Poll shows how misguided House Republicans are about a government shutdown

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Kerry Eleveld

Fresh off their crackerjack idea of launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, House Republicans are greasing the skids for a government shutdown. In their view, it's both righteous and popular. Not kidding.

“We’re going to have a shutdown, it’s just a matter of how long,” Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said Thursday. “We believe in what we are doing. The jury will be the country. And the jury is fed up with reckless spending.”

On Friday, the progressive consortium Navigator Research released fresh polling on voters' views of a government shutdown and the government's spending priorities.

Seventy-seven percent of voters believe a government shutdown this fall would hurt the economy either a lot (45%) or somewhat (32%). A measly 13% of voters said it would not hurt the economy.

🚨 NEW POLL: 77% of Americans believe a government shutdown this fall would hurt the economy, including… 🔵 84% of Democrats 🟢 74% of independents 🔴 71% of Republicans … as well as 83% of those who rate the economy negatively, but support Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. pic.twitter.com/8FLPOMJtIn
— Navigator Research (@NavigatorSurvey) September 15, 2023

And while Republicans think shutting down the government in an attempt to slash spending is a righteous cause, the spending cuts they are proposing are deeply unpopular.

At least 3 in 4 voters oppose cuts to the following: Social Security, nutrition assistance for children and vulnerable families, K-12 education, funding to provide safe and clean drinking water, and investments in life-saving medical research for children, cancer patients, and maternal health.

Bottom line: The more righteous House Republicans feel about their shutdown and their rationale for it, the better it is for Democrats. No one wants a shutdown but House Republicans, and they seem more than happy to own it.

Sign and send the petition: Pass a clean funding bill. No GOP hostage taking.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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House Freedom Caucus plans to shut down the government, blame it on the Senate

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Joan McCarter

In 15 days, funding for all federal government operations will expire, barring a miracle (or House Speaker Kevin McCarthy having a personality transplant that turns him into a competent leader, which puts us back in miracle territory). A guy who lets people like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz pressure him into trying to impeach President Joe Biden based on the hallucinations of Rudy Giuliani isn’t likely to transform into a competent strategist.

The House returned from its six-week August recess Tuesday afternoon ready to do one of the easiest things Congress ever has to accomplish: spending a lot of money on the Pentagon. They failed—massively—as the extremist zealots refused to let the bill come to the floor. They didn’t do it because they’re opposed to the bill. They did it because they can, as a power flex.

No one in the House seems capable of coming up with a plan to stop them. “It’s stupid,” Idaho GOP Rep. Mike Simpson complained to Politico. “We’ve been seeing this coming for the last three or four months. I just didn’t think we were dumb enough to get there,” he said. Simpson should know better, coming from Idaho of all places, the sinkhole of GOP stupidity.

Another senior GOP member told Semafor that what happened with the “Five Families” in the “Godfather” movies is coming. “The whole family kills each other,” they said. “I think we’re close to that right now. We are in maybe the Godfather II stage.” The member is probably referring to the fact that GOP leadership in the House decided to emulate “The Godfather” by calling the various factions in the House the “Five Families.” For real. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

Two of those five are working on a supposed solution. A few members of both the Main Street Caucus, made up of supposed moderates, and the Freedom Caucus started meeting Wednesday to hatch some sort of stopgap funding plan, including spending cuts and border security funding.

Since Freedom Caucus guy Chip Roy of Texas is one of the negotiators, don’t expect it to work. What he’s in it for is a shutdown that they can blame on the Senate. He admitted it.

SHUTDOWN: @chiproytx says at Family Research Council he views a shutdown as inevitable because of Senate intransigence. He says GOP uniting around push for border policy changes as reason for fight
— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) September 15, 2023

The Senate will not accept a stopgap bill or a continuing resolution that slashes funding. For one thing, it’s called a continuing resolution because what it does is continue current funding. Roy knows that. His whole group knows that. A shutdown is exactly what the Freedom Caucus wants, for whatever reason.

