacted more than a pound of flesh from McCarthy and most of the House GOP conference that will make governing exceedingly difficult.
With just one day left, at least nine Republicans have made clear that they aren’t sold, despite McCarthy’s warning and even after he gave in to some of their most ardent demands.
McCarthy is still working to seal the deal, with enough hardliners threatening to deny him the top job on Tuesday and his allies growing increasingly anxious that he is giving away his power for nothing.
We’re ready for a fight. It isn’t the way we want to start out, but you can’t negotiate against the stance of “Give us everything we ask for and we won’t guarantee anything in return.” The North Dakota Republican who is a member of the Republican Governance Group spoke to CNN.
“I give Kevin a ton of credit. He worked really hard to find a way forward after bringing everyone in. A better way to run the place. But I get the feeling that not everyone is negotiating in good faith.”
McCarthy spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s in deal-making mode, working the phones with critics and supporters alike to find consensus on rules changes designed to win over holdouts.
The fight for the House Speakership: When a Republican legislator gets frustrated in the Capitol, or why he’s out on a campaign trail
He has only been able to lose four votes in the House and so far, at least five Republicans have vowed to oppose him, with almost a dozen others publicly saying they are still not there.
They want a commitment from the leadership that they won’t play in the primaries and that one member will be allowed to call for a vote to topple the speaker.
In another strategic move, McCarthy postponed races for any contested committee chairs until after the speaker vote. He said it was to allow freshman members to have input in the process, but other members believe it was a way to insulate himself from potential criticism from members who end up losing their races.
McCarthy’s defenders promised to him and each other they wouldn’t let a few of them control their conference during the holidays.
The committee in charge of administrative matters sent a letter last week outlining the practical implications and pitfalls of a drawn-out speaker’s fight. Committees won’t be able to pay staff without an approved House Rules package.
The same memo warns that if a rules package isn’t adopted, committee staff won’t get their student loan payments.
The fight over the speakership, which began Tuesday on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House GOP majority into chaos and undercut the party’s agenda.
Even with the race far from settled, boxes from McCarthy’s office were spotted by CNN being moved into the speaker’s suite last week – a standard protocol, but a sign he’s committed to seeking the job.
“It is a bizarre game of chicken where both sides have ripped the steering wheel off the dashboard and are just going pedal to the metal,” one member said of the ongoing standoff between pro- and anti-McCarthy factions.
A senior GOP source tells CNN that McCarthy has a mentality that is “We’re going to war”, and he is defiant in the face of opposition. Never backing down.
A Farcical Debut for the Speakership of the New GOP-Leading Congressional Causal Committee: Kevin McCarthy and the State of the House
To be elected speaker, a candidate needs to win a majority of members who vote for a specific person on the House floor. 218 votes equates to no member skipping the vote or voting present.
The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. McCarthy was nominated ahead of the vote on the second ballot by Jordan to show that he was not vying for the job. Critics voted for Jordan because of McCarthy’s move.
McCarthy raised his voice and was animated while he started against his opponent, according to two sources. He said that he had earned the job.
The razor-thin majority of Republicans in the fall resulted in a small band of conservatives being given carte blanche to make demands.
What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.
The California Republican unveiled major concessions on Wednesday evening after he was stung by right-wing radicals who blocked his bid for power in six humiliating votes – a farcical debut for the new GOP-led House.
The moves – just proposals for now that have not been agreed upon – could not only enshrine the chaotic instability of the tiny new Republican majority, they could also make him a permanent hostage of his party’s most extreme voices. Congress facing critical decisions this year, including a need to raise the government’s borrowing limit, if not fulfilled, could potentially lead to a crisis, as a neutered speaker unable to force his members into hard votes.
The proposals surfaced after the new House majority finally agreed on something Wednesday: following another day of feuding and insults, they narrowly voted to adjourn their futile search for a speaker until Thursday.
The GOP management in the House is so poor that it cannot perform the only task it currently has, which is choosing a leader, that it is holding up the functioning of the chamber.
