CONGRESS
McCarthy relents on key conservative demand — but
uncertainty remains over speaker bid
The proposed tweak to the House’s no-confidence vote
could present a serious threat to McCarthy as his conference takes power this
week.
By SARAH
FERRIS and OLIVIA BEAVERS
01/01/2023
07:32 PM EST
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/01/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-vote-00076002
Kevin
McCarthy has made perhaps his biggest concession so far to the band of
conservatives standing in the way of his path to speaker. Yet it’s not clear if
it will be enough to clinch his gavel.
In a
lengthy conference call on Sunday, McCarthy and his team informed members that
he would lower the barriers for rank-and-file members to attempt to depose a
sitting speaker, a change that some GOP lawmakers have warned could weaken
their leadership team. If adopted, the new rule would allow five members of the
House majority to force a vote of no-confidence in their leader — a long-time
demand of the party’s right flank.
That tweak
is part of a broad slate of GOP rule changes that McCarthy’s leadership team
unveiled Sunday night. Approving new rules will be one of the first acts of the
GOP’s majority later this week. But first Republicans have to elect a speaker —
and McCarthy’s slim margin for error has emboldened many conservatives in their
push for reforms.
“The simple
fact is that Congress is broken and needs to change,” McCarthy wrote in a
letter to his members, citing party leaders’ increasingly centralized power
that has “relegated members of both parties to the sidelines, with mammoth
bills being drafted behind closed doors and rushed to the floor at the last
minute for an up-or-down, take it or leave it vote.”
The 55
pages of proposed rules are highly procedural, yet critical to the inner
workings of the House. They would, for instance, govern how party leaders bring
bills to the floor and how to ensure transparency around what those bills
include. But the biggest focus for Republicans lately has been the so-called motion
to vacate — the same tool that conservatives effectively used to topple former
Speaker John Boehner in 2015. And it could be a serious threat to McCarthy as
his conference takes power this week with one of the slimmest margins in House
history.
It wasn’t
the only ominous sign for McCarthy on Sunday: A group of nine conservatives who
haven’t said how they plan to vote on Jan. 3 released a missive stating they
remained unsatisfied by McCarthy’s answers to their demands from last month.
“Despite
some progress achieved, Mr. McCarthy’s statement comes almost impossibly late
to address continued deficiencies ahead of the opening of the 118th Congress on
January 3rd,” the group, led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), wrote.
The group
added that McCarthy’s response, which was delivered to them on Saturday, was
“missing specific commitments with respect to virtually every component of our
entreaties,” though they said some of the progress has been “helpful.”
Those
noncommittal members, many of whom belong to the House Freedom Caucus, are in
addition to several other prominent McCarthy skeptics in the GOP — underscoring
the shakiness of the California Republican’s path to speaker on Tuesday.
Even so,
McCarthy’s allies are not backing down, though they did make clear in their New
Year’s Day huddle that they wanted more clarity on exactly how his compromises
with the conservatives are translating into support. The speaker vote is just
two days away, and opposition does not appear to be softening.
At one
point during the call, Rep.-elect Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) asked Rep. Matt Gaetz
(R-Fla.) if he would support McCarthy if he agreed to lower the threshold to
one. Gaetz replied by noting McCarthy wouldn’t agree to that, to which the
California Republican replied that it is the conference that will oppose that
threshold.
And
McCarthy said he’d like to hear Gaetz’s answer, but Gaetz — one of his most
fervent opponents — said he’d think about it. At one point he asked: is that an
offer?
“Some of
the rules changes are being made, some of us will live with them even though we
think some of them may be unnecessary,” said one GOP lawmaker supportive of
McCarthy, who requested anonymity to speak candidly of the private discussions.
Some of
McCarthy’s allies also made clear they would not accept the conservative-led
changes if they derailed the speaker vote. “Many of us said we’ll only agree to
rules if we get 218 for Kevin,” said another House Republican, who is also a
McCarthy supporter.
Other
proposed changes would bring a return to Republican rules prior to the
Democratic takeover in 2019. One focus is on controlling spending by restoring
provisions on how House bills are scored and paid for. The GOP would reinstate
so-called “Cut As You Go,” which requires all mandatory spending increases to
be offset by a cut in spending.
Other
proposals are new. Republicans will push ethics reforms, calling for the first
members-focused ethics task force in 25 years and a new feature that would
allow the House Ethics Committee to take complaints directly from the public.
The package would also create a new select subcommittee within the Judiciary
Committee called the “Weaponization of Federal Government,” to focus on what
the GOP has called the White House’s “assault on civil liberties” — another
conservative ask.
Most of the
proposed rules are not surprising. Republicans plan to nix Democratic rules
allowing for proxy voting, remote committee work, and magnetometers outside of
the House chamber. Congressional staff unions, which had just begun forming
this fall, would be banned. The GOP would form a new select committee on China
that would work on protecting “American competitiveness” and defending human
rights.
Certain
committees will again be renamed: The House Education and Labor Committee, for
instance, will become Education and Workforce.
The Democrat-led committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riots will be disbanded, requiring a “quick transfer of funds” back to the House Administration Com
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