“We’re going to have a shutdown, it’s just a matter of how long,” GOP @RepRalphNorman says. “We believe in what we are doing. The jury will be the country. And the jury is fed up with reckless spending.”
— Ben Siegel (@bensiegel) September 14, 2023

The “jury” does not want that. Seventy-one percent of Republicans “believe a government shutdown this fall would hurt the economy,” according to the latest polling from Navigator Research. Other Republicans understand that. “Have we ever not got blamed for a shutdown? ... I’m worried about the basic functions of government,” said Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong of South Dakota.

Making matters even worse for McCarthy, he lost another vote Friday when Rep. Chris Stewart’s planned resignation was supposed to take effect. That leaves just a four-vote margin for McCarthy.

The glaring solution—and the inevitable one—is reaching out and compromising for Democratic votes. It’s the only way this gets solved. But at this point, it’s going to take Republicans reaping the disaster of a shutdown to force them to do it.

Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden

House hardliners brag about 'chaos' as government shutdown looms

What did McCarthy gain by caving on impeachment? Nothing

What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

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McCarthy talks tough, rebels yawn

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Joan McCarter

In a closed-door meeting Thursday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an F-bomb-filled tirade, daring hardliners to just try to oust him. “If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the f—ing motion,” McCarthy said, according to the three Republicans who immediately ran and told Politico. Odds the three are McCarthy allies? Very high. The motion in question is what Rep. Matt Gaetz is threatening, calling for a vote in the House to remove McCarthy from the seat.

For his part, Gaetz was unimpressed. “Sounds like @SpeakerMcCarthy is having a total normal one - not rattled at all,” he tweeted. “Truth is Kevin controls his own fate. … Pull yourself together, Kevin!”

McCarthy also tried to convince the extremists that they have to relent and agree to a stopgap funding bill before the end of the month, averting a government shutdown. That didn’t work so well, either. Freedom Caucus Rep. Chip Roy of Texas went on Glenn Beck’s show and was mad that McCarthy is trying to work the conference to avoid a shutdown. “My point is force an actual trajectory change and a shift or get out of the damn game,” he said.

Not content just to swear at fellow Republicans, McCarthy also threatened to take away their weekends, Politico reports. He reiterated what he said in the meeting afterward. "When we come back (Monday), we're not going [to] leave,” he told reporters. “We're going to get this done. Nobody wins in a government shutdown. Nobody wins in a government shutdown."

That message might have worked better if he didn’t have a history of bailing on hard votes. This week, which consisted of barely three days, was the first one back in session for the House since July 27, when they left town early after failing to pass the agriculture appropriations bill.

The House was supposed to have passed the annual defense appropriations bill this week, but the Freedom Caucus and others shut that down, too. They refused to vote for the procedural motion bringing the bill to the floor, effectively blocking anything of import from being done in the House and complicating McCarthy’s plans to avert a shutdown in 16 days and a few hours.

What’s his plan now? Who knows. Cue the sad trombone:

McCarthy with the understatement of the month as Congress speeds toward a federal shutdown asked if he has a plan for next week McCarthy, almost whispering, replied: “I had a plan for this week. It didn’t turn out exactly as I planned”
— Meredith Lee Hill (@meredithllee) September 14, 2023

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans.

Gaetz attacks McCarthy in wild House speech

House bails early for August, and the old guard and newbie Republicans are cranky about it

House hardliners brag about ‘chaos’ as government shutdown looms

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Joan McCarter

On its first full day of work following the August recess, the House was supposed to start the floor process to bring up the defense appropriations bill Wednesday. The people in charge of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, however, had other plans. That plan consists of: one, shutting the House down while they come up with more unreasonable demands for slashing government funding and, two, running the clock down toward Oct. 1, when they can shut the whole government down.

One of the hardliners in the House, Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, told Politico that running amok is their master plan. “We have an evolving strategy going right now. This whole place is about chaos, right?” Got that? Chaos is strategy.

