The price of pride
Kevin McCarthy finally claimed the House speakership after 15 embarrassing ballots, but it was a hollow and hazardous victory. By caving to the demands of his own party’s hardliners, he obtained the title, but diminished its value. He’s turned himself, and his office, over to the hostage-takers, and he’s put the country’s fiscal future at risk.
McCarthy has “given away everything including his dignity,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, told The Washington Post.
The new Republican majority poses no threat when it comes to most legislation. Any bills they pass for purely political purposes will be shelved by the Democratic-controlled Senate. And while the GOP’s robust roster of investigations could dismay and distract the White House, it’s all posturing — not policy.
But there are three measures that must pass Congress, and that’s where the leverage McCarthy has ceded to the “legislative terrorists,” as former Republican Speaker John Boehner called them, becomes truly threatening.
One essential bill would fund the government beginning next October. The second would support Ukraine’s resistance against the Russian invasion. The third, and most critical, would extend the government’s authority to borrow money, which should expire next summer. All are now in jeopardy because of McCarthy’s spinelessness.
The list of concessions is long and detailed, but they come down to this: The hardliners, dubbed the “Taliban 20” by a GOP moderate, aimed to put the speaker in a “straitjacket,” as one put it — and they succeeded. They have virtual veto power over any bill the speaker wants to bring to the floor. And if he resists, they have the ability to trigger a vote that could lead to his immediate removal.
But then, this was no surprise. McCarthy has repeatedly shown that he is a paper-thin character, consumed with vanity and ambition, and he has caved before when his personal prospects were at risk. After the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he stated accurately that former President Donald Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” When Trump, however, signaled his displeasure with “my Kevin,” as he calls him, McCarthy immediately groveled, flying to Florida and begging the former president for forgiveness.
McCarthy initially backed former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his top lieutenants, after she also criticized Trump’s support for the rioters. But then, after the hardliners demanded her head, he reversed course and supported Cheney’s ouster from her leadership post. “I think that he is not leading with principle right now,” Cheney said on NBC. “And I think that it is sad and I think it’s dangerous.”
The danger has only gotten worse. On the bill to fund the government in 2024, for instance, the terrorists won a promise that spending would not exceed 2022 levels. That would mean enormous slashes in virtually every government service, an outcome the Biden administration could not possibly accept. A shutdown of the government seems so likely that some federal agencies are already declining to plan any events for after the fiscal year begins in October.
Hardliners are already complaining that support for Ukraine is too expensive. It’s true: The bill is high and will only get higher. But there is no cheap option. Either the U.S. and its allies help Kyiv now to resist Russian aggression, or they allow Moscow to succeed. That would embolden Putin — and perhaps China, as well — to threaten other neighbors, a far costlier outcome in the long run. But the terrorists seem incapable of grasping that incontrovertible calculation.
The most explosive issue, however, is the debt ceiling, the legal limit on how much the government can borrow. The Taliban 20 openly vows to block all efforts to raise the ceiling, demanding massive budget cuts in exchange for their consent. The administration and its allies in Congress are equally adamant in refusing to negotiate on the issue. As Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, put it, “We will repeat, again and again, there is a line in the sand here.”
A showdown seems all but inevitable. And if the U.S. government fails to pay its bills, if it defaults on its bonds, if its reputation for reliability is shaken, the impact could be catastrophic — a self-inflicted wound with a weapon of mass destruction.
McCarthy won the title of speaker and lost the power that goes with it: the power to govern. The power to lead. He occupies an empty office — a figurehead, a pretender. The rest of us will pay the price for his pride.