McCarthy and Freedom Caucus: Let’s Make A Deal
Rep. Kevin McCarthy admittedly landed an awesome position as Speaker of the House, but at what cost?
Technically, the election for the new Speaker of the House took place in January, but I’m including it in my February section because it set a tone as to how the new House majority might operate.
As most people know, it took 15 ballots before the House GOP finally elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California’s 20th District) as the next Speaker. He needed a majority of voting members to win, which would be 218 if every member voted, but in most of the ballots he earned around 200 votes while a group of about 20 decided to vote for a variety of other candidates.
The group of holdouts was basically made up of the “rightest” members of the right wing in the new House. In extremely short, the group used their votes as leverage to get concessions out of McCarthy as to how the new House would operate. This story from Vox gives a good overview, but here are three key points:
1) McCarthy made promises about how he would approach government-spending-related issues like appropriations bills and the debt ceiling, and those promises appear to set the stage for tense showdowns with Democrats.
2) McCarthy agreed to a change in the House rules that would make it easier to trigger an effective no-confidence vote in his own leadership.
3) McCarthy agreed to committee assignments demanded by the holdouts, including placing Republicans associated with the hardline Freedom Caucus on the powerful Rules Committee.
Personally, I’m most concerned about point number one. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “if the debt limit is not raised or suspended, the government’s ability to issue additional debt—other than to replace maturing securities—will be exhausted between July and September 2023…the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully. As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both.”
Or, readers could just quote me: “This would be bad.”
Leverage to strengthen negotiating positions is as old as the hills in governance. As we saw the House Freedom Caucus use their votes as leverage with McCarthy’s bid for Speaker, expect the new House majority to use the specter of defaulting on national debt as leverage to negotiate federal spending cuts. Stay tuned to see what the consequences of proposed spending cuts might be, but it’s not hard to imagine the new GOP might target things like health care subsidies, spending on Ukraine, or general welfare-state programs that help people in economic trouble live better lives. Again, this would be bad, at least for those most affected.
The point about possible no-confidence votes regarding the new Speaker is also moderately interesting to me. I’ve lived most of my life basically assuming the elected Speaker would hold office for at least two years if not much longer. Needing to replace the Speaker during his/her term would at the bare minimum bring the business of the House to a halt, for another potentially divisive election, complete with deal-making and hardball negotiations.
MTG Flunks Elementary School Stats and Civics
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia’s 14th District and a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, gaffed hard in a February committee hearing.
While questioning Gene Dodaro, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, about issues including federal American Rescue Plan Act allocations, Greene made the following eye-popping assertion:
“I have to tell you in Illinois that they received $5.1 billion at an elementary school there that used it for equity and diversity.”
Minor problem – there was in fact a $5.1 billion sum of money allocated to Illinois, but it certainly did not solely go to “an” elementary school, and this sum was not exclusively for the purpose of equity and diversity.
According to this Politifact story, the money was to be split among 850 school districts, not just one school. Greene was literally incorrect by an off-the-charts factor. The notion that one school would get $5.1 billion in federal aid should have raised a red flag in anybody’s mind. Just for illustration, the Boulder Valley School District had a roughly $425 million budget for this entire year.
A Greene spokesperson said after the fact that she was not talking specifically about “an elementary school,” but nonetheless, that’s what she said in a Congressional hearing, and she was way off-base on several other issues.
The Illinois money was to be used for issues including (paraphrased from Politifact) helping groups of students who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, such as low-income students; tutoring; after-school programs; special education; building improvements; and hiring teachers. In other words, it was for far more than equity and diversity.
Greene also asked Dodaro about Critical Race Theory, and when Dodaro asked what she meant, she served up an “interesting” description:
“It’s a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin is not equal to black skin and other things in education.”
I’m not going to write about what Critical Race Theory actually is here, and readers can Google the issue to their heart’s content, but I will say Greene was grotesquely wrong.
We’ve all become sort of desensitized to Greene’s boorish behavior, but the two-minute video linked below showed real problems. Either she literally didn’t know what she was talking about, or she didn’t put even a minimal effort into research before her hearing, or she has a willingness to lie on the record and put messaging out to anyone willing to believe or repeat total falsehoods. None of these attributes are good for a member of Congress.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVwLKkxSVSc
Rep. Angie Craig Assaulted
U.S. Rep. Angie Craig
Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat representing Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, was assaulted in Washington D.C. in early February 2023. Fortunately, she suffered only relatively minor injuries, and was able to fight off her assailant, partially by throwing hot coffee at the attacker.
A quote from a Craig staffer in “The Hill” story linked here said the attack did not seem to be politically motivated, but the attacker had not been arrested as of at least Feb. 9.
