McCarthy rescues GOP agenda with eleventh-hour wins
David Sivak
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House Republicans had campaigned on passing legislation to secure the southern border, yet four months into the new Congress, their signature bill was on the verge of falling apart.
First, there were concerns from Hispanic Republicans that the bill would restrict legitimate asylum claims. Then, worries that its E-Verify provisions would hurt agriculture in rural districts. Whether or not drug cartels should be designated as terrorist organizations even became a GOP sticking point.
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Each step of the way, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) put out fires, striking compromises or cajoling his members to hold their noses and vote for the bill. It passed on Thursday with a few votes to spare after an eleventh-hour scramble.
The episode underscored the difficulty of getting even messaging bills passed in a chamber Republicans control with a four-seat majority. But it also typified McCarthy’s knack for riding out the turbulence and getting to “yes,” no matter how many deals he has to cut.
He’s had to cut a lot of them. It took him 15 rounds to become speaker in January as GOP hard-liners deeply skeptical of his leadership denied him the gavel. McCarthy withdrew from the speaker’s race in 2015 due to similar resistance, but McCarthy chose to run the gauntlet this time around.
He eventually locked down the speakership by ceding much of his power to the conservative Freedom Caucus. He gave its members plum committee posts, pledged to pursue deep spending cuts, and, as an insurance policy, changed the rules so a single lawmaker could call a no-confidence vote on his leadership.
The concessions left Washington wondering whether he could govern at all.
McCarthy has a chip on his shoulder over the skepticism. “You’ve underestimated me” has become a common refrain to reporters at the Capitol, and he’ll gladly list off the legislation he has moved through the chamber in a few short months.
That includes two long-shot measures House Republicans passed on crime in Washington and the COVID-19 national emergency that became law over President Joe Biden’s initial objections.
But his early wins haven’t always been pretty, and other priorities remain stalled.
Two weeks ago, McCarthy surprised Democrats by muscling a bill to raise the debt ceiling through the lower chamber. Following through on a promise to leverage the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit to extract spending cuts from Biden, he demanded, unsuccessfully, that the president sit down and negotiate.
McCarthy finally got Biden to relent through a show of GOP unity — just four hard-liners voted against the debt ceiling bill, the most the speaker could afford to lose. The president offered to meet for budget talks ostensibly separate from the debt ceiling five days later.
The feat strengthened McCarthy’s negotiating position, showing he had control over his conference. But the bill’s passage was far from certain.
Despite incorporating most of the Freedom Caucus’s demands — the bill proposes $4.8 trillion in deficit cuts and rolls back Biden’s legislative accomplishments — a handful of conservatives couldn’t bring themselves to raise the borrowing limit under any circumstances.
Plus, corn-state lawmakers were revolting over the repeal of ethanol tax credits. The speaker found himself facing a growing number of “undecideds” or outright “noes.”
Lawmakers filed in and out of leadership’s offices ahead of the vote as, one by one, McCarthy struck a deal with reluctant members. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) would get the stricter work requirements he sought for entitlement programs. For Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), the promise of floor votes for child and reproductive care legislation.
The same eleventh-hour deal-making that won him the speakership got his debt ceiling bill across the finish line.
To some extent, the mad scramble was self-imposed. House Republicans could have taken more time to work out the kinks. But facing a one-week recess, plus the sign of weakness it would send if McCarthy could not get a bill passed quickly, leadership wanted to force the bill through just days after it was introduced.
Similarly, there was no hard deadline for the GOP border security bill to pass Thursday, as it had languished for weeks. But the timing was symbolic: Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that allowed Biden to turn away immigrants at the border, would end at midnight, and House Republicans wanted a dramatic rebuke of the president’s handling of the border.
GOP leadership doesn’t relish the last-minute drama. McCarthy had drawn a line in the sand with rank-and-file members on the debt limit bill, telling them that no further changes would be made before it came to the floor.
That did little to stop Republican complaints, and McCarthy had to relent.
In the end, he lacks the control over his conference that his Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), displayed with the same four-seat majority. But his ability to clench victory from the jaws of defeat evinces an ability to build consensus within a fractious and unruly conference.
In part, McCarthy has centrists to thank for that success. Pragmatist Republicans have been willing to bend where hard-liners won’t.
That leeway only extends so far, however. In the case of the ethanol tax credits, Midwestern lawmakers threatened to vote against the debt limit bill and eventually got their way.
But centrists were willing to overlook how conservative the bill was if it meant getting Biden to the negotiating table. The legislation would be watered down, they figured, in talks with the White House anyway.
So far, McCarthy has avoided the fate of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), whose failure to control the Tea Party cost him the speakership in 2015.
Perhaps it was a lesson learned for McCarthy, who was the majority leader at the time of Boehner’s resignation. McCarthy has gone to great lengths to build goodwill with the Freedom Caucus, giving its members face time and the ability to shape legislation.
But no matter how McCarthy runs his conference, he is going to face infighting with a majority so narrow.
House Republicans have passed most of the 11 pieces of legislation House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said they would in the first two weeks of the new Congress, but many were delayed.
A handful, including a resolution to express support for law enforcement, stalled out completely.
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The police resolution faced resistance since its blanket support for “the Nation’s law enforcement agencies” included the FBI, which many conservatives believe has been “weaponized” to persecute Republicans.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), the resolution’s original sponsor, introduced a separate measure earlier this month tailored to local law enforcement ahead of the start of National Police Week. The bill will receive a vote in the House on Thursday.