Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy is barely hanging on to his conference, Axios reported last week, because he’s been badmouthing his leadership team to other colleagues. That’s making prospects for any agreement on a debt ceiling solution even murkier.
A report in The New York Times last week started the latest brouhaha, in which McCarthy has been telling GOP members that he thinks Republican Rep. Joey Arrington of Texas, chair of the Budget Committee, is incompetent and not up to the job. He has also been telling people that Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana is unreliable, “ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take a position on anything.”
Can you say “projection”?
McCarthy seems to have forgotten he’s serving at the pleasure of his restive caucus and especially the maniacs who put a steep price on the speaker’s gavel. They wouldn’t let him have it until he agreed to the condition that any one member at any time can call for his ouster. That’s called a “motion to vacate,” a privileged resolution that takes priority over anything else pending on the floor and must receive a vote. It’s a hot topic already among House GOP members, one telling Axios, “The members I’ve spoken with are just stunned by his rebuking of his budget chair, and certainly of our leadership. … I can’t imagine [he will last an entire term].”
These are not the people who are going to solve the debt ceiling issue.
RELATED: Barely Speaker McCarthy stumbles over debt ceiling, budget again
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That’s got people talking again about one potential way for House Democrats to step in and save the day—using a discharge petition to pass a clean debt ceiling solution. Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who served as Budget Committee chair when he was in the House, tells the NYT that House Democrats should start the process now. “I do think it is important to lay the groundwork for a discharge petition because it is a complicated process, so you need to plan ahead—meaning now,” he said. “Having a backup would be a good strategy and, if necessary, would put pressure on House Republicans.”
Yes, the key is planning ahead, and if this were to be a truly viable plan that planning would have happened a couple of months ago. This legislative trick bypasses House leadership and the Rules committee to force a vote on a bill that the majority of the House—218 members—agrees upon. That’s the first problem—Democrats would need five Republicans willing to buck their party and agree to it. Then there are more hurdles, most of which involve time. It takes 30 legislative days—days when the House is in session—after it’s introduced before backers could even start getting the 218 signatures on it to force it out of committee and to the floor. Even then, there are another nine legislative days on the front end after the bill has been successfully discharged before it can be considered.
As of now, the debt limit could be hit any time between June and September, depending on revenues from this tax season and other factors. And as of now, there are just 44 legislative days scheduled in the House between now and Aug. 1, with all of August and nearly half of September scheduled for recess. That leaves very little wiggle room—just five days—for this option to work. Five days that McCarthy and team could easily take away through various other procedural maneuvers.
Van Hollen concedes that even if it is introduced the first day members are back from their current recess, April 17, lawmakers couldn’t start getting signatures until June 21. Given the slim chances for this to work, there still might be some value to Democrats trying it. It would be a chance for Democrats to demonstrate just how intractable the GOP is on saving the global economy by keeping the U.S. from defaulting on its debt—they have to be forced to do it. That is if five Republicans who want to avoid disaster can even be mustered.
It theoretically could put more pressure on a fracturing GOP, if Democrats were able to peel some Republicans away. It would certainly highlight the fact that McCarthy and team are continuing to flail, without any solution of their own to get out of the mess.
It’s a highly unlikely option for solving the debt crisis problem, but it is probably still worth putting out there. It would have to be introduced pretty much immediately, however, to be taken seriously. In the meantime, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats need to keep the pressure on McCarthy and team to come up with their budget and their solution. That pressure might just break them.
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