House Republicans are approaching the new year wary about their slimming majority in the wake of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announced exit.
McCarthy, R-Calif., said he would leave Congress by the end of this month after he was ousted from the speakership two months ago. It comes on the heels of the House expelling scandal-plagued Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y.
House Republicans will only be able to lose three votes on any legislation to pass it without Democratic votes for the first several weeks of the new year, until special elections bring new members and change the margins yet again.
"I mean, we’re operating on razor-thin margins here," Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., told Fox News Digital. "Between God, gravity, indictments, and retirements, we're one day away from losing the majority depending on what happens."
KEVIN MCCARTHY, MATT GAETZ TRADE JABS AS FIERCE RIVALRY CONTINUES: HE 'BELONGS IN JAIL'
GOP Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore, R-Utah, conceded that the numbers were tight but argued it was not much different than their current situation.
"It's tough to operate in a four-seat [majority], it's tough to operate in a two-seat [majority]. We've got to be judicious in what we get done, and do something that we can all get behind," Moore said.
However, others echoed Garcia’s concerns that the slim majority would mean that any single member's absence is consequential when the House is in session.
MCCARTHY MAKES STUNNING ADMISSION ON BIDEN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY: THE FACTS HAVE LED 'EVEN CLOSER'
Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., said he did not believe it would make a difference "from a policy standpoint," but he added, "I just think from an attendance standpoint, it’d be hard."
"What are we going to be governing by, one vote? It's always a concern when people get sick, they get injured. It makes the whip’s job measurably more difficult with a narrower majority," said Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C.
A special election will take place to replace Santos in mid-February. California Gov. Gavin Newsom must set a date for an election to replace McCarthy.
That means House Republicans are likely to stay on thin margins through their Jan. 19 deadline for funding part of the government.
Conservatives like Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, urged GOP leaders to resist giving Democrats concessions to pass legislation until the numbers in the House change.
"It's gonna be tight…We've dealt with it before, though, and I think that Speaker Johnson is doing an excellent job of keeping everybody together. And, frankly, I think people will realize how important it is to stay together," Self explained.
"What I do not want to see is bills put on the floor that pass with more Democrat than Republican votes. No, that is not a way to govern."
House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on a major defense and national security policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, on Wednesday. It’s likely to be the only legislative accomplishment they achieve before leaving for the the end of the year, if it does indeed pass. The bill authorizes nearly $900 billion in defense and national security, though it doesn’t include funding—it just directs where the eventual funding bill will be spent. What the new House-Senate conference report doesn’t do is overturn the Pentagon’s abortion policy or strip health care from transgender troops.
That’s enough to have members of the hard-right House, which loaded their version of the bill up with all those toxic provisions, howling and vowing to vote against the bill. The bigger problem in the House, though, is Speaker Mike Johnson’s bungling of another provision in the NDAA. The conference committee decided to add a short-term extension of the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers in the bill, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, after several misfires on the issue from Johnson.
In the course of the last week or so, Johnson has taken three different positions on getting that done. On Nov. 29, he said he wanted to include an extension of it until Feb. 2. Then on Tuesday of this week, he told the GOP conference that he would put two competing reauthorization bills—one from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and another from House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner—on the floor in a head-to-head matchup. Whichever bill got the most votes would be sent to the Senate. Punchbowl News reported that he had instructed the members of the defense authorization conference to keep the FISA extension out of the bill, and “got cheers from conservatives for this statement.” Then on Wednesday, he made a complete about-face, agreeing to include an extension of the surveillance powers until April.
That same day, Jordan’s committee passed his bipartisan overhaul of FISA in committee by a 35-2 margin. Jordan had every expectation of his bill passing and wanted it to go to the floor next week, as he thought Johnson had promised. That’s precisely the kind of indecision and flip-flopping that already has Johnson in trouble with his fractious caucus, and since they are all unappeasable, it’s not going to get any better for him.
The Senate took up the defense authorization on Thursday with the initial procedural vote, which gives Johnson the weekend to try to smooth ruffled feathers and get the bill done on their side next week, likely the last substantive thing that will happen before they leave for Christmas.
That’s the worry for Ukraine and other countries in need of aid: that the House will leave town before the Senate passes its $110.5 billion supplemental foreign assistance package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. There’s been no advance in the stalemate on that issue since GOP senators threw their border security tantrum Tuesday. It’s looking likelier by the day that the urgently needed aid for Ukraine is not going to be passed before the end of the year.
And when Congress returns in January, as Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington reminds everyone, they’re going to have to get serious about passing government funding. Her concern is that Johnson’s supposed fallback proposal—to just extend current funding until the end of the fiscal year—will end up being the default. "It’s dangerous and a non-starter," the Senate Appropriations Committee chair told Politico Wednesday. "Everybody needs to understand that it’s dangerous, and we can’t go there."
She’s right to be worried. The budget agreement that President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy made back in May tried to avert just that eventuality by levying cuts if lawmakers extended funding with continuing resolutions. The $777 billion now budgeted for non-defense programs would plummet to $704 billion if regular funding bills aren’t passed.
Murray is also right to be worried that it’s Johnson in charge of figuring this out for the House. His combination of inexperience and arrogance makes him an unpredictable and dangerous negotiating partner.
