Kevin McCarthy Is Having His Moment. It May Be Short-lived.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy addresses the Knesset, May 1, 2023. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem / Jerusalem Post

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is all over my news feed. But is that a good thing? It’s certainly a bit head-spinning.

McCarthy is fresh off a win in the House, having recently squeaked through a debt ceiling bill that ties huge federal spending cuts to raising the borrowing limit of the U.S. Treasury. Flushed with new-found confidence, McCarthy also flexed for international audiences on Ukraine, stunning many by berating a Russian reporter who had assumed McCarthy was opposed to further Ukraine aid (as he has indicated consistently in the past). McCarthy declared that, now, he fully supports aid to the country.

But for all his confidence and bravado over the past few days, McCarthy remains in a very tight spot, and he appears still not to understand how much the far-right owns him. The next months may prove a big wake-up call for the Speaker as he attempts to get hard-line Republicans on board with raising the debt ceiling and providing billions in Ukrainian aid that he rather suddenly favors.

Let’s break these two things down.

The House debt ceiling bill solves one problem for him but creates another

McCarthy is feeling great, at least in the moment. A little over three months ago, he was quite stuck. It took a humiliating 15 rounds of balloting for him to secure his place as Speaker of the House. He ultimately got his wish, but as in all fairy tales, it came with two big costs. 

First, he agreed to use the debt ceiling bill to press the extreme demands of far-right members. And second, he agreed that any single member could now call for a vote to take him out as Speaker. These will both wind up being very important, so put them in your mental notebook for now. And bear with me, because this part of the story is rather involved. Here we go:

McCarthy went to work on the debt ceiling bill, but Biden responded, as he should, that there must be a clean debt ceiling raise so that the nation would not risk default and ensuing global financial ruin. In Biden’s view, budget proposals could and should wait till the actual budget talks, while the debt ceiling should be raised as a matter of course because it’s for debts already incurred. And America always pays its debts. 

Biden also pointed out that the GOP had no actual proposal on the table to even talk about. That’s why McCarthy believed he needed to get Biden to the “negotiating table” with some kind of bill supported by at least half of the House, meaning at most only four GOP defections. Without an agreed-upon bill from the GOP, McCarthy argued to his caucus, all the pressure would remain on him instead of the Democrats. 

The bill that emerged—the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023—was one that enough of the GOP radicals could accept, just barely, with less extreme factions sidelined once again in the name of party unity. The bill guts spending on veterans benefits, Medicaid and food assistance, to name a few areas, while backing the petroleum industry, unwinding just-passed climate change action and slashing IRS enforcement against wealthy tax cheats.

But for McCarthy, a win is a win. “You’ve underestimated us,” he crowed after the measure passed by a nose. To the vote counters, it was indeed something of a dice roll. A handful of his own members still voted no, so McCarthy only got 217 votes—with the measure only passing because of two Democratic absences.

The close vote matters, and it will likely have major consequences later this month when the Democrats presumably present their own debt ceiling position. After all, if this is the only version of the bill that could garner even a razor-thin GOP majority, what will happen when McCarthy needs to compromise on it, even a little bit? That already shaky support will likely fall away. 

For example, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who held his nose and voted in favor of the House bill, has already indicated he will not support any bill that doesn’t offer up at least as many cuts as the version that passed the House. But in practice that means no wiggle room at all—and this fifth GOP vote against any compromise bill would be enough to sink it.

But the bill is still an official proposal from the House, so a fair question now is, shouldn’t Biden sit down now to hammer out a deal? One way to look at this, with which I agree, comes courtesy of Josh Marshall of the Talking Points Memo. Marshall reminds us that McCarthy is holding the economy hostage in exchange for a set of ludicrous demands. He warns,

But you will hear lots of reporters say that since Kevin McCarthy has now sent out a list of demands from the bank vault where he’s holding the hostages that he’s done the responsible thing and Joe Biden must negotiate with him because McCarthy is acting in “good faith.” There’s no such thing as good faith hostage taking. There’s no responsible way to engage in parliamentary terrorism.

That’s correct, but still anxiety-producing. So how is this likely to go?

Let’s be very clear. The bill is already dead on arrival in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has dubbed it the “Default on America—DOA” bill. Instead, Schumer announced that the Senate will hold hearings on the bill to expose how damaging it would be to so many of our most vulnerable citizens. 

President Biden also blasted the bill, urging McCarthy to take the threat of an unprecedented default “off the table” and calling it “totally irresponsible.” He has called for congressional leaders—Majority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with Speaker McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—to meet at the White House on May 9 to discuss the debt ceiling limit. (The meeting is next week because Congress is in recess this week.) 

“President Biden will stress that Congress must take action to avoid default without conditions and invited the four leaders to the White House to discuss the urgency of preventing default, as well as how to initiate a separate process to address the budget and fiscal year 2024 appropriations,” a White House official said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin also wrote a letter to McCarthy urging him to raise the debt ceiling and warning that the U.S., for the first time in its history, would be unable to pay its debts “as early as June 1”—giving very little time for Congress to act. This is particularly true because the House has only 12 legislative work days in May to produce a bill. Yellen also made clear that delaying a decision to the final moment will hurt everyone. “We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen warned.

