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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) notched a victory for himself and for Republicans with Wednesday's passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. The bill will raise the debt ceiling through 2025, claw back pandemic and IRS spending, improve welfare programs, speed up permitting, reinstate student loan payments, and cut non-defense discretionary spending. The bill also has an enforcement mechanism: If Congress fails to pass the required appropriations bills by January 1, overall discretionary spending will be cut by 1 percent.

The legislation doesn't restore fiscal sanity to the federal budget—only changes to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would do that—but it is a step in the right direction. Since becoming speaker in January, McCarthy has faced a test: Could he strike a fiscal bargain with President Biden that would earn Republican support and avoid a breach of the debt ceiling and a government shutdown? Well, the grade is in. He aced the exam.

I’m as happy as anybody that Congress is in the process of avoiding a U.S.-debt default. It would have been horrific economically and a sign that rampant stupidity had overtaken our political system. But c’mon: Some of the paeans to the strategic brilliance of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in getting the deal through the House are a bit hard to take.

Yes, McCarthy had to figure out a way to get a deal with Joe Biden that a majority of House Republicans would vote for and that wouldn’t outrage conservatives enough to motivate them to toss him out of his Speakership. But it’s not like he had any choice about placing himself and his country in danger: It was very clear that the key House members who secured his gavel after 15 ballots in January wanted a confrontation with Democrats over the debt limit. Taking the economy hostage was part of the plan all along for converting a narrow Republican majority in one chamber of Congress into some real power and a 2024 talking point. After all, this had worked in similar circumstances during the Obama administration.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is safe in his position after reaching a debt-ceiling deal with President Joe Biden that almost a third of his Republican caucus voted against, a key GOP negotiator said.

Representative Garret Graves, who was part of McCarthy’s negotiating team with the White House, was asked about comments last week by fellow Republican Ken Buck that the speaker should be concerned about his political future.

A couple days ago, Steven Pearlstein, Pulitzer Prize winning professor of public affairs at George Mason University, explained in a Washington Post column "How to take Congress away from the crazies" . Professor Pearlstein outlined in detail how a bipartisan majority could implement some simple procedural changes that would allow the House to function productively. He concludes:

“These modest steps, easily within the power of moderates and pragmatists, would neutralize extremists, break through the partisan gridlock and jump-start bipartisan compromise to solve some of the big issues facing the country.”

The sky is falling in Washington as the nation looks poised to plunge into an unspeakable crisis. Sure, millions of kids around the country are still living in poverty, homelessness is on the rise, and the United States remains unique in the world for having medical bills be the number-one cause of bankruptcy. But none of this is what’s currently causing dismay in the nation’s capital.

No, instead, the United States’ cartoonishly gigantic military budget might get a modest cut.

Sometimes, a surprise is not a surprise. In recent years, the US defense budget has skyrocketed. Last year, for example, Congress added $44.6 billion to the Pentagon budget compared to an already sky-high Biden administration request. As a result, the funds appropriated to the Department of Defense last year increased by a colossal $76 billion from the previous year. In fact, the US defense budget is well above the peak of the Vietnam War after adjusting for inflation.

The push to shovel more money into the Pentagon has been led primarily by Republicans, such as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) but supported by most Republicans and many Democrats as well. Rogers crowed last year about the annual defense authorization bill as a “bipartisan and bicameral agreement that makes the investments our military needs to maintain overmatch with China.” Certainly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine added gasoline to the defense fire.

So despite weeks of negotiations to reach an agreement on spending levels, both within the Republican caucus and with President Biden’s team, Speaker McCarthy is now cavalierly inviting the extremists to stage a repeat performance.

Never mind that moderates of both parties, those Members who actually comprise a governing majority, will never support the radical spending cuts MAGA will propose. Never mind that indulging the fantasies of the least responsible elements of the Republican party will subject the House to another pointless cycle of divisiveness.

The ink is barely dry on a debt limit deal that constrains Pentagon spending for the next two years, but lawmakers in both parties are already looking for ways to boost funding levels in spite of those caps.

The pact passed the House late Wednesday with the support of most Republican defense hawks, even though the deal caps national defense spending at the administration’s $886 billion proposal for fiscal 2024. It’s still unclear as of Thursday afternoon how the GOP will break in the Senate.