RELATED STORIES:
Ukraine Update: Trump, Putin prevail with Republican senators
White House has things to say as Speaker Johnson reverses course on impeachment inquiry
The honeymoon is ending for Mike Johnson
Campaign Action
Republicans provided another textbook example of massive hypocrisy on Wednesday with a letter ordering Hunter Biden to appear for a hearing on Dec. 13. The letter to Hunter’s attorney says that he has no choice. He must appear for a closed-door deposition on that date or face contempt of Congress charges.
Hunter has offered to appear in a public hearing on any date, but Republicans have refused the offer. They want the session closed so that they can selectively dribble out fragments of this testimony they believe fit the narrative they have been building to impeach President Joe Biden. Rep. James Comer has been constructing his case against the president using increasingly ridiculous claims. This week included assertions that Hunter paying back his father for the downpayment on a truck allegedly showed that Joe Biden had received bribes from China.
But the biggest red flag of hypocrisy in the latest letter may be one of the signatures at the bottom. In addition to Comer, the letter was also signed by Rep. Jim Jordan. The same Jim Jordan who infamously refused to appear in response to a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee.
Jordan, who was heavily involved in the planning and execution of the attempted overturning of votes on Jan. 6, first insisted that he had “nothing to hide” about those events. But when the select committee investigating Jan. 6 asked Jordan to testify, he refused. That eventually led to Jordan being the subject of a congressional subpoena.
How did Jordan respond to his subpoena? With a list of demands before he would agree to talk. Jordan accused the select committee of “not operating in good faith,” and of being unfair. He insisted that investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a “legitimate task of Congress” because it did not “advance a legitimate legislative purpose.” Because of this, he claimed that both the committee and the subpoenas were unconstitutional. Jordan never appeared before the Jan. 6 select committee.
Jordan insists that investigating an insurrection that included an armed mob crashing through the doors of the Capitol is not part of Congress’ business. However, he apparently believes that checking out small personal loans between a father and son demands the attention of two House committees.
By the test that Jordan himself laid out: Exactly what legislative purpose does questioning Hunter Biden about his truck payments satisfy?
As Laura Clawson reported on Wednesday, Rep. Troy Nehls has made it explicitly clear why Republicans want Hunter Biden to come in. They want to launch an impeachment of Joe Biden, evidence or no evidence, so they can provide Donald Trump with “a little bit of ammo to fire back” going into the 2024 election.
This isn’t about any legitimate concerns over anything that either Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did. It’s about House Republicans trying to prove their loyalty to Trump and provide him with something to sneer over at the next rally.
Hunter Biden’s attorney has made it explicitly clear that Hunter Biden wants to testify publicly because Comer’s committee has demonstrated time and again that “it uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public—a hearing would ensure transparency and truth in these proceedings."
Both Comer and Jordan are aware that any hope they would really find something in these hearings to justify further action died over the summer when star witness Devon Archer blew a hole through false claims. They’ve found nothing, because there is nothing, even if Jordan keeps repeating false stories from Rudy Giuliani that were debunked four years ago.
Comer’s “investigation” is a farce. Jordan’s support is the height of hypocrisy. Together they are the Wonder Twins of the Republican House, shaping their committees into a footstool for Trump. Now they’ll get to pound their chests about why the evidence they say should be made public can’t be heard by the public.
Campaign ActionWith the exit of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the ejection of George Santos, and the impending resignation of Rep. Bill Johnson, House Republicans' bare majority is getting delectably precarious.
Daily Kos Elections political director David Nir games it all out, concluding that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson will likely end up having a two-vote margin of error on any given measure.
Wherever the numbers end up, Republicans' exceedingly thin majority throughout the 118th Congress has proven to be a blessing in disguise, despite Democrats' failure to keep the majority last cycle. Rarely, if ever, has America seen a more pathetic display of governance than that offered by House Republicans this Congress. The chaos of multiple leadership battles amid the daily display of internecine warfare within the GOP caucus has been both instructive for voters and good for America heading into, yet again, the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
As former Rep. Liz Cheney bluntly noted this week, “A vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in. ... People have to recognize that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution.”
Cheney also called the prospect of Mike Johnson still being speaker in 2025 "terrifying" in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.
One of the reasons the race for control of the House is so critical is because it's the 119th Congress that will certify the 2024 election, and House Democrats can serve as a backstop to any Republican election-stealing efforts if Democrats control the chamber.
To the benefit of the pro-democracy side, House Republicans have revealed themselves as completely incapable of leading anything. The message appears to be sinking in, based on Navigator Research polling of roughly 60 battleground districts that will decide control of the House in next year's elections, with nearly 7 in 10 respondents recently saying Republicans have prioritized "the wrong things."
Last month, pro-Trump Rep. Chip Roy of Texas summed up House Republican rule nicely.
“Explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done," Roy said during a floor speech.
Last week, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries happily riffed off Roy's rant in a press conference during the debate over expelling Santos from his seat.
"House Republicans have now been in the majority for a little under a year—they have nothing to show the American people that they have accomplished.," Jeffries said, mentioning Roy's assertion. "Nothing to meet the needs of the American people," he continued.
Fortunately for Democrats, that dynamic won't be changing anytime soon. House Republicans’ next debacle is already in process, with Johnson preparing to hold a vote as soon as next week on initiating a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Not only will it not be popular with voters, it's the perfect way for House Republicans to kick off 2024
Campaign Action