“The country or Kevin McCarthy. Kinzinger, who retired as a congressman, is now a CNN political analyst.
A Groundhog Day in the House to Revisit Right-Right Symmetry: The Ups and Downs of Donald J. McCarthy
Some right-wing extremists are holding their party, the House and the country hostage in order to destroy the idea of governance. For them, chaos is the point.
But as humiliation piled on humiliation for the California lawmaker, there was the merest hint of a lifeline as a divide inside the anti-McCarthy block began to open.
Several lawmakers reported progress in their talks with McCarthy on changes to the way the House works. If the talks go well, Roy predicted he could bring over 10 votes.
It’s questionable whether another day of pointless voting on Thursday will cause members to consider whether he should step aside for a more trusted colleague, like Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Many Republicans are unhappy because their hopes to quickly wield power and kill the Biden administration have been dashed.
While another Groundhog Day in the House didn’t produce a new speaker, it did offer hints on how an endgame in the battle for the speaker’s gavel may develop. It gave an insight into the new balance of power in Washington and how Congress will work in the months to come.
Mr. McCarthy’s monthslong effort to appease them — capped off by a frenzied few days of humiliating defeats on the House floor this week — has so far fallen flat, raising questions about his vote-counting abilities, and about whether they can ever be placated.
The Right Side of the GOP: The Loss of Democracy in Action Against Ex-President Donald J.McKinnon
It isn’t as constructive if it’s the latter because it should be about the process and not the personality. I have no sense of how many are in either camp,” he told CNN.
Roy believes that the House is having consequential debates. Chaos and partisan activity have caused the speaker and their staffs to limit the order of the debates and committee meetings, as well as the sequence of new laws.
According to North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, this is democracy in action. You can’t be satisfied with doing the same thing if you aren’t satisfied with Washington.
What do they want? The right-wing rebellion against Mr. McCarthy is rooted not just in personal animosity, but also an ideological drive. The holdouts want to drastically limit the size, scope and reach of the federal government, and overhaul the way Congress works to make it easier to do so.
Some Republicans think that their colleagues are exploiting the spotlight to raise campaign cash and to get in front of conservatives. It is a new expression of the anti-establishment wing of the GOP that seeks to take out the government.
This politics of destruction was sent into overdrive by ex-President Donald Trump, with his vows to drain the Washington “swamp.” Steve Bannon said at the start of the administration that it was the deconstruction of the administrative state. The problem for McCarthy – who has cozied up to Trump and often appeased the zealots – is how to negotiate with someone whose main aspiration is chaos.
The Californian must have thought he was owed an endorsement from Trump after he supported the ex-president in the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
It was the kind of social media blast that once would have had Republican members leaping into line. However, no longer. It didn’t appear to change a single vote.
“I disagree with Trump. The fight that we are fighting is ours. This is not Trump’s and I support him. I disagree with it. Norman said that Kevin is going to censor him. In another sign that Trump’s spell may have broken, Boebert said that her “favorite president” had called rebels opposing McCarthy and told them to knock it off.
Her rebuke was the latest sign that after two years in political exile, a disastrous intervention in the midterms and a low energy 2024 campaign launch, Trump’s juice isn’t what it once was in GOP ranks in the House. Even though the ex-president has a warm relationship with the Republican base, it is unlikely that this kind of insubordination would have taken place in Mar-a-Lago.
Biden and the GOP: “It’s embarrassing for the country,” Biden says after he was beaten by McConnell
It took weeks or months to arrive at a leader or governing majority in Europe or Israel, which was similar to the spectacle in the House on Wednesday.
“It’s embarrassing for the country,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, as he capitalized on the chaos in an event in Kentucky highlighting bipartisan political leadership over his massive infrastructure package, appearing with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
It is unclear if he can get the 218 votes he needs to win the gavel, and lawmakers are becoming impatient as the fight continues.
McCarthy said there was progress, but there was still no deal to end the stalemate. McCarthy said after the House had adjourned that he believed it was best that people work through some more.
