Long power quest’s finale exposes glaring weakness
Concessions from McCarthy may lead to chaos in House
WASHINGTON — Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s historically long slog to become speaker of the House has made one thing abundantly clear: The United States should brace for the likelihood of a Congress in perpetual disarray for the next two years.
The recipe for the chaos already existed: A toxic combination of the Republicans’ slim governing majority, an unyielding hard-right flank that disdains the normal operations of government and a candidate for speaker who has repeatedly bowed to that flank in his quest for power.
But to see it play out repeatedly on the House floor last week, as McCarthy tried and failed repeatedly to win the speakership before prevailing, has left little doubt that Congress as an entity would struggle to carry out even its most basic duties in the coming two years, such as funding the government — including the military — or avoiding a catastrophic federal debt default.
The speaker fight ground the House to a halt before it even began, rendering the body essentially useless. Without a speaker, lawmakers were unable to pass bills, form committees or even get sworn in. To win the votes, McCarthy, R-Calif., promised concessions to the hard-right group that would substantially weaken the speakership, effectively giving them new tools for disrupting business in the House — and the ability to hold him hostage to their demands.
“He’s going be the weakest speaker,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. “The problem is that he’s also weakened the institution in general — all because he wants the vain title of speaker but without the power or the potential responsibility.”
Before the first speaker vote, McCarthy had offered some key concessions, including a return to a rule that would allow rank-andfile lawmakers to force a snap vote on ousting the speaker. On Wednesday, a major PAC aligned with McCarthy agreed to limit its role in GOP primaries in safe Republican districts, another demand of conservatives who have bristled at his efforts to box out hardright candidates.
And on Thursday, McCarthy also privately agreed to more concessions that could disrupt the normal operations of the House and diminish his ability to control it. A single lawmaker could move to oust the speaker, instead of the five McCarthy had initially offered as a compromise, according to people familiar with the negotiations who described them on condition of anonymity.
The hard right would get approval power over some plum committee assignments, including a third of the members on the influential Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form. And spending bills would have to be considered under so-called open rules, allowing any member to put to a vote an unlimited number of changes that could gut or scuttle the legislation altogether.
Some of the proposed rules changes come in response to widely held concerns about the way Congress operates. Many House Republicans have long been frustrated with the current state of affairs concerning spending bills. Lawmakers are often forced to vote on large catchall measures, numbering thousands of pages and hundreds of billions of dollars, with only hours to review their contents.
“A lot of the things that the ‘no caucus’ is asking for are things that we likely would want to see anyway,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., a McCarthy supporter. “This Christmas-tree notion of having lots of different things in a package isn’t always ideal. So there are some things in here that I think are helpful and relevant. Are we going to like all of them? I don’t know. I think that remains to be seen.”
But as McCarthy gave more and more ground to the far-right group, it became clear that the lower chamber of the 118th Congress would be highly difficult for him to control.
And with hard-right lawmakers empowered to derail spending bills or call for the speaker’s removal at any moment, some worried the chamber would be paralyzed from the start.
“The concessions he’s made means that it will be a minority of a minority of the minority, because of the Freedom Caucus, that will get to dictate the outcomes of legislative achievement,” said Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.