Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) seemed to have avoided the wrath of conservatives over his decision to cut a modest deal to raise the debt ceiling.
The bill got through the Rules Committee, albeit barely, despite the panel being stacked with hard-line Republicans.
INFLATION ISSUE STILL LOOMS FOR BIDEN DESPITE PROGRESS
Even talk of a “no-confidence” vote after the deal became law fizzled out following an outburst of conservative anger.
But a dramatic display on the House floor Tuesday afternoon, in which a dozen conservatives tanked a GOP bill on gas stoves, stood to show that the Freedom Caucus would not forget the promises McCarthy made to win the gavel in January.
The act of protest, the first time since 2002 that a rule vote failed on the House floor, came with a message: Conservatives wanted a reset on their relationship with leadership.
The hard-liners weren’t ready to depose McCarthy, a distinct possibility given the speaker’s four-seat majority in the chamber.
But they wanted a return to the “unity” seen in the first months of the new Congress, when Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, legislation that would have enacted deep spending cuts and rolled back President Joe Biden’s legislative accomplishments.
The bill’s passage in April helped bring the president to the negotiating table by proving to Washington that House Republicans could govern.
But the deal that emerged weeks later was extremely modest. In exchange for a hike in the debt limit until early 2025, Democrats agreed to roughly freeze discretionary spending for two years.
The Freedom Caucus was livid over the deal, calling it a “betrayal” of the commitment McCarthy made to reduce spending to 2022 levels.
The agreement fractured what had been a positive, even warm, relationship he had been cultivating with its members. McCarthy had empowered his right flank, appointing them to powerful committee posts and taking up their favored bills.
But the goodwill he developed evaporated the instant he cut the bipartisan compromise, an inevitability in Washington given Democrats’ control of the Senate and White House.
Republicans left their weekly conference meeting on Tuesday morning, the first since the debt ceiling bill passed the House, without talk of a no-confidence vote.
McCarthy’s speakership seemed to be safe.
But just hours later, conservatives made clear the “motion to vacate” was not the only tool at their disposal. They could strong-arm McCarthy in other ways.
“We took down the rule because we’re frustrated at the way the place is operating,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told reporters after the vote. “We’re concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed McCarthy to assume the speakership have been violated.”
The claim that leadership threatened to pull a bill by Freedom Caucus member Andrew Clyde (R-GA) last week if he voted against a procedural step on the debt ceiling compromise added fuel to the fire.
But at its core, Freedom Caucus members are worried that McCarthy might once again work with Democrats to bypass them.
The hard-liners spent days in early January constructing for McCarthy, whom they viewed as a self-interested establishment politician, a metaphorical “straitjacket” that reduced the speakership to what they thought would be a ceremonial position.
They denied him the gavel for 15 rounds until he agreed to give more power to rank-and-file members and return the chamber to regular order.
But the debt ceiling episode illustrated he could escape that straitjacket if the stakes were high enough.
McCarthy has spent months appeasing the Freedom Caucus with messaging bills that will never pass the Senate. But the deal to raise the federal borrowing limit, signed into law days before the United States defaulted on its debts, created the conditions for the speaker to partner with Democrats.
The hard-liners, who shuttled in and out of McCarthy’s office on Tuesday afternoon, want to make clear to McCarthy that he’s still beholden to them and their votes. They have threatened to oppose all legislation brought to the floor unless the speaker agrees, in writing, to a reset.
But Freedom Caucus members fear they’re in store for another “bait-and-switch” come Oct. 1, the deadline for Washington to fund the government.
The appropriations process is viewed as another test of his speakership — if he can secure additional concessions from Democrats with the threat of a government shutdown looming, he may keep his job.
But they see a repeat of the debt ceiling drama on the horizon, with Republicans uniting behind a conservative bill only for McCarthy to strike another bargain with Democrats.
“There’s no test,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) told the Washington Examiner. “He failed.”
The congressman, one of the 12 members to vote down the rule on Tuesday, invoked spending fights of years past, in which conservatives flirt with shutdowns all the way to the Christmas recess to no avail.
“What’s gonna happen is he’s gonna have great appropriations bills. And on Dec. 24, we’re gonna vote for an omni that the Senate proposes, and it’s going to be” another letdown, Buck said.
Hard-liners might have lost all trust in McCarthy, but the speaker is also grasping at ways to forge a path forward. He pleaded with conservatives in Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting to move past the debt ceiling fight and focus on their “next play.”
That the pleas go both ways shows how the relationship, though dysfunctional, is existential for McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus.
The Californian spent his career pursuing the speakership in fits and starts. Hard-liners could move to depose McCarthy — after all, Gaetz suggested he had become an “imperial speaker” — but then they would lose the very leverage they’ve acquired under him.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), once a renegade thorn in ex-Speaker John Boehner’s side, is now the chairman of the influential Judiciary Committee. Other committees are filled with conservative firebrands.
Keeping the peace will require McCarthy to walk a tightrope in a seemingly impossible situation. He must take the wish list of conservative demands and translate that into something palatable enough for Democrats to vote for.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
That balancing act fell short in the eyes of the Freedom Caucus this time around — more Democrats voted for the debt ceiling compromise than Republicans.
How he handles the appropriations fight this fall could very well decide his speakership.
