McCarthy’s tidy 1st week disguises trouble ahead
WASHINGTON — Chaos? In the House of Representatives?
Republican Kevin McCarthy wrapped his first full week as House speaker in the most outwardly orderly way, with hardly a hint of the chaotic, rebellious fight it took for the Republicans to arrive here, having barely installed him as the leader with the gavel.
The House Republicans marched through the early days of the session like a spunky new business — in by noon, out by dinnertime, the lawmakers rapidfire voting without much public drama in between. They approved their House rules and sent six Republican bills quickly to passage, including one to gut funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
The Republican committee chairmen were named, members were appointed to the panels and the Oversight committee launched its first requests for financial documents as it probes President Joe Biden and his family.
And when House Republicans met for the first time behind closed doors after the rowdy public spectacle that broke history records and almost came to fistfights to elect McCarthy as speaker, it was a “lovefest,” as one Republican lawmaker put it.
“That’s just the first five days, and we’re just getting started,” McCarthy said Thursday at his first press conference as speaker.
But the semblance of House GOP unity is all but certain to be temporary, a momentary reprieve after the grudging, grueling effort by Republicans to seize the majority from Democrats and elect the embattled McCarthy as the new speaker.
The daunting political math confronting McCarthy remains the same: With a 222-seat majority, he can only lose a few detractors on any issue unless he reaches across the aisle for help and backing from Democrats for the 218 votes typically needed to pass legislation.
While the first bills the House Republicans easily approved were essentially GOP favorites, designed to unite their side of the aisle and even pull in some Democratic support, the next legislative lifts are expected to be more vigorous and politically risky.
McCarthy has made a deal with conservatives that the next government funding bill will be held to fiscal 2022 levels, which means a substantial 8% cut of discretionary accounts — or more if the defense budget is spared.
“We’ve got to change the way we are spending money,” McCarthy said Thursday.
Even more, Congress will be asked this summer to raise the federal debt ceiling to allow more borrowing to pay off the government’s current bills, always a difficult vote for lawmakers and one that the Treasury Department says is coming sooner than expected.
In refusing to allow the federal government to take on more debt unless changes are made to federal spending, House Republicans are heading for a risky showdown that echoes the debt ceiling debate of 2011. That was a months-long political drama that resulted in a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating for the first time in modern memory after the newly-elected tea party class of House Republicans demanded federal spending cuts.