Kevin McCarthy’s speaker deal, explained

After days of negotiations and a failed vote in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy and his GOP House leadership allies have struck a proposed deal with a bloc on the far right that puts him close to becoming speaker.

Although those involved continue to stress that there is a final “agreement” in hand – they call it “framework” – McCarthy presented the offer on Friday night. And through the new round of voting for the speaker on Friday, 15 of the 21 GOP holdouts’ votes swung in favor. If he swings just three of the six remaining recalcitrant Republicans, he will get the support he needs. Some reports suggest he thought it would come when the House reconvenes last Friday night.

So what, exactly, is in the deal – er, framework?

The full proposal was not leaked, however part of it is to haveand from what we know, there appears to be the main three component.

First: McCarthy made promises about how he would approach government-related issues like the appropriations bill and the debt ceiling, and those promises appeared to set the stage for a tense showdown with Democrats.

Second: McCarthy agreed to changes in the House rules that would make it easier to trigger an effective no-confidence vote in his own leadership.

Third: McCarthy agreed to committee assignments demanded by holdouts, including placing Republicans with the hardline Freedom Caucus on the powerful Rules Committee.

This was not all that McCarthy gave – he also made other special promises to certain people personally. But the overall result is that the GOP right will have a say in how McCarthy runs the House, and there will be tense times as they try to tackle the basic tasks of governing.

That must have been the case, and the real question remains if and how the House Republicans manage to climb down and deal with the Democrats to keep the government open and prevent default on the country’s debt.

1) McCarthy’s commitment to the debt ceiling and spending

The framework, or at least what we know, includes McCarthy’s plan for how he and the House GOP will handle the government spending war that will dominate the legislative agenda this year. Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Times get the text from this part of the framework and tweet it in this thread. Important bits include:

Quick debt

At some point this year, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling to prevent a national debt default. Conservatives want to use this must-pass bill as leverage, to force Democrats to accept the spending cuts they want. (This is a strategy the House GOP previously used in the 2011 showdown with President Obama.) Democrats have said this will be hostage-taking, and that they will not negotiate with.

By FerrechioMcCarthy’s offer states: “We will not agree to increase the debt limit there is no discretionary budgetary agreement in line with the House-passed budget resolution or other commensurate fiscal reforms to reduce and cover the growth of spending.”

This is basically a promise to try to drive a hard bargain in the debt ceiling war. McCarthy already said he would do this last October, so it’s nothing new. But it creates a dangerous situation later this year.

Budget

McCarthy committed that House Republicans would create a plan for a balanced federal budget within 10 years, including “long-term reforms” to mandatory spending programs (entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid), as well as limiting discretionary spending wherever possible. during the first fiscal year of the Biden administration.

It would be a dangerous and controversial political effort — it has already sparked headlines suggesting it would cut defense spending by $75 billion from current levels. And any budget, if the House manages to pass one, will be dead by the time it reaches the Democrat-controlled Senate. But Republicans on the right hope it will be a statement of principle and a tough opening offer to negotiate on spending.

discuss the Senate

In recent years, Congress has tended to fund the government until the deadline when the previous funding bill is about to expire – which means shutting down the government – and then passing “continuing resolutions” increasing the status quo funding level for a period or one. massive “omnibus” Bill to finance the entire federal government (as just happened last month). The hawks in the GOP hate this practice, and they want it stopped. But he knows he doesn’t have the unilateral power to do so, because Democrats control the Senate and Biden controls the presidency.

McCarthy’s proposal, that is, the House will not pass a Senate appropriations bill that does not comply with the House’s own budget resolution. That is – he said that the Democrats should meet their demands on the level of spending. Democrats don’t want to do this, so if it stays, it could mean a government shutdown.

Still, again, this should probably be interpreted as what McCarthy told House Republicans he was going to do in the first place, rather than a dead bottom line — although more on that below.

For all of these spending topics, the House GOP will not be formally bound in any way by this framework. So if they feel the political pain of being blamed for a death or potential debt, that promise can go out the window.

2) Making a vote of no confidence in McCarthy’s leadership easier to ask

If McCarthy violates the spending agreement in a way that conservatives don’t like, they will have a way to destroy him.

For most of its history, the House gave one member the power to file a “motion to vacate the seat,” which would force the House to vote on whether to oust the speaker. Hardly people ever used it, but when then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) filed one to try to push out Speaker John Boehner in 2015, it helped contribute to Boehner’s decision to resign. The Democrats then undermined this power when they took over the House in 2019, requiring not just one member but half of the party’s membership to advance this movement.

The Conservatives wanted to reverse this change, but McCarthy initially refused to do so, requiring five members. After losing some of the first speaker’s voice, though, he Surrender and said he would let one member do it.

All this is important because the dynamics of the election of the speaker, as we are now seeing, can greatly influence the stubborn rebels against the party leadership. But once the speaker is elected, the hardliners will lose that influence – unless there is an easy way to force the election of another speaker. Now they have one.

However, there’s a reason almost no one has ever used this in the history of the House – it still takes 218 votes to elect another speaker, and if the majority of House Republicans remain loyal to McCarthy, there will only be gridlock. Also, if McCarthy were to be put in after cutting a deal with the Democrats, it might be possible for the Democrats to save him from a right-wing insurgency.

3) Plum committee task for hard line

Finally, McCarthy offered some sort of committee assignment that the rebels demanded. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who switched from anti-McCarthy to pro-McCarthy vote after the framework in hand was, explained this The issue is “conservative representation” in the House.

The details here still seem to be in flux. But Politico’s Sarah Ferris reported that McCarthy would let the hardliners have three seats on the House Rules Committee.

The Rules Committee is important because it determines what will come to the House floor, when it will be brought up, and how debate and amendments will proceed. In recent decades, it has essentially completed the supply of House speakers – indeed, it is one of the main sources of speaker power through the room.

So handing over some committee seats to brand conservatives who have a penchant for trying and undermining the agenda of party leaders would be a change. According to Ferris, three seats for hardliners would be enough for him to block the legislation from moving to committee (unless Democrats provide their own votes to help pass the bill).

There are rumors of other promises of committee chairs and subcommittee chairs. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), one of the conservative supporters, reportedly wanted to chair the appropriations subcommittee on labor and health and human services, but other Republicans objected. Harris finally supported McCarthy in the speaker’s vote on Friday afternoon, but there is no word on whether a deal has been struck.