McCarthy did not have enough votes to pass the first procedural vote on the military spending bill, and wasn’t going to force a repeat of his resounding defeat in June, when 11 hardliners unexpectedly voted against the motion to proceed on a bill and tied the House up for days, not allowing any legislation to advance to the floor. The ploy then was to force McCarthy to renege on the deal he made with President Joe Biden to avert a debt default, and slash the agreed-upon spending levels by billions. It worked.

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At least McCarthy learned from that experience and counted the votes before he put the defense appropriations bill on the floor, saving himself a modicum of embarrassment. Otherwise, it’s a repeat of the June fiasco, with the added excitement of a pending government shutdown in just 10 legislative days.

The obstructionists aren’t opposing this appropriations bill, just like they weren’t opposed to the legislation back in June—that was a ridiculous bit of political posturing about people’s freedom to have gas stoves. This bill, which Republicans are programmed to love because it contains money for the Pentagon, is chock-full of their culture-war bullshit. They’re blocking it because it’s the best hostage they can take now.

“Nobody’s objecting to what’s in the bill,” said House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole. “Everybody’s trying to leverage the bill for something now.” What they want isn’t exactly clear beyond, as Politico writes, “a litany of demands from [the] right flank on how to handle federal spending talks with the Senate to avert a funding lapse.”

One thing the House hardliners don’t want is a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown. That would mean continuing to spend at current levels, which they say is too much. They want to go back to the previous funding year, 2022, but that simply can’t be done in a continuing resolution. That’s not how this works. Which means they want to shut the government down.

There are any number of other demands, none of which are impeachment. “[McCarthy] starting an impeachment inquiry gives him no—zero—cushion, relief, brace, as it applies to spending,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, one of the revolters, told Politico. So good job on that one, Mr. Speaker.

This is another big blow to McCarthy. If he can’t get the defense bill passed—of all goddamned things—you know how hopeless it all is. There seems to be no possible way the speaker can regain control of the House at this point, and that makes a government shutdown almost inevitable.

GOP rebels shut the House down

Freedom Caucus bites back

What did McCarthy gain by caving on impeachment? Nothing

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy just set himself up for a game of government shutdown Whac-A-Mole. He gave in to the loudest voices—well, two voices mostly: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s and Matt Gaetz’s—and agreed to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, all based on nonsense and lies. Just about the only thing McCarthy achieved by agreeing to this was demonstrating yet again that he’ll fold to the extremists every time.

He also opened the floodgates for every other faction in the Republican conference to make demands.

Gaetz did not back down once McCarthy agreed to impeachment. On the contrary: He attacked McCarthy, promising that he’d move to oust the speaker if McCarthy didn’t start fulfilling a bunch of secret promises he allegedly made back in January, during his ego-bruising fight to win the speaker’s gavel.

Then there is the Freedom Caucus. On the heels of McCarthy’s announcement, they held a press conference to reiterate that no way, no how are they going to allow the government to be funded.

McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry hasn’t swayed the Freedom Caucus towards funding the government pic.twitter.com/sLink7n70S
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2023

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“Enough!” shouted a very worked up Rep. Chip Roy. “I will not continue to fund a government at war with the American people. We are here to change it. It is time to end it and I’m proud to stand with these patriots to do that.” What is the government supposedly warring with the people about? Who knows what Roy is ranting about this time. Maybe immigration, or the COVID vaccine, or maybe aid to Ukraine. He’s just mad.

How is McCarthy going to deal with that? With a margin of just five Republican votes to spare, he clearly isn’t going to be able to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running. He’s going to need Democratic votes. Now that he’s decided to ratchet up the partisanship with a bogus impeachment inquiry, House Democrats sure aren’t going to want to help him out. He isolated himself further from Biden and Senate Democrats, the very people who can bail him out with an agreement.