Unfortunately predictably, Craig’s office also received a number of “politically violent and vulgar messages” in the wake of her attack, according to CBS News.
Meanwhile, two city council members from New Jersey were shot and killed, in separate incidents, in the weeks preceding Craig’s attack. The murdered members were both Republicans.
Whether Craig’s attack was politically motivated or random, violence or threats of violence against public officials is a too-serious threat in our modern times. I don’t have an answer as to how to dial the threats and actual violence back, but it’s something we need to do if we hope to remain a civilized society.
The AR-15: Bigger Than America?
The AR-15: Your national weapon?
In early February 2023, at least a few Republican members of Congress took to wearing lapel pins in the shape of an AR-15 rifle, when normally they would probably wear American flag lapel pins.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Georgia’s 9th District and the owner of Clyde Armory in Athens, distributed the pins to members of Congress willing to wear them. At the bare minimum, Reps. George Santos (R-New York’s 3rd District) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida’s 13th District ) were seen wearing the pins.
Meanwhile, Rep. Barry Moore (R-Alabama’s 2nd District) introduced a bill in Congress to honor the AR-15. Co-sponsored by the aforementioned Reps. Clyde, Santos, Greene, and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, HR 1095 was as introduced a very short piece of legislation simply declaring the AR-15 the National Gun of the United States.
As of mid-March, the bill had been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability – of which Greene, Boebert, and Luna are members – but had not been taken to a vote.
Ukraine Can Fend For Itself Resolution
The damage resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a humanitarian catastrophe – but somehow we’ve got an active resolution in Congress to end U.S. support.
In early February, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida’s 1st District) introduced House Resolution 113, which if passed would in short express the House’s majority position “that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement.” Again, the list of co-sponsors included the aforementioned Reps. Greene, Boebert, Moore, and Luna.
Titled the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution,” the roughly 9-page text gave an outline of what the U.S. and its allies had spent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as a list of types of armaments and equipment delivered to Ukraine, casualty and refugee statistics, and potential future shortfalls in U.S. military equipment stockpiles due to supplying hard goods to Ukraine.
I found reading the resolution interesting to quickly get some perspective about the U.S. contributions to Ukraine. However, I’m definitely by no means suggesting my support for the resolution. The Russian invasion has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including combatants from both sides and civilians, and has caused incredible damage to infrastructure and the social fabric of Ukraine. It’s troubling to me to see members of our Congress suggesting withdrawing our support for a nation that’s experiencing such a horrific and brutal military action, but welcome to the 118th Congress!
As of mid-March, the resolution had been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and had not received a vote.
Expel Santos Resolution Introduced
U.S. Rep. George Santos, I hope
We’ve all heard too much about the lyin’ antics of Rep. George Santos (R-NY3), but it’s important to consider if the nation actually needs to put up with it. In other words, these are strange times, but are they really THAT strange?
There are only a few ways by which a member of Congress can leave office before the end of a term. Santos could resign, but that ain’t gonna happen. Also, the House itself can legally expel members, but only by a 2/3 vote.
In early February, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California’s 42nd District) filed a resolution to expel Santos, co-sponsored by at least 39 other Democrats. There does not seem to be much public Republican support for removing Santos by expulsion – but it’s early in his term. House Resolution 114, linked here, was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Ethics, but it had not been taken to a vote as of mid-March.
Narrow GOP Majority: Can It Change in 2024?
The current 222-213 GOP House majority accurately looks like a nine-seat edge, but all Democrats would have to do to flip the majority in 2024 would be to win a net of five new seats. This is a much closer balance than it looks at a quick glance.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado only won her 2022 re-election bid by about 550 votes!
In early February, The New Republic reported that Dems might have been able to keep the majority had they captured a total of 6,675 additional votes, spread over just five House districts. One of the closest races in the nation went down right here in Colorado’s 3rd District, recently a fairly dependable Republican stronghold, as Boebert defeated challenger Adam Frisch by only 546 votes. But Dems also lost a winnable race in California’s 13th District by 564 votes, in a district rated by the Cook Political Report as favoring Dems by four percentage points (“D + 4”).
There will probably always be some sentiment among voters that “my vote doesn’t matter,” and voter turnout for midterm elections like 2022 tends to be lower than turnout in Presidential election years. But according to The New Republic, the 6,675 votes represented about 0.006 percent of the more than 107 million votes cast in House races!
People, we’ve got to do better in 2024, unless we really like a Congress having the potential for passing AR-15 glorification bills or letting a brutal Russian invasion slide. ‘Nuff said for now.
