Posted on 04/26/2023 8:14:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Let’s start here: House Republican leaders declared repeatedly over the last few days that they wouldn’t change their $4.8 trillion debt-limit package before it hit the floor. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his top lieutenants vowed to muscle the Limit, Save, Grow Act through the chamber without altering the underlying measure.
But late Tuesday night, McCarthy’s leadership crew bent to an uncomfortable reality — the bill needed to be changed, so they changed it.
Following a marathon House Rules Committee meeting that stretched into early this morning, House Republican leaders included an amendment softening a provision that repealed a host of biofuel tax credits. They did that to win over holdout Midwestern Republicans who threatened to sink the bill.
GOP leadership also accelerated implementation of strict work requirements for social safety-net programs to placate hardline conservatives who threatened to oppose the measure.
But they still have to pass their bill on the House floor.
McCarthy can only lose four Republican votes and pass the measure, which he hopes will kick off negotiations with President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders.
The House GOP leadership, which promised regular order and a floor open to amendments, made just one amendment in order: a tweak to the Limit, Save and Grow Act that, among other things, puts in place new work requirements for 2024 instead of 2025. Party leaders had previously said that change was unworkable.
More importantly, McCarthy’s leadership team eliminated the repeal of three biofuel tax credits. For the remaining two — created by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act — the GOP said they didn’t apply to taxpayers who made investment decisions based on the credits.
In addition, the leadership-drafted amendment rescinds funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for green building construction, Energy Department loan guarantees, deferred maintenance for national parks, air pollution for states and municipalities and for a neighborhood access and equity grant program.
These tweaks are aimed at mollifying conservatives and Iowa Republicans, two pockets of resistance McCarthy faced, in order to pass this dead-on-arrival-in-the-Senate debt limit package.
We’ll know more about whether these changes took care of all of the problems inside the GOP conference after their closed-party meeting at 9 a.m. today.
But for everyone confident that the debt-limit dispute will eventually be resolved without a potentially disastrous default, let’s note that Republicans struggled mightily to rally behind a legislative package designed to give McCarthy some leverage in potential talks with Biden.
As of late Tuesday night, the nos were piling up. Genial Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett is a “no,” as is perennial thorn-in-the-side Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) has been non-committal publicly and privately. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) sounds skeptical, as do Reps. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.). Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told reporters she’s “still a no.”
And both GOP and Democratic leaders are also scrambling to head off attendance problems later this week as well.
Gripes from conservatives are nothing new for McCarthy. Remember January? Republican hardliners are known to get everything they want and still bellyache. CBO says this proposal cuts spending by $4.8 trillion over the next decade — which is exactly what conservatives want. But they’re still balking.
The Iowans, generally team players in the House GOP, have been the most difficult pocket to mollify. Party leaders underestimated the mettle of the four-person Iowa delegation and their unwillingness to roll back Democratic-passed tax breaks for the ethanol industry.
The operating theory inside leadership ranks was that Iowa Reps. Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Randy Feenstra were team players, so they’d kowtow to McCarthy when he asked. But the Hawkeye State Republicans, led by Hinson, didn’t back down under pressure from the leadership. In fact, the leadership backed down.
Remember: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is 89 years old. Hinson is 39, Nunn is 43, and Feenstra is 54. All of these House Republicans may be looking at the Senate as a viable next step.
McCarthy and other senior Republicans remain confident that they’ll pass the measure by week’s end. They note today will be the first time in weeks that House GOP lawmakers will all be in the same room.
When McCarthy was asked Tuesday how he’d limit potential GOP no votes, he responded: “The same way we’ve done it every week when you talk to me about every other bill we’re bringing to the floor.”
“I think we’re doing well. I think we’re doing fine,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer insisted on Tuesday night. “It just depends on when the speaker decides he’s ready to go.”
Happening today: McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are hosting a briefing today with MIT Professors Antonio Torralba and Aleksander Madry, experts in AI.
MIT runs an AI program for military officers. McCarthy had them develop a course to educate Congress about AI. “Whatever country captures AI and quantum first has an advantage and China’s not going to slow down,” McCarthy said Tuesday.
McCarthy is planning to have OpenAI’s Sam Altman in to talk to members as well.
MORE HERE:
Update (1026ET): Following a GOP closed-party meeting, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he’s confident that Republicans have enough votes to pass the debt limit bill in a floor vote today.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, dismissed the bill as the “Default On America” (DOA) Act - which of course is true since it will never make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate, much less past President Biden’s desk, in its current form.
* * *
McCarthy’s drafted amendment pulls funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for green building construction, DoE loan guarantees, deferred maintenance for national parks, air pollution for states and municipalities, as well as a neighborhood access and equity grant program.
A debt limit is moot when you just blow through it. We need a debt REDUCTION plan which will require the elimination of about 90% of the federal government.
I'm not sure what the impact would be of a default, but this cycle of endless spending has it's own negative effect on the economy, even if it is at a relatively slow and steady rate.
“McCarthy can only lose four Republican votes and pass the measure, which he hopes will kick off negotiations with President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders.”
And this is why they fail. If the “conservatives” come up with what they want since they control the house, they shouldn’t be negotiating anything. They need to satisfy their party before they worry about the opposition so they will have the continuity needed to satisfy the people that voted them in...as a unit. And this is the major difference with the liberals as they don’t care what a conservative thinks, while they are in power. they are working for their voters and themselves. For the conservatives, there’s nothing to negotiate. Here’s what we want. Don’t like it? Shut down some services you are responsible for providing because you said you were and everyone will know it was your fault for not going with the will of the people.
It’s simple, not negotiable.
wy69
Legislative process is like making sausage. This is an example of that. There is give and take and things happening behind the scenes to try to get legislation passed that’s agreeable to all of the Republicans.
The Republican margin is so narrow that they cannot afford to lose many on legislation.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
I haven't read the bill. But the Constitution predictably sinks the bill.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“If the tax be not proposed for the common defence, or general welfare, but for other objects, wholly extraneous, (as for instance, for propagating Mahometanism among the Turks, or giving aids and subsidies to a foreign nation, to build palaces for its kings, or erect monuments to its heroes,) it would be wholly indefensible upon constitutional principles [emphases added].” — Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2 (1833).
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
Pelosi: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." (non-FR; 6 sec.)
“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves [emphasis added]. It seems to be the law of our general nature.” - Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787)
Democrats Are Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public (3.12.23)
It should never be a problem to primary ALL incumbent lawmakers and the executive of a peacetime, constitutionally very limited power federal government [emphasis added].
There are no true pro-American lawmakers in Congress imo.
It’s all theater. The Republicans want to spend without limits just as much as the Democrats. They just have to pretend that they are being forced to do it, to fool their voter base. “I didn’t want mortgage your grandchildren’s future to enrich myself and my big money donors! The Democrats forced me to do it!!!”
Once again, big money to the Gomers Of Politics win out.
Another vehicle bill that could have been used to force Biden to secure the border if only the House GOP was interested in that. They were only interested before the election.
It's all Kabuki theatre for show, to try to look "conservative" or "Republican".
Also keep in mind these “cuts” are not even cuts. Many of these things were new spending programs that haven’t even occurred. So it’s not cutting at all. It’s just stopping or slowing the growth of the bureaucracy.
The GOP needs to learn how to message that and quit calling it cuts.
If I get $100 per year. Then they pass a budget to give me $200 next year. But then they change it to $150. I’m getting a $50 increase not a $50 cut as the democrats call it. It’s only a cut if my payment goes down more than I make this year. For it to be a cut I’d have to get less than $100.
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