There are just 11 legislative days before funding runs out, and as of now, McCarthy is on his own. On the Senate side, Republicans are aligning with the Democrats to avert a shutdown. The majority of House Republicans probably don’t want a shutdown, but right now they’re cowering and staying out of it.

While McCarthy is bumbling his way toward this disaster, federal government officials are being forced to spend a lot of time—and time is money!—going through the process of figuring out how to shut agencies down, who to furlough, and how to keep necessary stuff running. That means hundreds of thousands of federal workers are once again on tenterhooks, not knowing if they’ll be getting a paycheck next month.

The weakest speaker in recent memory is on a path to prove he’s also the most destructive one, just by virtue of his own incompetence.

Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

McCarthy thinks impeachment inquiry rules should apply to everyone but him

Why does it seem like Republicans have such a hard time recruiting Senate candidates who actually live in the states they want to run in? We're discussing this strange but persistent phenomenon on this week's edition of "The Downballot." The latest example is former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who's been spending his time in Florida since leaving the House in 2015, but he's not the only one. Republican Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Montana, and Wisconsin all have questionable ties to their home states—a problem that Democrats have gleefully exploited in recent years. (Remember Dr. Oz? Of course you do.)

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The Senate appears to be uniting against right-wing House extremists

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The Senate appears to be uniting against right-wing House extremists, subjecting Speaker Kevin McCarthy to possibly the biggest test to his leadership to date: averting a government shutdown while responding to this year’s catastrophic natural disasters and maintaining assistance to Ukraine. The two top Senate appropriators have an agreement on a spending bill that will come to the floor next week, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell has been using his bully pulpit to keep aid flowing to Ukraine.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who together lead the Appropriations Committee, announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal on a spending package that will include funding for Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; Transportation; Housing and Urban Development; Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as agencies under those larger umbrellas.

That could be the first of a handful of “minibus” bills the Senate pushes in the next few weeks, Sen. Jon Tester told Politico on Tuesday. If the Senate shows a united front on passing these funding bills, it would significantly increase pressure on McCarthy to pass a stopgap funding bill and avoid a government shutdown. That’s not a sure thing: The Senate is famously slow when it comes to legislating. To get these bills considered quickly, they’ll have to be advanced by unanimous consent. That avoids the lengthy process of cloture votes and hours of debate time. Any single senator—like the infamously obstructionist Republican Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, for example—could derail that with a simple objection.

So far, however, there hasn’t been much in the way of government-shutdown cheerleading from the usual subjects in the Republican Senate conference. In fact, as Murray and Collins noted in their announcement that “we worked with our colleagues in a bipartisan way to draft and pass out of Committee all twelve appropriations bills for the first time in years—and did so with overwhelming bipartisan votes.” There appears to be little appetite among Senate Republicans for picking this particular fight.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is intent on keeping the conference united on this one. Last week, he reiterated that the Republicans in the Senate were not going to emulate the House and renege on the budget deal that McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden earlier this year to resolve the debt-ceiling standoff. “The House then turned around and passed spending levels that were below that level,” McConnell said. “Without stating an opinion about that, that’s not going to be replicated in the Senate.”

McConnell has also set down a marker on continuing funding for Ukraine, another factor in a potential deal to avert a shutdown. The administration’s request for supplemental funding to Ukraine will likely be attached to a short-term funding bill, as would its request for emergency disaster relief. Funding for disaster relief should be a no-brainer for Republicans politically, as well as a top priority. Tying it to Ukraine assistance and keeping the government open should keep a healthy majority on board.

McConnell is doing his bit to keep up the drum beat. He has spent the last two days hammering on the need to keep funding flowing to Ukraine. “It is certainly not the time to go wobbly,” he said in a floor speech Wednesday. “It is not the time to ease up."

