The $1.7T deal reveals Senate GOP fears
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy was able to visit Washington in triumph on Wednesday because Senate
Republican leaders decided they could not trust their party’s new majority in the
House to deliver a budget — without delays and drama — that included the help Ukraine needs.
The agreement between top Senate Republicans and House and Senate Democrats on a $1.7 trillion deal to fund the federal government through September reflects the politics of fear — fear that the narrow GOP majority in the House might be unfit to govern and is prepared to engage in reckless brinkmanship in future budget battles.
Republican senators came close to saying as much. “My concern is that a new House, very small majority, new leadership, is going to have to take over, and to have to start from behind?” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, N.D. “That concerns me. That could have negative consequences.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., underscored the urgency of aid to Ukraine in a speech on the Senate floor in the hours before Zelenskyy’s arrival. The case McConnell made hinted at the divisions in his party between passionate supporters of Ukraine and those influenced by Trumpist America First nationalism.
“The reason that a big bipartisan majority of the American people and a big bipartisan majority in Congress support continuing to assist Ukraine is not primarily about inspiring speeches or a desire to engage in philanthropy,” McConnell said. While “the Ukrainian people are courageous and innocent,” he added, the “most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests.”
Those final words made clear that, for many Republicans, particularly in the House, the moral argument for supporting a democratic nation against a despotic invader is not a sufficient rationale for U.S. action.
In urging the Senate to “send President Zelenskyy back to Ukraine” with the assistance his country requires, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., brought the Republican split to the surface: “I hope that Donald Trump’s friendship with (Vladimir) Putin is not motivating House Republicans to turn a blind eye to Ukraine’s suffering and desperate need for help.”
In fact, by reaching a budget agreement, Senate Republicans might have saved House GOP leader and speaker-hopeful Kevin McCarthy deadly headaches. One Senate Democratic aide said McCarthy was saying a loud “no” publicly while privately welcoming how the deal would allow the new House to get organized and not face a budget showdown in its first months.
McCarthy is still scrambling for rightwing votes to secure the majority he needs to become speaker. So to bring conservative hard-liners to his side, he has been over-the-top in condemning his Senate colleagues.
McCarthy pledged on Twitter on Tuesday that if the Senate approved the new budget, even Republican-authored Senate bills “would be dead on arrival” in the House next year. While expressing support for McCarthy’s leadership bid, Cramer shot back in an interview with the Washington Examiner. McCarthy, he said, “can do that if he wants, but it doesn’t get him anywhere. I mean, I think it even sounds naive.”
Democrats were as eager as Republicans to reach a compromise, create at least some stability in government finances and avert the economic wreckage a budget confrontation could leave in its wake. So while Democrats could brag about domestic spending in the deal for veterans, Pell Grant increases for low-income college students, child care, substance abuse and food assistance, their concessions were substantial, involving what Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., called “painful cuts.”
Among the Republicans victories: big increases in defense spending and the bill’s failure to provide additional money the Biden administration says it needs to combat COVID-19. Shamefully, the agreement failed to restore even a pared-down expansion of the poverty-fighting child tax credit.
Still, the negotiations reflect what governing looks like when competing political parties decide that compromise in the name of economic stability and foreign policy responsibility is no vice.
What’s alarming is how afraid responsible Republicans are of what 2023 and 2024 will look like with the House in the hands of an erratic majority easily pressured by its right wing and under leadership in a very weak position to resist forces not interested in governing.
Zelenskyy’s visit is a reminder that democracy is worth fighting for and that bravery in the face of what seemed to be insuperable odds can achieve what was once regarded as impossible. It would be a national dereliction of duty if factions within the Republican Party were allowed to endanger all that the Ukrainian people have achieved.
And it will require a quieter, no less important form of bravery to keep our own democracy functioning in the face of extremists willing to risk calamity if that is what it takes for them to win.