What McCarthy's Win Could Mean for the House
Article by Asya Ardawatia, TPT Staff Writer
January 7th marked a monumental occasion in America’s tumultuous political history— one that will define the Congress’s legacy for years to come. After 15 rounds of votes, hundreds of concessions, and painstaking negotiations with far-right extremists, Kevin McCarthy was elected as the Speaker of the House of the 118th U.S Congress. Although these bargains may seem trivial when considering how Democrats control the Senate and White House, the concessions McCarthy agreed to make passing legislation practically impossible and increase the power of the hard-right while diminishing his own.
Only 14 other Speaker of the House votes in American history required multiple ballots, 13 of which occurred before the Civil War. With political tensions rising exponentially throughout the country, as well as polarization replacing the bipartisan spirit that should exist in our legislative bodies, this trend comes as no surprise. Whether this four-day fiasco will remain a footnote in history or indicates the first of many similar debacles is a mystery that will be unraveled over the next two years.
Photo: CNN/Ting Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Yet, it is certain that the theatrics that occurred on the floor of Congress are the warning signs of the deepening fault lines that grow everyday in America’s political sphere. McCarthy promises that his caucus will get things done. However, being clasped in the palms of alt-right Republicans renders him virtually unable to pass legislation that aids the country or appeal to Democrats as well. In addition, these representatives could insist on amendments that would block or stymie legislation that they disagree with.
Before discussing the possible outcomes that could result from McCarthy’s speakership, it is pertinent to understand how he got there and why it is a big deal.
From the beginning of his run, the odds were stacked against him. With the Republicans gaining control of the House through a very small majority, their supposed “red wave” was blocked by a “blue wall.” Now, the party only has 222 seats, leaving very little room to get the benchmark 218 votes to win the speakership. Harry Enten of CNN highlights how “all other potential first-time House Speakers in the last 90 years had at least 230 seats in their majority” and Speakers with fewer seats in their favor had the power of incumbency. Furthermore, a recent CNN/SSRS poll found that McCarthy’s net favorability rating among the party faithful was only 30 points, a number not too low or high. Both Pelosi and Boehner had net favorability ratings during their terms of above 50 points. Enten contends that McCarthy is well-liked but not beloved enough. These conditions created the successful blockade of McCarthy’s path to the speakership by the ultra-conservative wing of the party led by Matt Gaetz, a Floridian Representative and hard-line Republican. Gaetz has established himself as an anti-establishment rebel looking to “drain the swamp” which led him to front the ‘Never Kevin’ movement.
Photo: Newsweek/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Faced with these odds, McCarthy knew that he would have to cave into the demands of the dissidents to have a shot of the position he had been gunning for in the last seven years. He made several concessions to win their vote, yet one stands out the most. In this concession, he allowed the House Freedom Caucus, the furthest-right bloc of the Republican Party, to have three out of the nine Republican seats on the House Committee on Rules. The committee, commonly known as “The Speaker’s Committee”, has vast power in Congress as it is how the Speaker maintains control of the floor. The ratio of members is traditionally in favor of the majority party— 9 majority members (Republicans) and 4 minority members (Democrats). Jonathan Bernstein from Bloomberg describes the power this committee wields, and the disastrous impacts that McCarthy’s concession has. To get any bill to the full House from a smaller committee, like the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, it must have a “rule”, a procedure provided by the House Committee on Rules which considers the given legislation. This includes which amendments are permitted and other procedural details. Bernstein elaborates that it is not uncommon for a bill to be completely rewritten by the time it exits the committee. As every item proposed must pass via that committee in order to be considered by the whole House, giving seats on the Rules Committee to a small, radical faction institutionalized their influence in a way that will affect every single bill the House examines. The threat this poses on any Democrat’s bill attempting to get passed through the House is clear.
Contrarily, the provision also holds Republican legislation hostage. Under McCarthy, to get Republican bills to the House floor would require a seven vote majority, which means that the 6 mainstream Republicans would have to cut a deal with the Democrats or the intransigent right-wing faction. Now every Republican bill will be a victim to this small but hostile bloc of the party. Having a third of the Republicans on this committee loyal to a dissident faction, responsible to none but their close group of radical allies instead of the party is detrimental to the future of the GOP and Congress as a whole.
Not only does the state of the Republican party hang in the balance, McCarthy’s career is also at stake. Ironically, the new Speaker reinstated a provision, forced by the alt-right faction, coined “motion to vacate the chair.” Essentially, a single lawmaker could force a vote that would oust the Speaker of the House. The House Freedom Caucus used this provision to pressure Former Speaker Boehner of Ohio and his successor, Former Speaker Ryan of Wisconsin, until Pelosi ended this back-end intimidation. McCarthy’s forced revival of this motion means that he is completely at the mercy of the extremists that put him in power.
Right now, the passage of a dozen spending measures that keep the government fully financed and an increase in the statutory borrowing limit that permits the Treasury Department to raise the national debt ceiling are two of the more important jobs that Congress must complete. Cochrane states that if Congress cannot pass funding legislation or increase the debt ceiling, the government will shut-down and may experience its first-ever default. With McCarthy’s concessions and a slim Republican majority, any hope to complete the tasks above is shrouded in uncertainty. Moreover, he agreed to deliver on his promise that any action taken to raise the cap on borrowing to finance the federal debt would be met with budgetary changes like spending cuts on Social Security and Medicare, which Dems strongly oppose. Abiding by the Hastert Rule, informally established by former GOP speaker J. Dennis Hastert, to never put forth bills which do not have the support of the majority, Republicans may never let bipartisan legislation see the light of day.
Democratic pollster Matt Hogan expresses, “[to] win back the Independents they lost in 2022, Republicans should be embracing bipartisanship and compromise, but instead they are doubling down on the extremism that prevented them from achieving a red wave.” McCarthy’s willingness to surrender to the unbending, hard-right bloc of the GOP demonstrates the shift away from the party establishment to radical, defiant defectors — a gap that has been widening since the Tea Party movement.
In the words of Matt Gaetz, McCarthy’s biggest opponent and the man who forced several concessions on the Speaker, McCarthy is now governing in a straitjacket.
The views in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect the official stances of High School Democrats of America or The Progressive Teen.