McConnell from Senate floor on more Ukraine aid:“Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening 1 of America’s biggest strategic adversaries w/o firing a shot & deterring another one in the process. It means investing directly in American strength,both military & economic." pic.twitter.com/7Z19j3HORs
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) September 6, 2023

The stakes are high for McConnell. He wants Republicans to regain the majority in 2024, and avoiding a government shutdown is vital to that goal. He’s walking the usual tightrope between keeping the increasingly MAGA-like base happy, while not giving Democrats any additional fodder to hammer Republican opponents.

That’s nothing compared with what McCarthy faces, however. For him, the outcome is more politically existential: whether he keeps his speakership. He’s getting pressure from his supposed ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who won’t vote for any government funding, or support for Ukraine, or really anything until she gets an impeachment inquiry, as she recently detailed in a long, unhinged tweet thread.

McCarthy’s more vocal adversaries are taking direct aim at his speakership. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz threatened a challenge in a tweet Tuesday, writing, “We’ve got to seize the initiative. That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if @SpeakerMcCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long. Let’s hope he works with us, not against us.”

Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a Freedom Caucus leader, has piled on with a series of tweets, retweets, and replies firing up the MAGA base for a shutdown. That includes retweeting a post exclaiming, “Chip for Speaker!!!”

That’s a direct message to McCarthy that either of them—or anyone else in the extremist bunch—would be willing to use the tool they extorted from him in his leadership bid in January: the motion to vacate the chair. That allows any single one of them to bring the equivalent of a no-confidence vote to the floor at any time. It’s not the first time Roy has made this veiled threat.

This is the biggest test for McCarthy’s ability to lead, one that everyone paying attention knew would happen if he didn’t stand up to the extremists at some point. He scraped by in the first test on the debt ceiling by striking a deal with Biden—the deal which the extremists forced him to renege on. He’s facing a choice again: Will he stick with the Trump MAGA minority, or try to protect his slim majority—particularly the “Biden 18,” the freshmen Republicans holding districts Biden won in 2020?

It’s also, of course, a test for those supposed moderates, one they’ve failed before. They have the power to block the minority of extremists, if they’re willing to use it.

Sign and send the petition: Pass a clean funding bill. No GOP hostage taking.

McCarthy's speaker deals come back to haunt him

McCarthy caves to rebels for temporary truce

McCarthy is screwing over swing-district Republicans

It’s the Ukraine Update episode! Kerry interviews Markos to talk about what is happening in Ukraine, what needs to be done, and why the fate of Ukraine is tied to democracy’s fate in 2024.

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House Freedom Caucus is ready to force a government shutdown

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Laura Clawson

The House Freedom Caucus has set the stage for a government shutdown, issuing a list of demands on Monday that they know will never be met. They are thereby setting up a test of wills between themselves and basically everyone else in the House and Senate, starting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Congress will need to pass a temporary funding bill to keep the government open when current funding ends on Sept. 30, and the Freedom Caucus is insisting it will not back a clean continuing resolution. Even a short-term bill, they insist, would need to include their far-right demands.

Freedom Caucus members are opposing any bill that “continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending,” which is to say they’d oppose a short-term spending bill that didn’t make cuts right off the bat because they didn’t like the last government spending bill to pass. Additionally, they say, they won’t support any spending bill unless it includes the hateful immigration bill House Republicans said was a “first week” priority, but only managed to pass in May. They are vowing to oppose any bill that doesn’t “[a]ddress the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI to focus them on prosecuting real criminals instead of conducting political witch hunts and targeting law-abiding citizens” and “[e]nd the Left’s cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core warfighting mission.”

So first off they want a rollback to pre-pandemic spending levels, plus a bill that it took months for the House to pass as a stand-alone and that stands no chance in the Senate. But as unlikely as that is, at least it’s a concrete ask. From there, it gets murkier. How is a spending bill supposed to “address the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI”? Presumably cutting off the special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump, but this is a demand that could cover a lot of ground, some of which the different members of the Freedom Caucus probably don’t even agree on. Finally, they are demanding a legislative ban on various military policies they don’t like, presumably starting with the military’s policy of paying for service members and their families to travel for medical care, including abortion, and maybe policies allowing trans service members to serve openly in the military. But again, railing against “cancerous woke policies” is pretty vague language, especially considering that these days “woke” means anything a Republican doesn’t like. In some Republican hands, “End the Left’s cancerous woke policies” could mean resegregating the military.