In a series of new concessions first reported by CNN Wednesday night, McCarthy agreed to propose a rules change that would allow just one member to call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. McCarthy had initially proposed a five-member threshold, down from current conference rules that require half of the GOP to call for such a vote.
GOP sources familiar with the internal discussions tell us that one of the conservatives who voted against McCarthy’s bid, Texas Rep. Chip Roy, told GOP leaders that he believes he can get ten holdouts to come along, if negotiations continue.
There were a lot of people involved in the discussion, and now some are thinking about where they want to go with it.
Moderate Republican told CNN they aren’t happy about the concessions and are willing to have discussions about them.
Why Kevin McCarthy isn’t going to be the Speaker at the 2020 ePal Congress Conference? The story of four GOP legislators in Los Alamos, Calif
If there is a vote to oust the speaker from their ranks, it will make it almost impossible to fund items like the debt limit and funding.
I am willing to hear discussion about the rules that I don’t like. I think they’re a mistake for the conference. These handful of folks want a weak speaker with a four-vote majority. The public will not like what they see of the Republican party, said the member.
How does this end? House precedent states that members should take successive votes until the majority is in place. The House is useless until a speaker is chosen. It cannot pass laws or even swear in its members.
The four of them from left are: Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Bob Good of Virginia.
A core group of conservatives who dislike Representative Kevin McCarthy, a larger set of conservatives who are impatient for changes in the way the House functions, and recently elected legislators are just some of the reasons why twenty hard-right Republicans have repeatedly derailed his ambition to become speaker.
The Republican from California has agreed to many of the demands of the conservative group, including steps that would weaken the speakership and make it hard to pass legislation that is needed to keep the government open and avoid a default.
The Devil is in the Details: Reply to Gaetz, Boebert, Good, McCarthy, and the U.S. Rep. Carl Gaetz
It appears particularly personal for Mr. Gaetz, who emerged from a closed-door meeting on Wednesday to declare the Republican leader “a desperate man” and pledge that he would “vote all night, all week, all month — and never for that person.” He voted for the man that was president.
The stance against Mr McCarthy has been defended multiple times on television by Ms. Boebert. And she scoffed on Thursday at the notion Mr. McCarthy’s many concessions would be sufficient to deliver him the votes to become speaker.
Representative Bob Good of Virginia, a self-described “biblical conservative” and former administrator at Liberty University, also made it clear on Thursday that he would never be swayed to Mr. McCarthy’s side.
Mr. Donalds, like Mr. Roy, pointed to a provision that would allow a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust Mr. McCarthy from the speakership as a key priority.
The Freedom Caucus chairman who was involved in the efforts to remove the attorney general who stood by the results of the 2020 election has also been involved in the talks. But on Thursday, he lashed out at Mr. McCarthy and his allies, accusing them of leaking details of their talks to reporters.
Representative Norman of South Carolina has shown an openness to negotiation. When asked if he would be open to voting for Mr. McCarthy after the new round of concessions, he replied: “The devil is in the details.”
Several of the lawmakers who have declined to back Mr. McCarthy have not answered questions about what would be needed to convince them to drop their objections, or avoided a grilling from conservative media outlets.
Some of the returningLawmakers voted for someone else than Mr. McCarthy, including Matt Rosendale of Montana.
After a rough period of 11 successive defeats in the election, Mr. McCarthy agreed to a number of terms with the rebels that he had previously refused to agree to.
Is there a better alternative than McCarthy? Mr. McCarthy has the advantage due to the fact that no viable candidate has emerged to challenge him, but Republicans could coalesce around someone else. The second-ranked House Republican is seen by many as the most obvious backup.
Editor’s Note: Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who was chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 until 2017 and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies from 2015 until 2018. He works as a CNN political commentator. The views he expresses in this commentary are his own. On CNN, you can view more opinions.
Why the House Speaker’s Vote Matters: The Case for a Resurrection-Number Restoration Act of the House GOP
The drawn-out spectacle that was the House speaker election laid bare the fracture and dysfunction within the House Republican conference. It ended after five days with 15 votes.
