Kevin McCarthy’s Biggest Test Yet

House Republicans will have to overcome thin margins to pass a debt-ceiling bill.

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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) walks outside the U.S. Capitol on April 20, 2023. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Good morning. Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill tonight, and they have a lot on their plates. First and foremost: House Republican leaders will try to pass their debt ceiling bill, a bid to show GOP unity and strengthen their negotiating stance ahead of a summer deadline. President Joe Biden wants a “clean” debt ceiling increase, while Republicans say they won’t support lifting the $31.4 trillion limit without cuts to federal spending, among other demands.

Here are a few dynamics we’re watching this week as GOP leaders try to unify their conference around their plan:

This is McCarthy’s biggest test yet as House speaker.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed through 15 rounds of voting to claim the gavel in January—showing just how fractious his conference can be, and how difficult it is to corral members with only four votes to spare. He’s faced numerous challenges in navigating the Republican conference since then, particularly in trying to bring a package of immigration bills to the floor. GOP leaders have had to be nimble, cutting deals with members to win their support on agenda items and negotiating behind the scenes over amendments that might have hurt a given bill’s chances of passage.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ As we wrote last week, the measure would hike the nation’s borrowing cap by $1.5 trillion or until March 2024, whichever comes first. It also caps discretionary government spending at fiscal year 2022 levels and limits future spending growth to no more than 1 percent each year for the next decade. It imposes new work requirements for recipients of social safety net programs and repeals a host of green energy and climate-related tax credits while boosting domestic oil and gas drilling.”

    That sounds eminently reasonable. I’d probably vote for that

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    Taylor L

    Thank you, Haley. Another serving of broccoli in an otherwise French fry era.

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  3. Andrew M

    Gee, if only there were 213 other representatives in Congress that McCarthy could talk to for help in passing a debt ceiling bill who aren't part of the Republican buffoonery....

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    George.Skinner

    "Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Monday that the Senate will consider legislation this week to remove a deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment....It failed to win enough support among the states in the 1970s and early 1980s to be ratified before a 1982 deadline that Congress put in place at the time."

    I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that trying to force through a constitutional amendment that was proposed and *failed* 40-50 years ago probably warrants some re-examination before trying to ram it through with some administrative work-around. Advisory Opinions spent some time talking with the activists who've been trying to revive the ERA, and it struck me as a legalistic perspective decoupled from the political reality.

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      Ben Connelly

      Agreed. The activist on AO basically said that her argument was that states could always vote for the amendment and never rescind their vote. In other words: a legal ratchet designed to make it inevitable that the amendment is passed. This strikes me as fundamentally dishonest and probably unconstitutional.

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    2. Trichwages

      According to what Haley wrote here, the Senate will consider legislation this week to remove a deadline for ratification put in place by Congress, not passing it through a workaround.

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  5. Avatar photo
    PJ

    Why are the discussions all Biden/McCarthy? Both sides of congress are the most important at this point.

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    JohnF

    This is a good article that documents a completely muddled, misguided process. If I read this correctly, McCarthy has spent the past few weeks negotiating only within his own party to craft a bill that might barely pass through the House but has no chance of becoming law. He wants to do this so that he can negotiate things with the President that are constitutionally set as part of Congress's responsibilities. His sole bargaining chit is to withhold permission for the treasury to borrow funds to pay for spending that Congress has already approved.

    This is stupid.

    In this entire discussion, it's important to remember that there are supposed to be two separate things here:

    1. A budget process that appropriates funds for various purposes.
    2. A law that sets a limit on the Government's ability to borrow to pay for those congressionally-approved appropriations.

    If Republicans want to spend less, then the time and place to do that is during the budgeting process, not when it comes time to pay for things that were approved in the previous budget. If McCarthy was serious about legislating (aka "doing his job") then he should bring forward a law that just raises the debt limit to pay for spending that was already approved. Then, he should follow the process to set future appropriations that's defined by law. That might actually require negotiations with moderate Democrats to come up with a realistic budget that has a chance of passing the Senate and being signed by the President. This would not only likely result in a better result, but it would also marginalize people like Matt Gaetz.

    Instead, he's going to play a game of political brinkmanship that is more than likely to result in a hastily constructed, last-minute solution that rams through the kind of omnibus legislation that people like Chip Roy constantly complain about.

    These are not serious people.

