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Continuing his desperate quest to line up the votes to become speaker of the House after two days fell short, Kevin McCarthy offered new concessions to rebel Republicans Wednesday night – and may offer more, according to Politico and the Washington Post.
So far, no deal has been reached, as the seventh failed vote in the House Thursday afternoon has proven. But some of the holdouts have spoken positively about the continued negotiations, in what is basically the first good news for McCarthy’s prospects all week. Although the bad news continues, some apart holdouts insisted that they would not support him. McCarthy must win over 16 of the 20 Republican rebels to be elected speaker, and it is not clear how many of the objectors are truly motivated by procedural complaints rather than a simple desire to derail the basic work of Congress.
Substantially, McCarthy’s concessions fall on a spectrum from insignificant to potentially quite significant. But they all share a common theme: They’ll make it harder for him to run the House the way he wants, and maybe even harder for Republicans. Here are some of them.
1) The trigger is easy to vote no confidence in McCarthy’s leadership
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. And for most of its history, no one used it (except Republican Speaker Joseph Cannon, who proposed himself in 1910 for procedural reasons). But in 2015, then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) proposed one to try to push out Speaker John Boehner, and although it never came to a vote, it was one of the factors that spurred Boehner’s resignation in the year.
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. But Wednesday night, per Politico, he gave up and said he would allow one member to do so.
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. With a full House vote and intense internal pressure to seek Democratic votes (which he didn’t offer), McCarthy needed 218 of 222 Republicans to win the speakership, leaving five Republicans to block him. 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.
That’s why many compared this concession to McCarthy offering hardliners a gun aimed at their own heads. He cannot rule as he pleases; he would have to keep appeasing 218 of the 222 House Republicans or just five of them could pass a motion to vacate the seat and take us back to endless Groundhog Day speaker elections. The implication here is that if McCarthy cuts a deal with Democrats to fund the government or raise the debt ceiling that even some conservatives hate, he has the power to impeach him.
However, there is a reason almost no one has ever used this in the history of the House of Representatives – it still takes 218 votes to elect someone else’s speaker. 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.
2) Controversial conservative bills can get a floor vote
According to the Washington Post, on Wednesday McCarthy “released a floor vote to impose term limits on members and implement certain border policy legislation,” which some of the bloc demanded.
This is really not a big deal. It shows the votes that, if they pass the House, will die when they come to the Senate.
Now, McCarthy prefers to avoid the vote because it could make the re-election of vulnerable members — and thus holding the House — a bit more difficult. Republicans in districts won by Biden may prefer not to have to vote on a draconian immigration bill, while “no” could pose a primary challenge and “yes” could alienate general election voters. And the term limit bill opens up a hypocritical attack on members who stay longer than the proposed limit. However, this probably won’t be a problem.
3) Open the allocation process
Congress funds the federal government by passing appropriations bills, and if they don’t do it right, the government shuts down. In theory, there should be 12 separate appropriations bills created to cover different government departments and elected separately. But the most common recent practice in both parties is to let Congress run up to a deadline, extend the deadline one or more times through “continuing resolutions” to keep the government open at status quo funding levels, and then pass a massive “omnibus.” ” funding bills entirely (as was the case last month).
Conservatives who want bigger cuts to government spending have long been concerned about how to hate the omnibus process, and, per the Politico Playbook, here’s what McCarthy could win:
The brewing deal includes a promise for an independent vote on each of the 12 annual appropriations bills, which will be considered under so-called “open rules,” allowing floor amendments to be offered by lawmakers.
In theory, this would be a big deal and a dramatic change in the way Congress is dissolved. In practice, the main effect will probably be to create a prolonged government shutdown or at least some resolution that continues to maintain the status quo.
Assembling and passing 12 appropriations bills through the House will be extremely difficult and time-consuming under the best of circumstances. If the goal is to get 218 out of 222 Republicans to agree to a government funding bill, that will be more difficult. If it is possible to pass such a bill, it will likely be a conservative one. And more amendments make the situation more chaotic. But then an agreement must be reached with the Democratic-controlled Senate as well before it can be sent to President Biden’s desk for his signature. And remember, all of this must be done by September 30 or otherwise there is no government.
So what happens when that deadline hits and the work isn’t done? An ongoing resolution is the typical answer, maintaining the status quo while work and negotiations continue. But House conservatives may not do that and prefer a dead war.
4) A separate vote on earmarks
Republicans have also struggled with internal psychodrama over earmarks (special projects requested by individual members of Congress and included in larger spending bills). It has usually proven quite useful for congressional leaders trying to get votes on, say, various appropriations bills. But some of these projects seem absurd, unnecessary, or corrupt, and the last time the GOP took the House from the Democrats, in 2011, they banned earmarks, after endlessly decrying them in the midterms campaign.
But in 2021, House Republicans voted to let their members ask for earmarks again (because the Democrat-controlled House had brought them back). And after the midterms, last November, the Republicans voted in an internal meeting to keep the earmarks around, 158 to 52. The anti-earmark fever has clearly broken in the post-Trump era.
Still, some staunch opponents of the practice remain in the House GOP. And on Wednesday, according to Politico, McCarthy made “concessions to carve out signs that are included in the [appropriations] packages for separate votes, although it is not clear if they will be selected as one package or separately. The changes could also make appropriations bills more difficult to pass.
5) Adding Freedom Caucus members to the House Rules Committee
The Rules Committee 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. But per Politico, McCarthy is “ready” to give the Freedom Caucus (the main organizing body on the right in the House) two seats. in the Rules Committee.
Now, in the previous Congress, in the majority of the same size, the Democrats gave the party nine seats on the Rules Committee, and the Republicans four seats. So if McCarthy sticks to that math, giving Republican hardliners two seats Rule may not be a big problem – they can not block anything even if they are united with the minority, since the vote will be 7-6. However, according to Politico, “there is talk” of giving the third seat to another right-aligned member. If he agrees, McCarthy may have ceded control of one of his most powerful speaker tools to hardliners.
6) Give outside groups free rein in open primaries
Conservative activists have long resented the tendency of party leaders to try to support candidates they consider more “electable” — who are often more mainstream or moderate — in Republican primaries. In addition, party leaders have long resented the tendency of conservative activists to support extreme or controversial GOP primary candidates who then risk losing the general election.
It was interesting news Wednesday night that the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that has long squabbled with GOP leaders over the primacy, announced an agreement with the Congressional Leadership Fund, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC. McCarthy’s allies pledged in a statement that he “will not throw in the primaries who are running for seats in safe Republican districts.”
Basically, this is a concession to the right that they will have free rein to support whoever they want in the contest without the establishment participating (although the super PAC can still spend to support the incumbent or the candidate they like in the primary swing district) .
But safe seats can become competitive if the GOP nominee is too extreme or controversial, as Roy Moore found in the 2017 Alabama Senate special election. new. So this could hurt McCarthy’s chances of retaining a slim margin in the House in 2024 at least. They just don’t have many seats to lose.
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