NEWS
ANALYSIS
McCarthy Emerges From the Debt Limit Fight With
Victories, and Some Wounds
The speaker defied expectations and delivered a debt
limit agreement that few thought he could manage, but left some of his
Republican colleagues feeling betrayed.
Carl Hulse
By Carl
Hulse
Reporting
from Washington
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-debt-limit-republicans.html
May 31,
2023
When the
debt limit fight began, it was widely assumed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy,
untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, would either preside
over an economically and politically calamitous government default or lose his
hard-won post in a right-wing mutiny after caving to Democrats.
So far, he
has managed to avoid both outcomes while claiming some fiscal and policy wins.
With House
approval on Wednesday night of the debt limit package he personally negotiated
with President Biden, Mr. McCarthy defied expectations and even earned grudging
respect from White House officials while defusing the debt limit time bomb he
himself planted by insisting on concessions in return for raising the nation’s
borrowing limit.
The bar was
set low for Mr. McCarthy, known more for politicking and fund-raising than for
policymaking, after he struggled mightily to win his post in the first place as
House Republicans took control in January.
But in the
end, he delivered an agreement that met his goal of cutting spending from
current levels. It was not pretty; in fact, it was downright ugly. He managed
to do so only with significant help from across the aisle, as Democrats rescued
him on a key procedural vote and then provided the support needed for passage.
Mr. McCarthy exceeded his goal of winning the support of the majority of his
members with 149 backing it, but more Democrats — 165 of them — voted for the
bill than members of his own party, an outcome that will fuel Republican
criticism that he cut a deal that sold out his own people.
That is not
the way powerful speakers of the past have typically accomplished their goals.
But Mr.
McCarthy has proved uncommonly willing to endure political pain and even
humiliation — a trait that was on ample display during his 15-round fight for
the speakership in January — while focusing on extracting a few marquee
concessions from Mr. Biden that could allow him to claim victory and avert a
default he plainly wanted to avoid, even if many of his members did not.
His allies
gave him credit for taking on the White House and Senate Democrats and emerging
with a positive result when most Democrats were counting on him to fail. White
House officials and congressional Democrats privately predicted that Mr.
McCarthy would be unable to corral his extraordinarily fractious troops, and
would therefore have no leverage in fiscal talks, allowing them to force
through an increase in the debt ceiling with few, if any, concessions to
Republicans.
“Underestimated
for damn sure,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, one
of the lead G.O.P. negotiators. “Kevin McCarthy has always been
underestimated.”
Lifting the
debt ceiling. The deal reached by President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy
would suspend the nation’s debt limit until January 2025. This would allow the
government to keep borrowing money so it can pay its bills on time.
Spending
caps and cuts. In exchange for suspending the debt ceiling, Republicans demanded
a range of concessions. Chief among them are caps on some spending over the
next two years. The deal also claws back $10 billion in I.R.S. funding.
Food
stamps. The bill would place additional work requirements on older Americans
who receive assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
but it also would expand food stamp access for veterans and homeless people.
Student
loans. The legislation would officially end Biden’s freeze on student loan
repayments by the end of summer. It would also prevent the president from
issuing another last-minute extension, as he has done several times.
Environmental
impact. Both sides agreed to new measures to get energy projects approved more
quickly. The deal includes a win for Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a
Democrat who strongly supports fossil fuels, by fast-tracking the construction
of a contentious pipeline.
Mr.
McCarthy’s achievement may yet come at a cost. Far-right conservative
Republicans remain outraged at the agreement he struck with Mr. Biden, saying
it fell woefully short of what he promised and what Republicans committed to as
they pursued the majority last year.
Some feel
personally betrayed and say he went back on his promise to insist on paring
back spending even further. More than two dozen rank-and-file Republicans
registered their dissatisfaction with Mr. McCarthy by opposing the procedural
measure bringing the package to the floor, an aggressive challenge to the
leadership that also showed they were not worried about payback from the
speaker’s office.
Representative
Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said Mr. McCarthy had hurt himself with many
House Republicans “big time, big time.”
“I think
this is going to be a problem for him,” said Mr. Buck, who along with other
critics of Mr. McCarthy said lawmakers would be talking among themselves about
how or whether to proceed with an attempt to force out the speaker.
Mr.
McCarthy, in an interview on Fox News, said talk of unseating him was not a
worry.
“To govern
is not easy, but I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” he said,
saying that critics of the package would regret their opposition. “Every single
one of those members who vote ‘no’ will miss the opportunity to vote for the
largest cut in American history.”
That is
almost certainly an exaggeration, though the agreement was chock-full of side
deals and complex details that allowed the G.O.P. to claim far larger spending
cuts than they secured.
One factor
working in Mr. McCarthy’s favor in holding off a move to oust him was that
conservatives with standing among House Republicans, such as Representative Jim
Jordan of Ohio, remained in his corner. There is a distinct segment of House
Republicans who are eager to move past the fiscal fight and focus more on the
investigations and culture-war issues that they think play better with their
voters and are being lost in the current moment.
Mr.
McCarthy’s backers say his critics do not truly understand the limits of their
leverage in controlling only the House while Democrats hold the majority in the
Senate and Mr. Biden is in the White House. They say that Mr. McCarthy was
never going to get the type of agreement the most extreme elements of House
Republicans could embrace unless he was willing to force a devastating default.
He made it clear early on that he was not.
For months,
White House officials and Senate Democrats figured they could hold off Mr.
McCarthy’s demands to begin talks with Mr. Biden on budget and spending issues
by declaring that he must first show that he could pass something through the
House. They saw that as unlikely, given his four-seat margin for error and the
varying ideologies of his membership.
The pivotal
moment came in late April when, much to the surprise of the administration and
congressional Democrats, he did just that, squeezing through a partisan measure
that cut spending and rolled back Biden initiatives. The legislation had no
chance of advancing in the Senate but served as a marker and won him a seat at
the negotiating table.
“No
question the White House miscalculated on this one,” said Representative Garret
Graves of Louisiana, another of the key Republican negotiators. “They misjudged
the speaker.”
“Kevin McCarthy
has always been underestimated,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry, right,
who, along with Representative Garret Graves, left, helped negotiate the
deal.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Senator
Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, downplayed
suggestions that Mr. McCarthy had outmaneuvered the Democrats.
“Look at
the result,” Mr. Schumer told reporters. “It is a far, far cry from where the
Republicans started out.”
Administration
officials conceded they may have taken Mr. McCarthy too lightly. They say
privately that he proved a stronger adversary in negotiations than many of them
were expecting.
He also won
some policy concessions that administration officials had not expected to give.
For months, top administration officials had privately predicted that Mr. Biden
would agree to modest caps on discretionary spending to accompany a debt limit
increase.
But Mr.
McCarthy successfully pushed to protect military spending from the cuts,
forcing domestic programs in such areas as education and environmental
protection to bear the brunt of the reductions — a condition that Democrats
have strenuously resisted in past budget negotiations. He also secured a side
deal that would cut $20 billion in new funding for an I.R.S. crackdown on tax
cheats, which Republicans had made a top target for cuts.
Such
successes were still not enough to satisfy hard-right critics who wanted more.
But Mr. McCarthy was willing to take what he could get and declare victory —
and absorb the abuse he was already receiving in return.
Carl Hulse
Carl Hulse
is chief Washington correspondent and a veteran of more than three decades of reporting
in the capital. More about Carl Hulse
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