It should surprise no one that, in today’s Washington, a deal sometimes is not a deal.
Especially when it involves the House Republicans, who seem more interested in scoring political points with their supporters and justifying former President Donald Trump than in being serious legislators.
Their first victim was the second part of the bipartisan deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden that prevented a catastrophic government default.
The first part of their agreement, approved quickly by large majorities in both the House and Senate, extended the federal debt ceiling past the next election into 2025, ensuring the government wouldn’t default on its credit obligations.
But the second part, setting two-year parameters for curbing government spending to prevent a year-end governmental shutdown, had barely been passed when both Senate and House Republicans began to punch holes in it, reviving the prospect of the crisis that both leaders hoped to avoid.
Hawkish Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, vowed to add funds to the $886 billion the agreement provided for defense, much of it to help embattled Ukraine. Being senators, that will probably prove negotiable.
More seriously, the same far-right House Republicans who opposed the original deal – and McCarthy’s speakership – said they’d oppose any funding bills that don’t cut overall spending by 2%, more than the debt ceiling bill specified. They took that stand knowing that Democratic control of the Senate would make it impossible to achieve.
Their demands – and the leverage they hold because of the GOP’s bare five-vote House margin – forced McCarthy and other GOP leaders to renege on the spending levels to which they had agreed.
As a result, the likelihood that the Biden-McCarthy agreement would prevent a government shutdown this fall has become an unlikelihood. Agreement on spending levels will probably prove impossible by the start of the new fiscal year Oct. 1 – and possibly even by the end of 2023.
The underlying problem, of course, is that McCarthy, despite his success in helping pass the debt ceiling measure, again seems mainly able to control his fractious majority by acquiescing in such demands.
Indeed, events in the week before the House mercifully adjourned for a two-week “district work period” showed again that its de facto leader is not Kevin McCarthy, but Trump.
Look at the events of the week:
– It censured Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, claiming he “purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people” by contending “there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.”
The resolution, by Trumpist newcomer Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, ignored the evidence of Russian collusion found by special counsel Robert Mueller and in an extensively detailed bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee – under Republican leadership.
– It considered and then sidetracked – but only temporarily – Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s resolution impeaching Biden for “high crimes and misdemeanors” for failing “to uphold Federal immigration law” and acting “in a manner grossly incompatible with the rule of law and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
In essence, it elevated disapproval of Biden’s immigration policies into an allegation of a constitutional violation – ironically at a time his policies are beginning to work. The move – and similar ones aimed at other officials – are widely seen as political retaliation for the two Trump impeachments the Democrats voted in the prior House.
McCarthy may find it hard to prevent the Biden impeachment from returning to the floor later, if indeed he wants to.
–The No. 3 GOP leader, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, joined one of its most extreme members, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in sponsoring measures to “expunge” the record of Trump’s two impeachments, as if that will make them go away.
McCarthy supported them, incorrectly contending that Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden “was not based on true facts” and alleging that the one accusing him of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was undertaken with “no due process.”
And Punchbowl News reported Monday that McCarthy plans to start impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Merrick Garland if House Republicans are dissatisfied with his handling of the Hunter Biden case.
The common thread here is a Republican political effort to tar Biden and the Democrats – without evidence – with the same sorts of misdeeds for which Trump was impeached and now faces criminal charges.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she accused the Republicans of turning the House into a Trump-led “puppet show.”
The week also showed the contrast between McCarthy’s speakership and Pelosi’s. She too had to run the House with a tiny majority and faced occasional uprisings from her party’s fringe.
When her prospective speakership was imperiled at the outset, she adeptly picked off her opponents one by one until she had enough votes. When Houston Rep. Al Green prematurely sought to impeach Trump, she allowed a vote and made sure it was defeated.
McCarthy yielded to demands by foes of his speakership. As a result, he remains beholden to the GOP’s most extreme Trumpist elements, subject to a vote to topple his speakership if he crosses them.
Polls over the years have shown Republican prefer officials who stand up for their principles, rather than compromisers. The result is the current House GOP majority.
