Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) listens to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), speak during a news conference with House and Senate Republicans at the Capitol on May 17, 2023.
It is a testament to the strangeness of the modern Republican Party that the indictment of a former president for improper retention of national security documents has united them, and perfunctory House votes on a series of deregulatory bills has divided them.
We are now in the second week of a House Freedom Caucus (HFC) blockade. Because of the narrow margins of the House Republican majority, a sliver of HFC members can “take down the rule” by voting against a procedural measure that set up the terms of debate on legislation. Rule votes are almost always party-line affairs—hitherto there hadn’t been an unsuccessful one since 2002. But the Freedom Caucus, who believe they were stiffed on a debt ceiling deal that didn’t meet their extreme demands, revolted on the rule last week, forcing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to send everybody home early.
Amusingly, the bills in limbo are Freedom Caucus faves like the REINS Act, which would essentially give Congress a veto on any administrative rule; or the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, which is an assault on the concept of “Chevron deference,” enabling the judiciary to override agency interpretations of statutory provisions. Two other bills would preserve Americans’ God-given right to a gas stove, which is not actually under threat. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), a member of the Freedom Caucus, authored one of those gas stove bills; Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL), another HFC member, is lead sponsor on the REINS Act. So the Freedom Caucus tantrum prevented Freedom Caucus legislation from passing.
A bill that would disapprove of a ban on “pistol braces,” a rifle-like stock accessory that attaches to handguns, authored by HFC member Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), was pulled from the House floor last week; GOP leadership said they didn’t think it had enough votes to pass. (These braces have not been banned, but they have been subjected to new regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.) Clyde decided this was retaliation for his opposition to the debt ceiling deal, and that riled up the caucus, leading to the showdown.
The staring contest will end today, with the pistol-brace bill back on the schedule. That ultimately clears a path for pointless messaging bills that aren’t becoming law anytime soon. But the power struggle being waged is real.
Freedom Caucus members are baring their teeth in order to influence the implementation of the debt ceiling deal when federal spending bills come up in the fall. They’re trying to force McCarthy into positions that will make it difficult to get those spending bills completed on time. And because negotiators added a penalty if spending bills linger through January that would mainly slash the military budget, the Republican disarray threatens nothing so much as the men and women in uniform they traditionally worship.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act, which got the debt limit extended for two years, set spending levels for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. But appropriations must be conducted within those parameters. The HFC outburst should be seen as an attempt to effectively revise the deal at the appropriations stage. They want House appropriations to come in lower than the targeted figure, back to fiscal year 2022 levels, which would be a cut of roughly $100 billion.
The goals of reducing spending below the non-defense caps, above the defense caps, and having that be something Senate Democrats will pass and the president will sign are irreconcilable.
You can already this new HFC hostage situation yielding some success. McCarthy said last Friday, “Whenever you put a cap, that's the ceiling… We can always spend less. I've always advocated for spending less money.” Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) argued that a lower spending level could still honor the negotiated head. If there’s a breakthrough this week, it will almost certainly involve leadership agreeing to drop appropriations below the cap.
McCarthy knows well that there is no way Democrats would agree to spending levels below the real cuts already envisioned in the deal. Even Senate Republicans expressed surprise; they know nothing below the capped level can pass the Senate.
But Senate Republicans actually have a different kind of deal breach in mind. As I wrote last week, the Senate’s defense hawks got a commitment from Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to go above the $886 billion spending cap on the Pentagon budget, and to use a supplemental funding request for Ukraine as the vehicle to stuff in more military money.
Last week, McCarthy soundly rejected this idea, questioning the need for a supplemental at all and suggesting that any funding for Ukraine would have to be achieved through the normal appropriations process. He also intimated that the military budget has a lot of opportunity for “reform where we can have a lot of savings.” McConnell then said on the Senate floor that the deal, which he didn’t negotiate, was “simply insufficient” on the military side.
I should say here that I’m in rare agreement with McCarthy. He is absolutely right that the military budget, over half of which goes directly to outside contractors with incentives to overbill and raise overall budgets, is irrationally bloated. I wrote a year ago that Ukraine “supplementals” are pernicious when the Pentagon is sitting on nearly a trillion dollars per year, at a time when the U.S. is waging no formal wars anywhere on the planet. “The Pentagon budget keeps increasing because the slightest tremor in the world triggers calls for emergency supplemental requests,” I noted. “We should get in the habit of using the existing, astounding military budget when situations like this occur.”
The important thing here is that the goals of reducing spending below the non-defense caps, above the defense caps, and having that be something Senate Democrats will pass and the president will sign are irreconcilable. McCarthy is being implicitly threatened with his speakership if he doesn’t hold to lower spending. McConnell, meanwhile, is getting enormous pressure from the lobbying blob to plus-up military budgets.
All of that points to stopgap funding to prevent an October 1 government shutdown, if the votes can be found. That would render all the work on the debt ceiling spending caps rather meaningless, especially if a continuing resolution to fund the government were to persist. That said, a shutdown is a definite possibility given all the chaos.
This is also where the trigger mechanism in the deal comes into play. If Congress doesn’t pass the twelve annual spending bills by January 1, all outstanding budgets will revert to fiscal year 2023 levels minus a one percent cut. Because military budgets were increased in the deal, it’s actually more like a 4.3 percent cut for the Pentagon, which adjusted for inflation is closer to 10 percent. It’s a good bet to think that our military-worshipping Congress will never let that happen. But it’s harder to figure out how they’re going to avoid it, given the deep differences between Democrats and Republicans, between House and Senate Republicans, and between hardliners and the leadership within the House.
Democrats are in a different position than they were in the debt limit talks. Historically government shutdowns have rebounded back on Republicans, who eventually crawl back to the table without getting much in return. And the trigger that would slash defense spending in particular is a powerful spur to stick to the demand to keep to the promises in the debt ceiling deal.
Then there are wild cards like natural disasters, which almost always require supplemental funding. Holding out on rebuilding part of the country would be damaging to a House Republican majority that is at risk next year. You could even see Democrats, if they are the only thing standing in the way of an impossible impasse, asking for their own breach of the deal by asking for non-defense spending increases.
Republican disarray in previous years has allowed Democrats to effectively control the floor. Ultimately this, not the administration’s negotiating, could lead to the debt limit crisis having a much more favorable outcome than expected.