Many say that Washington is more divided than ever, but political quarrels in the nation’s capital and beyond are easily cast aside to unify against even the mere suggestion that perhaps the defense department’s budget might be a bit too high.

That’s what happened when reports emerged late last week that Representative Kevin McCarthy had secured a deal with rogue Republicans to become the next House speaker. In exchange for their votes, the Freedom Caucus – a group of more rightwing House GOP lawmakers – received assurances that the federal budget will freeze at FY2022 levels, which could effectively mean a cut to the Pentagon budget by anywhere from $75bn to $100bn.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s compromises with far-right members of his own Republican party to gain leadership of the House in January may be coming back to haunt him.

Last week, 11 members of the far-right GOP contingent known as the House Freedom Caucus expressed their displeasure with McCarthy, voting with Democrats to block a procedural vote on two Republican bills to limit regulations on gas stoves, as well as halting business on the House floor for days in what has been described widely as a revolt.

House Republicans will try again on votes to advance legislation Wednesday after conservatives blocked bills from reaching the floor in a protest over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

McCarthy cut a deal with President Joe Biden and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling, which House conservatives believe was in violation of parameters of the deals McCarthy made to secure his speakership.

As criticism builds in Republican ranks over the debt ceiling deal struck by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden, some hard-line conservatives have begun floating the idea of toppling the speaker.

On a House Freedom Caucus call Monday night, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., floated using the motion to vacate, a rule that would allow any House member to force a vote to remove the speaker, two sources familiar with the call said. Buck, speaking toward the end of the call, referred to it as the “elephant in the room,” a source said.

“The speaker himself has said on numerous occasions, the greatest threat to America is our debt, and now is the time to act. We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Perry said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”

Those efforts fell short. After Freedom Caucus members failed to quash the bill when it came before the House rules committee on Tuesday, McCarthy’s Republican critics staged one final attempt to prevent the legislation’s passage. Twenty-nine House Republicans opposed the procedural motion to set up the final vote on the debt ceiling bill, and that resistance would have been enough to kill the legislation if Democrats had not come to McCarthy’s assistance. In the end, 52 Democrats supported the procedural motion, clearing the way for the bill’s ultimate passage.

Meanwhile, McCarthy allies have aggressively pushed back on the idea that the speaker is a short-timer who’s trying to quickly check off all of the boxes of the job before a hasty exit. They argue that McCarthy, who served in leadership for 14 years before he fulfilled his lifelong ambition of becoming speaker, has had plenty of time to think and plot out what he’d like his speakership to look like.

“I think he’s been thinking about what he’d liked to do for a long time,” said Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., who has served with McCarthy over the past eight years. “He’s always been a very energetic, thoughtful leader that knows what he wants to do.”