But it’s worth noting that the House Speaker vote is the first – and typically the easiest – order of business. Judging by how difficult it was for Kevin McCarthy to secure the necessary votes to become speaker, there are plenty of bitter and protracted fights to come.
It is a question that asks if surrendering your way to victory is really winning. And when will this appeasement ever end, considering it only makes this extremist faction more powerful?
House GOP conference has been growing increasingly chaotic over the past 13 years and anyone who was surprised by that this week should not have been. The chaotic machinations witnessed by the world this week are simply a continuation of the dysfunction that began after the Tea Party swept the House in 2010.
Former Speaker John Boehner and Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and later Speaker Paul Ryan, were all tormented by a rejectionist wing of their own party on simple matters of governance. Funding the government, preventing default on the full faith and credit of the United States, providing emergency relief to states and communities ravaged by natural disasters, and reauthorizing essential programs all became dramatic, high stakes fights.
We’re in the year 2023. The smaller governing majority does not change the behavior of the malcontents. Actually, there really is no GOP governing majority at all, and the world will learn that soon enough.
A paradigm shift is long overdue. Pragmatic and rational Republican members, who bristled at the concessions McCarthy handed to Gaetz and his ilk, must force a course correction and change the dynamics.
In this case, revenge is a hot dish. It’s time for rational House Republicans to push back and use their leverage – starting with the rules package. They should give the chaos caucus a taste of their own medicine and say no until their reasonable demands are met.
The McCarthy-aligned super PAC won’t intervene in open, safe seat GOP primaries. More members of Congress are going to disinterested in governing if the fringe elements are given even more power. These are inexplicable acts of self-destruction.
It’s time to stop feeding the crocodiles. Rational Republicans must stand, fight and resist. Two people can play the game. If the diabolical demands and tactics of the chaos caucus didn’t upset them enough, consider this quote from Gaetz: “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”
The ability to function is at stake. Democracy around the world is seen as outdated and unable to meet the needs of the people it is meant to serve. It’s time to prove them wrong by stamping out the extremist elements within our midst who deny the results of free and fair elections and wish to wreak havoc on America’s hallowed temple of democracy.
The California Republican has taken on a lot of new challenges, and less space for error, after winning the coveted job.
The Rules Package for the House of Representatives in the Adoption of Majority-Republican Speaker’s Correlation Clauses
The Senate has standing rules that can be enforced from year to year, but the House adopts new rules for each Congress. This year, in particular, as they take over from Democratic control, Republicans want to make their mark in the rules package. The Rules Committee has posted a text and summary of the proposed rule changes.
On Sunday Republicans said they wanted to avoid cutting defense and Medicare spending, which leaves a relatively small portion of the federal budget for other things.
The other way, besides spending cuts, for the government to cut down on deficit spending, is to raise taxes. If the proposed rules are enacted the requirement that a majority of House members sign off on any tax increases will be restored.
“How am I going to look at our allies in the eye and say, ‘I need you to increase your defense budget, but yet America is going to decrease ours,’” The Attorney General said on CBS on Sunday.
Another Republican, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, said on the same program that she likes a lot of the rules package, but she is “on the fence” about it because it was formulated behind closed doors with fringe Republicans.
It’s an irony both that the rules package is perceived as being hashed out behind closed doors and that those who held out on supporting McCarthy argued they were achieving a path to a more open government.
The full House has banned such amendments in order to pass omnibus spending bills. They relied on debate in the committees.
Roy told Jake Tapper on CNN that the bills are cooked up with a lot of people, and they have to vote yes or no in order to get through the Rules Committee. There is a need for a conflict in this town.
He wants more free form and openness in the spending discussions that Americans saw when the speaker fight broke out on the House floor.
The idea that these debates are necessary was even being adopted by critics of the drawn-out speaker fight, like Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas.
McCarthy will be difficult when he needs to negotiate with Senate Democrats and Biden in order to appease the fringe that doesn’t mind going to the brink.
Roy wants party leaders to work openly to find a way to raise the debt ceiling rather than wait until there is a must-do moment.