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In translation, the Freedom Caucus is saying that it wants a government shutdown because they know that these demands will never be met. The only way to keep the government open will be for McCarthy to rely on Democratic votes to get a clean continuing resolution and, ultimately, a funding bill through the House. The Freedom Caucus is banking—with good reason—on McCarthy being unwilling to do that. But just in case this is the moment McCarthy finds a spine, the Freedom Caucus said it would “oppose any attempt by Washington to revert to its old playbook of using a series of short-term funding extensions designed to push Congress up against a December deadline to force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget busting, pork filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill at year’s end and we will use every procedural tool necessary to prevent that outcome.” In other words, if you try to pass this without us, we will do whatever it takes to block it from getting a vote.

It’s not clear that the Freedom Caucus demands could get through the House with its very narrow Republican control. They definitely can’t get through the Senate. So when the Freedom Caucus says that its support is contingent on getting all of their demands and that its members will do whatever possible to block a House vote on a bill they don’t like, they’re saying they want a shutdown. Let’s be very, very clear about that as the possibility of a government shutdown looms next month: It’s not both sides. It’s House Republicans.

American political parties might often seem stuck in their ways, but they can and in fact do change positions often. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is political scientist David Karol, who tells us how and why both the Democratic and Republican parties have adjusted their views on a wide range of issues over the years. Karol offers three different models for how these transformations happen—and explains why voters often stick with their parties even after these shifts. He concludes by offering tips to activists seeking to push their parties when they're not changing fast enough.

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House bails early for August, and the old guard and newbie Republicans are cranky about it

Posted on July 27, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The Republican-controlled House had two jobs to complete this week before taking off until Sept. 11. Two appropriations bills were slated to go to the floor and the House was supposed to spend the full week getting them through. Passage of the bills was necessary to give Congress a start on the job of funding the government before the Sept. 30 deadline. Instead, the extremists in and around the Freedom Caucus completely derailed one of the bills, and the House decided to just leave mid-afternoon on Thursday to get an early start on the long break.

That means the bills that are traditionally the easiest to pass—military housing and veterans benefits—will be done and the second easiest—agriculture—will not. The military construction and veterans bill, however, made it to the floor by the skin of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s teeth, and what he had to concede to the hard-liners could very well jeopardize every other spending bill. That’s got the old guard of Republicans spitting mad, particularly the “cardinals” who head up the powerful Appropriations subcommittee. At the other end of the tenure spectrum, the sizable group of vulnerable freshmen in swing districts are angry over the anti-abortion votes they’ve been forced to take.

The military and veterans bill narrowly advanced to the floor on Wednesday when the procedural vote for it passed with no votes to spare, 217-206. One of the conservative hard-liners, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, claimed his team agreed to allow the bill to move forward because leadership promised to cut the spending levels in the remaining appropriations bills. That got a flat denial from McCarthy.

McCarthy says there is no new deal on spending toplines (also says he hasn’t talked to Norman)
— Jordain Carney (@jordainc) July 26, 2023

But the machinations have finally gotten to the old guard, who are getting pretty sick of this shit and are willing to say so on the record. That includes the Appropriations subcommittee chairs—the “cardinals,” like Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, who chairs the Interior-Environment subcommittee. The cuts the extremists are demanding, he told Politico, “won’t pass the House.” He went on to make a remarkable threat for a senior member and appropriator: “I won’t vote for them.”

"Right now, small groups of members can exercise an extraordinary amount of power," Rep. Tom Cole groused. He should know—he has three of them on his powerful Rules Committee, the panel that determines what bills do or don’t make it to the floor. His committee spent hours trying to work through the agriculture bill and ultimately failed.