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    1. DTruitt

      Nothing at all "stupid" or unserious. This is what the party in control of the House does on major bills of any kind, particularly spending bills for which the Constitution assigns lead authority to the House to initiate.

      It's not a "game of brinkmanship" either. This is normal negotiation. Apparently you've never been part of any serious negotiation where a great deal was at stake. Nobody gives until the deadline arrives - if you give sooner than the deadline then by definition you've lost the negotiation and may as well just go home. That's the function of any agreement deadline - it creates a point in time by which the "nut cuttin'" has to take place, where either both sides or just one side takes a hair cut and loses something while gaining something.

      Rubes who know nothing about negotiation, because they've never done any, like you throw up their hands and declare it all stupid and a game. If you or your family ever has to do a serious negotiation, you'd better get someone else to do it for you (an intelligent spouse, friend, or attorney), because you'll lose.

      And, last but not least, this type of action is precisely why the American people voted in a Republican Congress, to finally put a stop to the profligate mindless spending of the Democrats in 2021-2022. We elected McCarthy to do exactly this thing, and thank god he's doing it.

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        Ellison

        I don't know if JohnF is a rube but I do know that calling him one is not a good faith move.

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        1. Hikingguy

          Liberals aren't Commies, either, but DTruitt loves calling names. He thinks it makes him look tough.

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        JohnF

        I spent decades negotiating contracts. I'm extremely familiar with the process. A couple of points:

        1. This is not a "spending" bill. It's a payment bill. The government has already borrowed the money to reach the debt limit and it needs to borrow more to pay for the rest of the spending that has already been approved.

        2. Any negotiation should be part of the formal budgeting process.

        3. A successful "negotiation starts with both sides adopting positions that are highly favorable to them but that still allow for the process to continue. Coming into a discussion with a set of demands that are complete non-starters is not negotiating, it's posturing.

        4. There is no good reason that this should be negotiated between any House Majority Leader and any President. The role of the Executive branch is to implement the laws passed by Congress and spend the funds that are appropriated by Congress. The Founders were quite deliberate about eschewing a system in which a Parliament negotiated with a Monarch.

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    John N.

    If this little fellow's "biggest test yet" is whipping votes, negotiation with his own side, and sacrificing his integrity giving concessions to the likes of his incel/Q-Anon members, to try to pass a bill that everyone, including him, knows will never, ever become law, it really does show what an ineffectual, neutered little person he is.

    Americans deserver better than whatever this little person offers.

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    1. DTruitt

      You have no freaking idea what you're blabbing on about with your "little person" schtick. Really, none.

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      1. Avatar photo
        John N.

        Thanks for your reply, it really advances the dialogue here in the comment thread.

        🙄

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        PJ

        You wish.

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  8. Learnin4life

    It's interesting that Sen. Manchin extols the virtue of negotiations as he eyes what will likely be his most serious political challenge in the redest of states in 2024. If he is serious I should think his next step would be to churn up agreement among fellow Dems of what they are willing to sacrifice on the budget alter in coming years. My assumption is that unless he can be the linchpin to a crucial vote we won't see many details from the good Sen. Manchin.

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    EricRemcon@gmail

    Thanks for the depressing update on our dysfunctional government. IMO, the two most telling sentences are:

    “His office pulled it together, he decided when it was going to come to the floor, and he is spearheading the effort to pass it.”
    AND
    “It helps McCarthy’s whip operation that the bill won’t actually become law.”

    This process demonstrates the two most important priorities for a CLOWN SHOW democracy:

    1. TOTAL lack of open deliberation with input from a variety of viewpoints (even from within your own party). – CHECK.
    2. TOTAL lack of putting forth a serious proposal that has a chance to become law rather than an almost meaningless, message bill. – CHECK.

    Why does anyone follow or work in politics anymore? The flow of tax dollars for anything other than national defense should stop immediately. If the grift came to a halt, maybe we could elect adults to make hard decisions instead of grifters handing out favors and promises.

    I KNOW, I am aware of the problem with my idea – Adults cannot get elected anymore. ☹

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      PJ

      Adults could get elected if we had informed citizens who took their responsibilities seriously.

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        I Am the Eggman

        Which we don't, and never really did. We had better candidates in the past (sometimes) because the party leaderships had more power to determine who their party's nominees would be for various offices.

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