McCarthy’s momentum: His past wins will matter little if he is unable to deliver on the debt ceiling

Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker, was only successful in securing the gavel after 15 ballots. Nevertheless, the slender Republican majority had some successes in governing, with the most fractious members of the Freedom Caucus providing the margin of victory.

The midterm elections gave Republicans a nine-seat advantage in the House, leaving many inside the GOP in a bad mood. However, McCarthy identified legislation that could not be filibustered or kept off the legislative calendar by the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer. One example is the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to repeal regulations published within the last 60 days.

McCarthy’s biggest test lies ahead with the showdown over the debt ceiling between House Republicans and the Biden White House. If not resolved, the government faces the risk of defaulting this summer. Even cutting it close could result in a credit downgrade at a time of an uncertain economy. The bad outcome will outweigh the small successes that McCarthy’s young majority has achieved since January. The White House is salivating over the prospect of fighting Republicans on this, with President Joe Biden insisting on a clean debt ceiling increase without preconditions.

Republicans have passed legislation that divides Democrats, with a few even making it through the Senate. Nevertheless, McCarthy’s past wins will matter little if he fails to deliver on the debt ceiling. His conservative disaffection could grow to the point where it threatens his speakership if he cannot secure spending cuts. On the other hand, flirting with a calamitous result on default could bring the whole Republican majority down with the economy.

Republicans pick this fight; they will rather than Biden get the blame if things go wrong. McCarthy’s majority is based on spending control, playing on the issue of inflation running at its highest in 41 years. Spending is the primary cause of inflation resulting in neither a mandate for specific spending cuts nor major reforms to popular government programs.

The Freedom Caucus has stepped in due to the absence of a House Republican budget. With the size of the Republican majority, the reforms it won to make it easier to replace the speaker, and its decisive role in McCarthy’s ascension, the Freedom Caucus is no group to be trifled with.

The vote on overturning a crime bill passed by the liberal Council of the District of Columbia and the COVID-19 origins intelligence that Democrats did not resist McCarthy on was instructive. Nevertheless, lifting the national emergency and other bills involving ESG investing and clean water will be shorter-lived due to Biden having vetoed them.

McCarthy needs to find areas that divide Democrats, such as ideological and generational splits over crime and environmental policies. Schumer has had difficulty corralling his caucus due to a lot of possible defectors built into it, with vulnerable centrists posing as much of a challenge as the Freedom Caucus.

The past House Republican majorities all survived, but the Democratic presidents they tangled with all won second terms. The economic ramifications of any debt ceiling delay affect Biden, too, during his election campaign, and House Republicans have not been ineffective so far. However, the future holds a test of McCarthy’s leadership and the Freedom Caucus’s political maturity and commitment to the California Republican running the chamber

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