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There are so many Republicans like Simpson who represent farming districts that getting this bill done is usually pretty easy. It’s a huge priority. While there are always fights about food assistance funding from the extremists, there are enough farm state Republicans that the old guard can fight them off, work with the Senate, and get it done. Maybe this is why the old guard is finally saying, “Enough.”

It’s not just the old-timers who are unhappy with what’s been happening in these bills, though. There’s a brewing “revolt” over the anti-abortion poison pills that these funding bills are being loaded up with. In the case of the agriculture bill, which also funds the Food and Drug Administration, it’s the inclusion of an amendment to force the FDA to withdraw approval for abortion pills to be provided by mail.

There are about a dozen of these members, some of them freshmen in swing districts, who are trying to get that provision removed. Axios quotes three of them:

"Some states allow [mifepristone] to be mailed, some states don't, but that should be a decision with the states and the FDA, not Congress," said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).

"If that language stays as is, we won't be able to vote for that appropriations [bill]," said Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.).

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said he told voters he "wasn't looking to disrupt the existing policy" on abortion being a state's issue, adding, "I intend to fulfill that commitment."

Maybe over the long, 47-day “August” recess, the two groups can get together and figure out how to break the Freedom Caucus’ hold over McCarthy. They’ve got the numbers to do it if they’re willing. It’s in their best interest. And unless they get this figured out, the government will shut down.

Freedom Caucus: ‘We don’t fear the government shutdown’

Posted on July 26, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Hapless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed his gavel over to a group that can’t even decide whether shutting down the government is a good thing to do. On Tuesday, members of the Freedom Caucus held a press conference hosted by Freedom Works, the Koch-funded dark money organization that basically created the far-right caucus. They were there to make more of their incoherent and ever-changing demands for government funding. The “demands” boiled down to basically no government funding.

But don’t worry, said Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona: “I don't believe you’re looking at a government shutdown.” Instead, Biggs said that some of the 12 necessary appropriations bills will go to the floor, and then “what we call a minibus” will combine the rest, and “then you’ll see a short-term continuing resolution to continue spending.” Never mind that one of the things the caucus demanded McCarthy agree to was that no appropriations bill could get a vote until all 12 were approved by the committee. And that there wouldn’t be any kind of “omnibus” that combined the bills.

Then Rep. Bob Good piped up. “We should not fear a government shutdown,” he said, because, “[m]ost of what we do up here is bad anyway.” Bring it on!

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“Most of the American people won’t even miss if the government is shut down temporarily,” Good continued. McCarthy, he said, “has an opportunity to be a transformational historical speaker that stared down the Democrats, that stared down the free spenders, that stared down the president and said no.”

So that’s what Good wants out of all this: for McCarthy to just say “no.” Add that to all the other constantly moving goalposts these guys have erected:

Funding levels at fiscal year 2022 levels.
Funding levels at FY22 and also no emergency funding bills.
Funding levels at FY22 and no emergency funding bills and lawmakers have to claw back money handed out last year.
Pre-COVID funding levels for everything but defense.

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The demands from the caucus as a whole are never-ending, and then there’s what the individual members want. For example, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said Monday that he would only “consider” passing funding if Congress reduces spending to pre-COVID levels, ends the border “invasion,” defunds the FBI, ends federal diversity policies, ends Ukraine support, and ends the “War on Reliable Energy,” whatever that is supposed to mean. What Roy wants matters because McCarthy gave him a seat on the powerful Rules Committee, the one that decides what goes to the floor for a vote.

These are not people who are going to be happy to go along with stopgap funding bills to keep the government open until somehow they work this all out. It will take just five Republican House members to stop one unless McCarthy decides to work with Democrats to pass it, which would only enrage the Freedom Caucus anew. It’s going to take a miracle, or McCarthy becoming an actual leader (which would also be a miracle), to avoid a shutdown this fall, which is bad for the country and worse for Republicans.