The Senate will likely present its own bill to raise the debt ceiling, and the main question is what else will Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (I-AZ) demand be included. The Senate ultimately could present its own bill that promises, for example, to address future federal spending and the deficit in the budget talks. 

But any debt ceiling raise that doesn’t adopt the deep spending cuts pushed by the far-right extremists isn’t likely to win 218 GOP votes. There are already 19 members of the House GOP who have never voted for a debt ceiling increase as a matter of principle.

That only leaves two apparent avenues for McCarthy. If he ultimately agrees to a compromise, then it is very likely someone within the Freedom Caucus will move to vacate the chair for that betrayal, and McCarthy will be removed as Speaker. But if he refuses to compromise, he will drive the global economy off a cliff. 

To prevent the latter from happening, one possibility is for the bipartisan, 64-member “Problem Solvers” caucus to step up with its own back-up proposal. Its “proposed debt ceiling framework” would suspend the debt limit until December 31 in order “to remove immediate pressure of defaulting on our national debt.” This would give lawmakers time to finish a budget for fiscal year 2024. It would create an external commission to recommend a package of measures that would stabilize deficits and debt over time.

But some caveats are in order here. Extremists in the GOP likely would fight adoption of this bipartisan move with every parliamentary means at their disposal, meaning it might not ever get past the extremist-dominated Rules Committee. This could eventually lead to a battle for new leadership, especially if there is a vote to remove McCarthy. In such a scenario, the Problem Solvers could in theory gain the cooperation of the House Democrats to elect a new, more moderate Speaker—one willing to raise the debt ceiling based on a compromise hashed out between the parties. But all that is highly speculative.

Also, it isn’t at all clear that there is enough time for any “back-up” solution to happen before the nation defaults. My current bet is that, should the two sides fail to reach agreement, the White House would have to step in to prevent global catastrophe, perhaps, as I wrote about before, by invoking Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment. That section states,

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

There’s a fair question whether this is really something the Executive legally can invoke to get around the congressional purse holders. But while that gets sorted out by the courts, the House leadership could get sorted out by the sane members still remaining in it. It’s chaos, but it’s less chaos than a default.

With all this said, none of it looks very good for McCarthy in the end. I’m not underestimating him; I’m just looking at the facts as they stand.

Wait, so now he’s FOR Ukrainian aid?

The Ukrainian people had watched the midterm elections in the U.S. with more interest than most Americans. Should the GOP come to power, as expected, it could mean the end to the economic and military aid that has kept their hopes, and their war of resistance against Russia, alive.

After all, McCarthy came into office promising no more blank checks for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and then promptly got very cozy with Russian mouthpiece Tucker Carlson, to whom he later gave exclusive access to the January 6 footage. That had many in Kyiv very worried. Without bipartisan U.S. support for more funds and weapons, it wasn’t clear how long the embattled Ukrainian forces could hold out against a much larger Russian enemy.

Something changed on Monday, but it’s not entirely clear why. McCarthy is currently on a foreign jaunt and spoke to reporters yesterday in Israel. He stunned many in the room by rebuking a Russian reporter who asked him about Ukraine. “We know that you don’t support the current unlimited and uncontrolled supplies of weaponry and aid to Ukraine,” the reporter began, correctly based on McCarthy’s past statements.

“Did he say I don’t support aid to Ukraine?” McCarthy asked. “No, I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine.” McCarthy then delivered his most startling statement. “I do not support your killing of the children, either. And I think…you should pull out. And I don’t think it’s right. And we will continue to support, because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.” 

One theory behind this sudden shift is that Tucker Carlson, Russia’s primary drip line to the MAGA base in the U.S., is now gone from Fox. Without the fear that Carlson might berate McCarthy publicly before his millions of viewers, the Speaker may have felt emboldened to speak out in favor of continued Ukrainian aid. McCarthy may also have been aware that the Murdochs, who own the network, held private conversations with Zelenskyy earlier this spring, before Carlson’s firing, and that no other remaining hosts on the network appear to share Carlson’s staunchly pro-Russian views.

Another theory is that McCarthy, who earlier declined to even meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had a change of heart after finally speaking with him by phone last month. Zelenskyy is known to be highly persuasive as an advocate for his country.

The real question for McCarthy, however, is that he may not be able to deliver the Ukrainian aid that he claims he now favors. The question will arise later this summer as aid to Ukraine comes up for renewal. McCarthy may not be able to get billions of dollars of new aid through, at least not without enlisting the help of the Democrats. But again, such a move could topple him as Speaker. 

Both the debt ceiling and the Ukraine issue prove that McCarthy has very little room for maneuvering without someone to his right pulling him to a more extreme position, on pain of him being fired. If McCarthy can actually get a debt ceiling raise through the House and then renew Ukrainian aid later this summer, all without losing his job, I will be the first to say that we have underestimated him.

My current guess is that he will be gone, because that is one thin tightrope to walk without falling off. Best of luck to him. And because the global economy hinges on him getting something done, best of luck to all of us.

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