Alongside Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at an event in New York, Trump reflected on what the House had just done. He took the occasion to bash Obamacare as being terrible, and then he turned to Turnbull. “We have a failing health care — I shouldn’t say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia,” Trump said, as The Post’s Abby Phillip reports, “because you have better health care than we do.” Australia’s health-care system is run by the government. It’s essentially a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system that is available to everyone, with private insurance also available. (They even call it “Medicare.”) Consider this merely the latest evidence that Trump, in his heart of hearts, wants single-payer health care. Indeed, it seems to be his forbidden fruit. Back in 2000, he advocated for it as both a potential Reform Party presidential candidate and in his book, “The America We Deserve.” “We must have universal health care. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole,” he wrote, adding: “The Canadian-style, single-payer system in which all payments for medical care are made to a single agency (as opposed to the large number of HMOs and insurance companies with their diverse rules, claim forms and deductibles) … helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans.” Just before the 2016 campaign, Trump appeared on David Letterman’s show and held up Scotland’s socialized system as the ideal. “A friend of mine was in Scotland recently. He got very, very sick. They took him by ambulance and he was there for four days. He was really in trouble, and they released him and he said, ‘Where do I pay?’ And they said, ‘There’s no charge,’” Trump said. “Not only that, he said it was like great doctors, great care. I mean, we could have a great system in this country.” Then, early in the 2016 campaign, he again praised the single-payer systems in Scotland and Canada — while also arguing that the United States needed to have a private system. Asked on “Morning Joe” whether he supported single-payer, he said: “No, but it’s certainly something that in certain countries works. It actually works incredibly well in Scotland. Some people think it really works in Canada. But not here, I don’t think it would work as well here.” He said two days later at a GOP debate: “As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.” Later on, Trump would repeatedly push for universal health care without specifically subscribing to the words “single-payer.” “Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say,” Trump said in a September 2015 “60 Minutes” interview. “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” He added when asked who is going to pay for it: “The government’s gonna pay for it.” That was enough for Breitbart, which would become vehemently pro-Trump during the 2016 campaign, to declare Trump had embraced single-payer. Then Trump told The Washington Post mere days before his inauguration, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.” He clarified: “I don’t want single-payer. What I do want is to be able to take care of people.” And some see the current debate eventually winding up with single-payer. Law professor F.H. Buckley argued in the New York Post last month that, in the face of defeat for the Republican health-care bill, Trump should just go for it. He argued that it would be a great thing for the Republican Party because it would eliminate Democrats’ claim to being the party of compassion and that Trump’s supporters would actually like it. “Leave behind all the people who hated you, who curse when you succeed,” Buckley wrote. “Reach out to the people who voted for you. Challenge the Democrats by offering them what they’ve always said they wanted.” It’s not the most far-fetched thing in the world — the idea that health-care reform would fail and Trump would pursue the thing that he’s praised for years. Sixty percent of Americans believe the government should guarantee health care, according to a recent Pew study, and even Republicans have moved toward this position. But it would risk breaking the Republican Party in half. The GOP has warmed to Trump’s pro-big-government message, but even that could have limits. Whatever happens, though, Trump’s past — and now current — rhetoric doesn’t lie: He’s pretty impressed with government-run health care in the places it works. It’s almost like he wishes he could do it here.

More than half of Republicans in a new American Barometer poll say they support “Medicare for all,” also known as a single-payer health-care system. The survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 52 percent of Republicans polled said they supported the option, while 48 percent said they opposed it. Twenty-five percent said they “strongly” supported “Medicare for all,” while 27 percent said they “somewhat” supported it.

Maybe that’s the entire point. Washington has faced divided government before, but the extent to which the House Speaker is now beholden to a far-right flank is new. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter who actually holds the gavel. The real power in the House rests with the handful of lawmakers who now feel plenty aggrieved over broken rules that, frankly, have never been made public. They have now shown they will tank even low-stakes PR stunts to get their leadership’s attention, even if it dooms a bill they actually like. For them, roughing up a Speaker to remind him that he needs them on even the most routine moves is a much more appealing prize, and it’s one they can get almost any time on a lark.

McCarthy’s next moves will be telling. On Tuesday, he tried to tamp down expectations that the House would take up an additional chunk of spending for Ukraine that Senate Republicans are promoting. That is likely a nonstarter unless McCarthy can win back the trust of his political captors. If his right flank will park even their favored pieces of the agenda—even one as far-fetched as Biden banning gas stoves—McCarthy stands no chance at moving an agenda with real needs. That includes the 12 appropriations bills Congress needs to pass in order to fund the government. Tackling those measures are a perennial challenge that got much more complicated under limits put in place as part of the debt-ceiling deal.

“How can you govern if you can’t pass a rule?” asked Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who joined the revolt against McCarthy this week.

When Kevin McCarthy was making concessions to the right-wing House Freedom Caucus in January to become speaker, perhaps the most talked-about lever he gave away was the “motion to vacate the chair.” The opposition demanded — and received — the right of a single member to force a vote to try to remove McCarthy as speaker.

This rule has existed for a long time, but it took on new resonance not that long ago, even playing a role in House Speaker John A. Boehner’s 2015 resignation. Staff for Boehner’s successor, Paul D. Ryan, labeled the rule a “weapon pointed at” the speaker “all the time.” The message to McCarthy was unmistakable: If you don’t toe our line, we will wield that weapon.

Last week, members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus weren’t content to oppose the bipartisan budget deal that resolved the Republicans’ debt ceiling crisis. They also raised the specter of punishing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for agreeing to the deal.

But we’re occasionally reminded that a lot can happen in a week. The Hill reported overnight: