Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is seen during a motion to adjourn vote after he did not receive enough votes to become Speaker, on January 7, 2023. He was eventually elected Speaker on the 15th ballot.
The 20 most nihilistic members of the Republican caucus, less than 5 percent of the House, are now holding the entire House hostage, thanks to Kevin McCarthy’s craven opportunism. This situation is inherently unstable.
I’ve argued that Republican moderates in Congress could well defect from McCarthy’s bargain as the details unfold. Some, like Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, had previously said that if the process of electing a Speaker deadlocked, they’d be open to considering working with Democrats to elect a moderate Republican as Speaker.
You might think that 14 failed votes would count as a deadlock. But Bacon’s posture turned out to be a striptease, at least for now. Last week, Bacon and all the other GOP moderates stuck with McCarthy as a lesser evil, even as he had made concession after concession to the far right.
But despite McCarthy’s success in getting his rules package narrowly approved Monday night, this isn’t over. McCarthy’s concessions, especially on the ease with which members can remove a Speaker, give leverage to the moderates as well as the ultras.
Take the issue of shutting down the government, using the debt ceiling vote as the vehicle, unless Democrats agree to crippling spending cuts. This has become a nonnegotiable issue for the far right, and McCarthy has capitulated as part of the deal that made him Speaker. (He signaled this months ago, for what it’s worth.)
The need to raise the debt ceiling may not come up until later in the summer, but if Biden prevails in the courts on another kind of debt—student debt relief—government will need additional borrowing earlier. If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling at that point, the United States would default on its public debt.
In the game of chicken over the debt ceiling in 2011, President Obama blinked first, leading to a deal that required mandatory deficit cuts via budget sequesters. And yet, in the run-up to the 2012 election, when Republicans in Congress tried to force deep spending cuts, it backfired on them in the presidential.
By the same token, when Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to use a threatened government shutdown to force spending cuts on President Bill Clinton in 1995, the ploy totally backfired on the Republicans and on Gingrich personally. This time, the stakes are even higher because the far right is demanding crippling cuts in valued spending programs, including wildly unpopular cuts in Social Security.
The 19 Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus are fiscal conservatives, but unlike the Freedom Caucus they are serious about governing. They worked with Democrats to enact several pieces of major legislation, not the least of which was the bipartisan infrastructure law, which increased the usual outlay by about $600 billion, and increased the federal deficit. (There were claimed offsets, but everyone knows they were gimmicks.)
They would not be thrilled about shutting down the government. Many are in swing districts, and they would not be friendly to some of the specific budget demands, such as deep cuts in Social Security. As co-sponsors of major infrastructure spending, these bipartisan Republicans would like to see it actually come about.
McCarthy’s concessions, especially on the ease with which members can remove a Speaker, give leverage to the moderates as well as the ultras.
When McCarthy and his allies do try to shut down the government by refusing to increase the debt ceiling, it would take only five moderate Republicans to vote with Democrats to pass a discharge petition (a way to get legislation on the floor that the Speaker doesn’t want there) and vote for a new ceiling.
And do the Republican moderates really want to abolish the Office of Congressional Ethics? Launch a fishing expedition against the FBI? Impeach Biden Cabinet members? We’ll soon find out.
There is a precedent for reasonable people from both parties in the House coming together in the middle of a term to depose an objectionable regime. That was the famous revolt against the dictatorial Speaker Joe Cannon in March 1910.
Cannon used his chairmanship of the Rules Committee, his power to make committee assignments, and his control of patronage to set the agenda and bottle up progressive legislation supported by a majority of House members. But on St. Patrick’s Day, when Cannon’s allies were out celebrating, progressives of both parties staged a coup led by the great Republican progressive George Norris of Nebraska, who assembled a coalition of 42 progressive Republicans and all 149 Democrats.
With Cannon’s allies absent, they voted to strip the Speaker of many of his powers, most importantly his chairmanship of the Rules Committee and his power to make other committee assignments. Cannon never recovered his influence, and a year later he was removed as Speaker.
Like Cannon, Kevin McCarthy and his allies represent a minority of the entire House. The moderate Republicans lost their nerve last week. But that was just round one. As the Gang of 20 keeps pushing the entire House to the far fringes, I’m betting that moderate Republicans will reach a breaking point.
