Get Ready For a Busy Lame Duck

Democrats may want to act on the debt ceiling and Ukraine aid, but that’s easier said than done.

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images.)

The man most likely to become House speaker next year has been signaling plans for the upcoming Congress, and his comments have set Democrats and even some Republicans on edge. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s musings on the debt ceiling and the future of aid to Ukraine could lead to an interesting lame-duck session—but it’s complicated.

Let’s start with Ukraine.

Ambiguity Is the Point

America has authorized more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine since the war began earlier this year. When McCarthy suggested this week that a Republican House may not be willing to offer more, he left a lot of wiggle room. And his office isn’t offering clarity on what, exactly, he meant.

The ambiguity is probably intentional: Republicans on the whole haven’t quite determined whether they will go along with the conventional foreign-policy wing of the party and continue to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. The anti-interventionist, Donald Trump-backed sect of the GOP that doesn’t want to spend money on a war in Europe could still win out. If Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress next month, they might ultimately meet in the middle.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Earl King

    Haley I have a different take on the debt ceiling. I’m not sure how long you have been around these debt ceiling fights but in the end the GOP loses and gets egg on their face, look feckless and look like losers. The GOP caves, they always do. How long does it take the citizens of the country to turn on them? About 2 weeks usually, the heat rises, the public gets mad.....Having another tantrum is a benefit to the Dems which is why it is better for them to do nothing. Let the GOP shoot itself in the foot again, look incompetent. Biden need not do anything except veto legislation he doesn’t like. His response which has worked for Clinton and Obama is I will not let children starve, or grandmothers freeze to death in their homes. It is tried and true and McCarthy who is a pliable Gumby will cave.
    Oh and BTW, does anybody really think that the Freedom Caucus will treat McCarthy any better than they did with Ryan or Boehner? No they won’t. McCarthy will be trolled, lied to and frustrated.

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  2. Ohio Reader

    Does anyone know what the prospects look like for the SECURE 2.0 Act passing in the lame duck? There are a number of retirement plan provisions involved.

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  3. Israel.D.Gale

    Great article, very informative. Minor nit-pick: There should have been a brief definition of the term "lame duck".

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  5. Mhammond00

    Is McCarthy still committed to Ukraine aid but is cynically trying to create some leverage to force a package of loosening restrictions on US energy production to go with said aid?
    This is the most charitable interpretation of his actions that I can think of (and I’m not usually inclined to be charitable towards McCarthy’s actions or motivations)

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    NashLives

    On the debt limit stuff, I'd invite you to investigate more deeply the claim that a debt limit breach could "...trigger a global economic meltdown." This is a standard line pushed by smart ppl who write on the DL, and it's not without some basis in reality (not trying to throw stones). There's certainly some truth to the idea that a major fight + short term default could cause serious market turmoil, and there is the real issue of payment prioritization; the systems treasury uses to process federal payments are arcane and would need modification to prioritize certain payments over others. On the other hand, there's a lot of speculation in the assertion a default would cause a broad meltdown. The US technically had a minor debt default in the mid 20th century (there's a good CRS report about it somewhere), which had no discernable impact on the global economy, or even long term interest rates. And given the long term fiscal picture in the US, one could tell a story that a minor default would be preferrable to no action on the entitlement crisis, at least from the prospective of bond markets. I certainly remember many such stories from the '11 debt limit episode. Maybe a short, temporary suspension of some federal payments would wake the country up to the current unsustainable levels of unfinanced spending. Of course, this is all wish casting, but what can I say, it's a desperate time to be a deficit hawk...

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  8. DTruitt

    McCarthy is speaking vaguely, of course, because the very last thing he needs to do at this point a few weeks before election day is to alienate a single potential GOP voter, no matter how little he may agree with them on specific policy matters. Standard politician's tactic. McCarthy has never given any sign that he's a committed MAGA isolationist, but he needs every one of those votes next month. Likewise he did not commit to the isolationist bent and a cap or cutoff of aid to Ukraine because that would annoy an even larger group of potential GOP voters, the traditional conservatives.

    Politicians always avoid being pinned down on issues unless it is an issue that unites his or her electorate, rather than dividing them. That's why the majority of GOP Senators and Gubernatorial candidates, who have to run on statewide ballots, are loath to speak up much on abortion policy unless they represent a deep red state with a dominant evangelical or Catholic electorate.

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    JohnM.

    Great reporting here, Haley. I learned quite a bit. Thank you

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  10. Frankwhobbs

    Our economy is 10 times the size of Russia's; 20 times if you count the EU. We can easily afford the military aid needed to allow Ukraine to regain the territory it has lost. Reagan used the military threat posed by our much larger economy to drive Gorbachev to attempt the reforms that eventually resulted in the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR. Russia today has half as many people contribution to their GDP as the USSR ever did and the cost of this war and the sanctions it imposed are shrinking their GDP today. .

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