April 17, 2023 03:46 PM UTC

House Republicans Have Little to Celebrate After 100 Days

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Republican House Majority in Congress surpassed its first 100 days in power last week. Silly sloganeering and partisan rhetoric aside, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have a whole lot to boast about after the first three months of Republican control in the lower chamber of Congress.

As The Associated Press explained on Friday:

As the embattled Republican leader from California rounds the first 100 days at the helm of a slim House Republican majority, it is proving hard to shake off the spectacle of the unsteady launch that has become a defining backbeat to McCarthy’s speakership…

…It’s 100 days into the new Congress, and McCarthy’s speakership is what one senior congressional Democratic aide compared to the spotlight on the theater stage, with the audience waiting for the play to begin and then suddenly, the realization there is no script. [Pols emphasis]

McCarthy is performing the role as speaker — second in line to the presidency — but the Republican leader allied with Donald Trump remains stubbornly limited in action because of his uneasy grip on the gavel. Any single lawmaker is able to call for a vote to oust the speaker from office.

As such, McCarthy has been unable to steer House Republicans to start delivering on broader pursuits — the GOP promises for border security or budget cuts to prevent a debt ceiling crisis, for starters. How he handles them will be the defining challenge that makes or breaks his next 100 days.

McCarthy endured an humiliating four days and 15 rounds of voting in January in order to secure his lifelong dream of becoming Speaker of the House, a spectacle that ended up being the longest-lasting battle for House Speaker since before the Civil War. In order to pick up the remaining holdout votes needed to become Speaker — which included Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-ifle) — McCarthy caved on something he had once refused to even consider: Changing the rules so that any one Member of the House of Representatives could call for a new vote to oust him from the Speaker’s office. As a result, McCarthy’s power rests solely on his ability to hold at bay the whims of extremists — such as members of the notoriously ill-tempered Freedom Caucus — who could decide at any time to light his speakership on fire.

The ever-present threat that any House Republican could at any time drop an anvil on his head has made it more difficult for McCarthy to avoid causing an economic disaster that would be blamed on the GOP. McCarthy may not be able or willing to reach a deal with Democrats on a debt ceiling debate that could cripple the U.S. economy. From The Hill newspaper:

As McCarthy reaches the 100-day mark of the new Congress, he’s facing down the toughest tests of his roller-coaster tenure, as Republicans brace for soul-defining battles with Biden and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling and funding the government — two crucial debates where failure brings the potential to crash an already fragile economy.

Republicans are generally united behind McCarthy’s attempts to force Biden to negotiate spending cuts as a condition for raising the debt ceiling — a stipulation the president has so far refused.

But their position has been blunted by internal disputes over policy priorities, behind-the-scenes tensions between McCarthy and other top Republicans and the GOP’s simple failure to coalesce around a long-term budget blueprint to counter Biden’s proposal heading into the talks…

…The combination confronts McCarthy with the greatest challenge since he took the gavel, testing his ability to unite a restive conference in a debate where the very notion of success is ill-defined and a misfire could prompt economic turmoil, efforts to boot him from the Speakership, or both. [Pols emphasis]

McCarthy finally unveiled his first debt ceiling proposal today; it is both insufficient and insulting. His plan to cut food stamps as a way to balance some of the budget is the equivalent of offering to pay only for the gratuity after an expensive dinner. Many of his fellow Republicans aren’t on board with the idea anyway.

McCarthy and allies have crowed about their success in passing silly messaging bills that have no chance of making it out of the Senate — a limited follow-up to the House GOP’s laughably-broad “Commitment to America” that it rolled out last September — but the debt ceiling discussions are a much different problem. For example, the first bill passed by McCarthy’s House was a measure to repeal a funding increase for the IRS that made MAGA Republicans happy but is functionally irrelevant since the Senate won’t even consider the proposal. There will be significant real-world implications that affect all Americans should McCarthy force the United States to default on its debts for the first time.

Many of McCarthy’s other legislative priorities have floundered under the weight of unrealistic expectations. His demand that all House committees focus on investigating one thing or another within the federal government has complicated other GOP message points and opened up Republicans to revelations of their own complicity in illegally coordinating with the likes of former President Donald Trump. As The Associated Press summarized:

The House investigations into Biden and his family that were supposed to be a capstone of the new Republican majority have spun into a free-for-all with several committees examining all aspects of the federal government.

Republicans have muddled their own 2022 messaging with conflicting assignments. The GOP’s “tough on crime” narrative, for example, promised to crack down on local prosecutors “who refuse to prosecute crimes,” yet Rep. Jim Jordan has overseen efforts to do the exact opposite by interfering in a state indictment of Trump. House Republicans have done nothing to advance their goals of adding 200,000 more police officers or securing the border with Mexico, but they have made field trips (among them Boebert and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) to praise convicts who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

As Spectrum News in New York explains:

While House Republicans are touting their successes, one expert says the newly minted majority has yet to deliver on its promises to voters.

“Compared to other Congresses of divided nature as we have right now, it’s about on par, especially in this polarized era where it’s tough to get agreement,” said Casey Burgat, director of the Legislative Affairs program at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. “But strictly speaking, judging by what they promised their constituents once they got the gavel and sending forward, they’ve lacked a little muster there.” [Pols emphasis]

In short, Kevin McCarthy’s caucus has generated a lot of bluster and public displays of nonsense in its first 100 days, but not much else. None of McCarthy’s stated priorities have come to fruition or even appear to be on the horizon (there’s still no border security bill, for instance). If McCarthy can’t work out a deal on the debt ceiling, he risks losing Republican support in the House and/or plunging the economy into a recession.

Democrats can retake control of the House of Representatives with a net gain of five seats in 2024. At the rate things are going in McCarthy’s House, voters may be more than happy to make another switch in 18 months.