McCarthy Needs Scapegoats For His Catastrophic Speakership-- Which Gets Worse By The Day

His Deal With The Fascists Is Coming Home To Roost

Based on a new poll the AP commissioned, Amanda Seitz and Hannah Fingerhut reported that most Americans oppose proposals by conservatives that would cut into Medicare or Social Security benefits, and a majority support raising taxes on the wealthy to keep Medicare running as is. “Few Americans,” they wrote, “would be OK with some ways politicians have suggested to shore up the programs: 79% say they oppose reducing the size of Social Security benefits and 67% are against raising monthly premiums for Medicare… Instead, a majority— 58%— support the idea of increasing taxes on households making over $400,000 yearly to pay for Medicare,” which is what Biden proposed last month… Some Republicans, however, have floated the idea of raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to keep the programs flush. But a majority of Americans overwhelmingly reject that, too. Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose raising the eligibility age for Social Security benefits from 67 to 70, and 7 in 10 oppose raising the eligibility age for Medicare benefits from 65 to 67. U.S. lawmakers who support raising the eligibility to keep those programs afloat may have been given a preview of the difficult road ahead in France, where the president’s proposal to increase the country’s pension retirement age from 62 to 64 has been met with violence and demonstrations by 1 million people.

This is beyond what Kevin McCarthy and his fractured tiny House majority can deal with. CNN reported that “With little room for error in their razor-thin majority, Republicans have so far struggled to deliver on key priorities like the border and the budget amid their internal divisions… [T]he party’s more vulnerable members are frustrated with how the House Republican majority has so far spent its time in power, which has also included a heavy focus on investigations and running defense for Trump.”

“I’m concerned about the kind of legislation that we’re working on, and what we’re talking about,” Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who represents a swing district, told CNN. “We just spent the last week talking about paying off porn stars, and that doesn’t get us anywhere closer to solving the inflation crisis, it doesn’t inch further to finding ways to protect women. … I’ve been very disappointed with what we’re doing right now.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, a moderate and outspoken critic of the GOP’s hardline border security bills, was even blunter: “I don’t have time to sit around all day long and drink scotch and bullshit about bills that have no chance of passing into law.”

…[T]he biggest hurdles are yet to come, with Congress gearing up to deal with must-pass items like lifting the nation’s debt ceiling and funding the government– two politically tricky issues with incredibly high stakes. And while GOP lawmakers say they are generally experiencing a honeymoon phase right now, the anxiety over the challenges ahead was palpable in interviews with over two dozen Republican members for this story.

In a sign of how difficult things could get for GOP leaders, members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus are already talking about the cudgels they have at their disposal to use in those upcoming fights– namely, the power of any single member to force a floor vote on ousting the speaker. Restoring the procedural tool, known as the “motion to vacate,” was one of the key concessions Kevin McCarthy made in his bid to become speaker.

“It hasn’t come up as far as in a serious conversation, as this needs to be enacted. But as we look at these issues… It does come up from time to time, as we game plan and we look at all of the alternatives and contingency plans that could play out over the next two years,” said freshman Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, one of the McCarthy holdouts who ended up voting “present” on the last ballot.

Lawmakers have largely attributed the House GOP’s slow start to the historic, drawn-out speaker’s battle that delayed their ability to organize committees.

But there are other reasons: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise initially promised to put 11 bills on the floor within their first two weeks in office, but leadership was forced to pull five of them– including legislation on hot-button topics like border security, law enforcement and abortion– amid resistance within their ranks.

House Republicans also promised to produce a 10-year budget, but have struggled behind the scenes to find consensus and are now discussing delaying– or even skipping– a budget in order to focus on a bill to combine hiking the debt ceiling with spending cuts.

McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes on any partisan bills. And he made a number of promises to secure his speakership that have complicated his ability to govern, such as vowing a more open amendment process that allows any member to alter legislation on the floor.

While many lawmakers welcomed this addition to the legislative process, some have expressed concern that it could sink otherwise bipartisan pieces of legislation.

“I’ve got mixed feelings,” GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Biden-won district in Nebraska, told CNN. “On the positive side, it gets more people involved. They feel like they have a voice. That’s good. I think, too, though, on the downside, it’s taking some of our bills that should be more bipartisan, but through the amendment process is made more partisan.”