“What would happen if Republicans for once stared down the Democrats and were the ones who refused to cave and to betray the American people and the trust they put in us when they gave us the majority?” Good asked Tuesday. “We don't fear the government shutdown.”

What would happen is that Republicans would lose that majority in 2024. And the Senate, and the White House. But you do you, Congressman Good.

How far can McCarthy bend for extremists? Not far enough

Posted on July 25, 2023 (Updated July 25, 2023) by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had a steep learning curve when he got hold of the gavel in January and so far, he seems to have learned nothing about negotiating. Specifically, he seems clueless about the most important lesson: Don't negotiate with terrorists.

Whatever he does to appease the extremist members, it’s not enough. They simply come back with more demands. A strong leader might recognize that he would have numbers on his side if he chose not to let a dozen or so House members dictate what the rest of the 435 can do, and that he could work with the majority to shut the Freedom Caucus down. Kevin McCarthy, however, is not a strong leader.

At the moment, the biggest challenge he faces is finding a way to keep the government from shutting down, which at this point seems nearly impossible. McCarthy bowed to the extremists on government funding levels, reneging on the deal he made with President Joe Biden to resolve the debt ceiling crisis. He and his leadership team agreed to make sharp cuts to the previously agreed-upon numbers, and the Freedom Caucus came back with a demand for more cuts, leading to a delay in committee work on the spending bills that are required to fund the government.

With the House ready to attempt passage of two of those appropriations bills this week, Freedom Caucus ringleader Chip Roy of Texas is upping the ante. The congressman’s demands: “1) Return Federal Bureaucracy to Pre-COVID, 2) End Border Invasion & fed attack on Texas, 3) End FBI Weaponization, 4) End Racist DEI Govt Policies, 5) Make Europe Handle Ukraine, 6) End War on Reliable Energy.”

There’s so much nonsense to sift through, but don’t miss the part where he’s threatening continued U.S. aid to Ukraine.

That would be on top of the wide-ranging culture war matters the extremists are forcing into every spending bill, with a particular focus on abortion. It’s just like what they did with the National Defense Authorization Act after McCarthy insisted to the rest of the Republican conference he was going to make sure they had a clean bill and not a “Christmas tree” of a bill, chock-full of poison pill amendments on every branch. He didn’t stop the extremists from adding extraneous amendments to that bill, so now they’re proliferating through every appropriations bill.

While the Freedom Caucus is itching for a showdown in order to get what they want, McCarthy’s trying to keep his head above water on these spending bills and he’s fighting the hard-right wing of his party over a promise he may or may not have made to expunge Donald Trump's two impeachments. This just might be the lamest thing McCarthy has done to date, all to appease Trump’s fury after mentioning that the indicted former guy might not be the strongest presidential candidate.

McCarthy denied making that promise, which only gave the story more legs and also made the MAGA crowd in the conference even more intent on forcing that expungement vote. For what it’s worth, expunging an impeachment isn’t a real thing. Trump was impeached—twice. There were votes. They were recorded. They were put in the Congressional Record. There are no take-backs. There aren’t going to be thousands of people hired to go through every copy of the Record with their bottles of Wite-Out, erasing the evidence. But here’s McCarthy, setting up what is quite possibly the most absurd legislative push ever, and getting himself in a jam over it.

Whatever McCarthy does, it will not be enough to appease the extremists. They have no reason to back down—not when they’re getting what they want and being rewarded mightily for it. Now the Club for Growth is backing all the rabble-rousers who have opposed McCarthy all these months. The conservative organization says it is planning to spend millions to reelect the 20 members who opposed McCarthy’s bid to be speaker through 15 rounds of balloting. That, the group insinuated, is to keep McCarthy and his allies from backing any of their primary opponents.

McCarthy is going to bumble the country into a shutdown, making the House of Representatives look more ridiculous and dysfunctional along the way. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi nailed it this weekend on CNN when she said, “These people look pathetic.”

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