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For a span of eight months, no adults were present in the House Republican day-care center. The far-right toddlers threw tantrums day after day without any consequences. Rather than giving them a timeout, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to appease them with lollipops, ice cream, and sugary drinks.
However, on Saturday, with only 12 hours left before a potential government shutdown, McCarthy decided to step up and act like a grown-up. “We’re going to be adults in the room and keep the government open while we solve this problem,” he announced to reporters as he rushed to the floor to propose funding the government at current levels for another 45 days.
And if Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and the other troublemakers attempt to remove him from the speakership with a motion to vacate the chair? McCarthy dared them, “If somebody wants to remove [me] because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try. But I think this country’s too important.”
Who is this man and what has he done with Kevin McCarthy?
Let’s give a partial applause to the embattled speaker. He did the right thing, but only after exhausting all other alternatives. After clumsily stirring up another manufactured crisis, he turned to Democrats to bail him out, just like he did with the debt ceiling issue.
Initially skeptical of McCarthy’s announcement of a “clean” continuing resolution with no changes to spending levels or policies, Democrats eventually embraced the proposal after taking the time to review the 71-page bill. While House Republicans were divided, with a 126-90 vote in favor of the bill, Democrats overwhelmingly approved it with a 209-1 vote.
It may not be the perfect solution, as it just delays the threat of a shutdown until right before Thanksgiving and doesn’t allocate urgently needed funds for Ukraine to fend off Russia’s invasion. However, it is, at long last, a step towards rationale, especially considering that House Republicans had previously attempted to cut government spending by roughly 30 percent. Just a few hours before, Republicans were even willing to let the government shut down.
“MAGA Republicans have surrendered,” exclaimed Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), the House Democratic leader, after the vote.
However, the truth is they weren’t surrendering, they were simply put aside. When asked before the vote whether he had any support from the extremists in his caucus, McCarthy chuckled and replied, “No. Look, I had tried that for eight months.”
Now, a vote to remove McCarthy from the speakership seems likely, as Gaetz declared on Saturday that it is on “tenuous ground.” McCarthy’s future may depend on the willingness of Democrats to come to his rescue. Democrats have valid reasons not to trust McCarthy, especially since he recently attempted to placate the far-right by initiating impeachment proceedings against President Biden without any evidence of wrongdoing. Even if McCarthy could be trusted, how much more of his incompetence can this struggling nation withstand?
Throughout the week, he didn’t even make an effort to avoid a shutdown. On the House floor, he wasted valuable time on spending bills that would do nothing to prevent the imminent crisis. Then, only two days before the shutdown deadline, Republican House members held the first hearing of their “impeachment inquiry” into Biden, an embarrassing session in which their own witnesses admitted they didn’t possess any evidence against the president.
McCarthy’s team had to withdraw the Republican-drafted Pentagon spending bill from the floor on three separate occasions due to holdouts within the party. On Thursday, rebels within the party defeated the Republican-drafted agriculture appropriations bill. And on Friday, when McCarthy finally attempted to keep the government open, it was a complete failure, with 21 Republicans voting against it.
In private caucus meetings in the Capitol basement, Republicans shouted and cursed at each other. In public, they resorted to name-calling: they added “charlatan” and “joke” to an already extensive list of insults, including “lunatics,” “pathetic,” “weak,” and “clowns.”
Outside the caucus meeting on Friday evening, Rep. Steve Womack (Ark.), a seventh-term Republican on the Appropriations Committee, compared the scene to a football team using the wrong snap count or a spaceship disintegrating upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. “You make a lot of mistakes when you are tired and mad, and we are both right now,” he remarked, confidently predicting that the lights will go out at midnight on Saturday.
Republicans were hopelessly divided. Should they propose a seven-day continuing resolution, a 14-day one, or a 30-day one? Should the spending level be $1.47 trillion or $1.56 trillion? What about the border? Consensus was impossible to reach. Gaetz and another holdout, Dan Bishop (N.C.), stormed out of the meeting. Another dissenter, Bob Good (Va.), left shouting, claiming that McCarthy had “surrendered to the Senate,” where a bipartisan stopgap spending bill was progressing.
Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) expressed her support for a shutdown as a form of punishment for Washington due to COVID restrictions. “People here in Washington need to understand how it feels to be shut down,” she told reporters.
Rep. George Santos (N.Y.) couldn’t even deny the chaos unfolding in the room, admitting, “We’re just screaming at each other at this point,” in a conversation with Axios’s Andrew Solender.
Conditions had not improved by Saturday morning when Republicans reconvened. This time, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) informed them that they didn’t have enough votes to pass any continuing resolution, regardless of the duration (14, 30, or 45 days). Their plan was to let the government shut down while addressing a few bills (such as paying the troops and extending flood insurance) in order to alleviate some of the damage.
Then, almost miraculously, McCarthy transformed into an adult. It seems he had an epiphany and finally recognized the truth he had been unaware of for the past eight months: there was no way to appease the extremists in his caucus.
Unfortunately, this realization came a tad too late. McCarthy’s handling of the situation couldn’t have been more disastrous. At the beginning of the year, House Republicans had proudly adopted a rule requiring bill texts to be distributed 72 hours before a floor vote. However, this time, they released the text just minutes before bringing it to the floor. The Democrats strategically played for time, calling for an adjournment vote and engaging in a mini-filibuster led by Jeffries, while their staff rushed to review the bill’s contents.
As chaos unfolded, hotheaded Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) deliberately pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building, causing an evacuation. A video caught him in the act, and he will likely face consequences for his actions.
Immediately after the vote, some of the 90 Republican dissenters against McCarthy’s “clean CR” began to sound the alarm. Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) complained that “McCarthy sided with 209 Democrats” on “Biden-Pelosi-Schumer spending” and questioned on social media whether he should remain Speaker of the House.
Gaetz already had an answer for that question. Right after the vote, he approached the microphone on the House floor, hoping to be recognized. However, the presiding officer, Womack, promptly adjourned the House until Monday, pushing back McCarthy’s reckoning for at least 48 hours.
When asked if the Democrats would assist the speaker in keeping his position, Jeffries simply responded, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Maybe McCarthy can strike a deal to retain the speakership, but the American people deserve better than the constant chaos and crises that have characterized his amateurish term in office.
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