Frustrated, McCarthy is blaming everyone but himself, but especially his chief deputy, Steve Scalise, the Majority Leader, and Budget Committee Chairman, Jodey Arrington (TX), who he hates and considers incompetent (and disloyal). Jonathan Swan and Annie Karine reported that “McCarthy has told colleagues he has no confidence in Arrington, the man responsible for delivering a budget framework laying out the spending cuts that Republicans have said they will demand in exchange for any move to increase the debt limit… After Arrington told reporters he was preparing a ‘term sheet’ detailing a formal list of spending cuts Republicans would demand from the White House in exchange for their support in raising the debt ceiling, McCarthy publicly undercut him, telling reporters, ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about.’… The flap reflected the difficulty that Republicans have had in coalescing behind a fiscal strategy that lines up with the many promises McCarthy made to the hard right to obtain his job and also has the votes to pass a House where they have a minuscule majority. Their promises of balancing the federal budget in 10 years have gone by the wayside, a budget plan has yet to materialize, and they cannot agree on what spending cuts to demand in exchange for raising the debt limit. Privately, McCarthy has laid the problems at Arrington’s feet, mocking his television interviews as unhelpful and venting that he floated dates for rolling out a budget long before Republicans had agreed on the substance of what would be in it.”

McCarthy has told colleagues and allies that he cannot rely on Scalise, describing the majority leader as ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take a position on anything, according to three Republican lawmakers with direct knowledge of his private comments who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss them.

… For now, McCarthy has been able to hold his conference together, mostly around agenda items that have little chance of passage in a Democratic-controlled Senate. He has courted the hard right and maintained an approval rating among Republican voters that is nearly double that of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.

But McCarthy has had to hold off on trickier endeavors that divide Republicans, including an immigration overhaul and the drafting of a budget measure. He has told allies he does not want to present Biden with a budget that the president would be able to attack. Instead, the speaker wants to first try to pass a separate bill through the House that would raise the debt ceiling for a limited period in exchange for spending cuts.

McCarthy floated several broad categories for spending reductions in a letter to Biden last month but has not detailed specific cuts or the extent to which he would be willing to lift the debt limit. He has acknowledged privately the challenge of getting the necessary 218 votes to pass such a bill.

As he tries to navigate the fissures in his party, McCarthy is circumventing Arrington and empowering loyalists like Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana, whom he credits with helping to deliver him the speaker’s gavel.

McCarthy has asked Graves to lead debt ceiling negotiations on his behalf. Graves has been steering meetings of the so-called five families in the House Republican conference— a reference to the five warring crime families in the film The Godfather that reflects the level of feuding in the GOP— to forge an agreement on a package of spending cuts and economic growth policies that could be wrapped into a debt limit bill.

And instead of relying on his official leadership team— with the exception of Emmer— McCarthy has turned to allies who helped him win the speakership for his most sensitive assignments and advice. That inner circle includes Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, a longtime ally; Representative French Hill of Arkansas, a former banker; Representative Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, a lawyer whom McCarthy trusts on legal issues; and Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

It remains to be seen whether they can help bail McCarthy out of an increasingly dire negotiation.

“I’m always an optimist,” McCarthy told CNBC last week of the stalled debt ceiling talks. “I’m not now.

Yesterday, Rachel Bade wrote that “Conversations with more than a half-dozen senior Republican lawmakers and aides revealed some additional context on the Mean Girls drama playing out in McCarthy’s leadership circle: There’s a reason McCarthy is singling out Arrington and Scalise, and it’s about more than just disagreements over policy or strategy. People close to McCarthy tell us that he perceives both men as disloyal— and he’s known to hold a grudge… Republicans we spoke to found McCarthy’s lack of pushback on the Times story to be quite conspicuous. McCarthy, they note, rarely speaks ill of his members in meetings, and if he does, it rarely leaks. His paltry response did not go unnoticed. ‘He made a bunch of promises during the speaker race that were always untenable, but he made them anyway,’ one senior Republican said. ‘At a certain point, a lot of that stuff is going to collide, and he’s getting nervous and looking for others to blame.’ Senior Republicans always knew that passing a budget with a slim majority was going to be difficult. But the interesting part of all this palace intrigue is that it’s not factions inside the rank and file causing the problems; it’s McCarthy’s own leadership team that’s in disarray. That doesn’t bode well for House Republicans’ budget efforts— or their bid to extract concessions from Biden on the debt ceiling. And without a unified GOP front, Democrats won’t take Republican demands for spending cuts seriously."