As the battle for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership wore on last week, some allies began grumbling about all the concessions he was making to the hard right, and suggested they were approaching a red line of their own. Then he made even more — so many that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) remarked that he was running out of things to ask for. McCarthy’s allies continued to grumble, notably about the fact that they didn’t truly know the full scale of his concessions. But they voted for him anyway in the name of ending the impasse.
Now a debate on those concessions is approaching. And it could be the first test of McCarthy as speaker.
The House returns late Monday to vote on its rules for the incoming Congress, and there are some signs of yet more potential trouble ahead. One McCarthy backer, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.), has said he will vote against the package, while another, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), said this weekend that she is on the fence.
As with the speaker’s election and pretty much every other process right now, the package can lose only four GOP votes if all the members vote and Democrats unite to oppose it.
So what could be the sticking points? And what are the key concessions we could be talking about moving forward?
The rules package could be salvaged by the mere fact that many of the key concessions that McCarthy made aren’t reflected in it, because they — including committee positions, for example — took the form of promises to the House Freedom Caucus. But some concessions do take the form of proposed rules, and the rules debate provides the first real venue to deliberate over what McCarthy has given up. Mace, for instance, said she supports the rules package itself but is concerned about the other concessions.
Perhaps the biggest rules change is what’s known as the “motion to vacate the chair.” This effectively allows one member to force a vote to remove McCarthy as speaker at any point. McCarthy allies might not like the leverage this provides McCarthy’s critics, but given that this threshold effectively existed for more than a century before 2019 — it’s simply more of an imminent threat now — it seems unlikely to be a sticking point.
One possible flash point is a potential agreement that could shrink defense spending. McCarthy has reportedly agreed to a vote on a 10-year budget that would cap spending at fiscal year 2022 levels. That would effectively reduce defense spending by about 10 percent, unless the Pentagon is exempted.
This isn’t actually in the rules package itself, and it would seem quite likely that a 10 percent defense cut will never actually come, given that neither the Senate nor enough hawks in the House Republican conference would sign off on it. But both Gonzales and Mace spotlighted it as looming over their votes.
“I want to see it in writing. I want to see what promises were made,” Mace said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding: “I don’t want to see defense cuts. Again, we don’t know what deals were made. And that’s something that we should be transparent about. Sunshine is the best medicine.”
That lack of transparency was the source of consternation last week, as McCarthy backers acknowledged they didn’t truly understand the scale of the concessions he had made, even as they were holding strong and voting for him for speaker. But thus far Mace is relatively alone in raising it as an issue when it comes to her vote on the rules package.
Another reported agreement that isn’t fully understood is one that would require spending cuts as part of any increase in the debt ceiling. Hard-right Republicans have occasionally threatened to force spending cuts through this process, but raising the limit is required to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt, and such efforts to freeze the debt ceiling have never been successful.
It’s unclear right now exactly how this will shake out, how severe the theoretical cuts would be, and what the enforcement mechanism would be. But the consequences could be so significant that Mace’s admonition about the lack of firm detail applies.
And one of the deal’s chief negotiators among McCarthy’s holdouts, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), left open the possibility of trying to boot McCarthy out of the job if he didn’t abide by it.
When asked whether he and his allies would file a motion to vacate the chair if McCarthy allowed the House to pass a clean debt-ceiling increase, Roy told CNN on Sunday: “I’m not going to play the what-if games on how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement. But we will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement.”
A rule that is reflected in the package is the creation of a new select committee on “weaponization of the federal government.” This is an outgrowth of the GOP’s criticisms of the investigation of former president Donald Trump and things like the expansion of the IRS. (Some advocates have compared it to the Church Committee, which in the 1970s uncovered many civil liberties abuses by administrations of both parties.)
The idea seems broadly in line with the GOP’s priorities right now, but as Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, two key provisions stand out: The panel is to be given access to highly sensitive information shared with the House Intelligence Committee, and its purview is to include “ongoing criminal investigations.”
This latter provision raises significant questions about the separation of powers, because the committee could in theory try to subpoena sensitive Justice Department information before charges are ever brought — including information about the DOJ’s probes into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump and Hunter Biden. This is information the Justice Department keeps close to the vest, to protect its investigations and avoid politicizing its processes.
With Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in charge of the committee, it seems quite likely there could be some tense standoffs ahead that will likely include court battles.
But many of the claims about the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government have been hyperbolic and highly speculative, including on Trump and on matters such as the IRS expansion, the federal government purportedly targeting parents who criticize local school boards and the Homeland Security Department’s now-scrapped Disinformation Governance Board. Republicans will need to ask themselves how much they want to empower an effort often pursued by a wing of the party that, for instance, claims the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters were victims.
McCarthy’s team has expressed confidence that the rules package will pass. And if last week showed us anything, it’s that McCarthy’s allies have proved willing to stomach plenty — including a deal they apparently didn’t know much about — in the name of moving past all this.
But as will be the case moving forward, their margin for error is minuscule, and a small number of members can gum things up if they want to raise a fuss. So it’s worth keeping an eye on these flash points as the rules debate — and McCarthy’s speakership — begins.