McCarthy DA - Georgetown 2023

McCarthy Speakership DA
Neg
Top Level
1NC
McCarthy’s survived the debt ceiling fight, but he needs to step carefully and avoid introducing controversial legislation to appease the far right.
Sarah Ferris & Olivia Beavers 6/1, staff at Politico, “How Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene helped McCarthy get his debt deal through,” Politico, 6/1/23, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/31/mccarthy-debt-limit-deal-gop-divisions-00099567
Jim Jordan and other key conservative firebrands have caused a fair share of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s biggest headaches. But instead of leading the rebellion this time, they helped him quash it.
As the House Freedom Caucus was preparing to discuss whether to officially oppose the speaker’s bipartisan debt deal — a move that would potentially galvanize conservative opposition — Jordan (R-Ohio) phoned several fellow members with a request, according to a person familiar with the calls. The former chair of the group urged them to hold back, effectively giving conservatives who wanted to vote with McCarthy license to do so.
Jordan, a longtime McCarthy antagonist turned ally, almost got his wish. The group took no official position until hours before the vote, when most members had already made up their minds.
The beloved House Freedom Caucus co-founder — who gravitated toward McCarthy after the now-speaker tapped him for a senior spot on the Oversight Committee — helped out in other ways. The Ohio lawmaker spoke up in favor of the deal in private calls and meetings, including taking the mic at a closed-door huddle on Tuesday night, just hours after many of his fellow conservatives had spent the day trashing the deal.
And he publicly denounced as a “terrible idea” Rep. Dan Bishop’s talk of moving to remove McCarthy over his compromise with President Joe Biden. By Wednesday afternoon, Bishop (R-N.C.) was refusing to discuss his oust-McCarthy idea, dismissing it as a preoccupation of “fascinated” reporters.
Now, McCarthy has triumphed on one of his toughest votes yet, with rumblings of booting him largely extinguished, at least for now. Asked about the possible long-term impact of the debt deal on conservative goodwill, Jordan said he didn’t think there would be any.
“No, I think we’ve got a good record of doing what we told them we were going to do,” he said in an interview.
The backing from Jordan, along with other once unlikely conservative allies with virtually no record of supporting past budget deals like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), has proven to be a lifeline for McCarthy. He’s spent months, and in some cases years, taking steps to win them over, with a plum committee assignment here, a desired debt provision there.
Instead of kowtowing to his most far-right members, McCarthy was forced by the reality of divided government to take a divide-and-conquer strategy on must-pass legislation: Cut a deal with Democrats that does just enough to win over a clutch of conservatives with Freedom Caucus cred, and hope the remaining critics lack the collective willpower to tank the agreement.
If most Republicans get on board, it means threats against his speakership won’t gain real traction. And with two-thirds of the GOP conference backing the deal Wednesday, it seemed to be working.
“We didn’t do it by taking the easy route,” McCarthy said in a celebratory post-vote press conference. “It wasn’t an easy fight, I had people on both sides upset.”
But he added: “I think we did pretty damn good for the American people.”
It’s an approach that McCarthy will likely need to return to repeatedly heading into a packed fall schedule. Government funding, Pentagon policy and a contentious farm bill will all require a sizable GOP majority in addition to Democratic backing.
And this is probably not the last time he’ll need to lean on conservative allies like Jordan, a relationship that has paid dividends after McCarthy continuously elevated the most famous face of the House Freedom Caucus on high-profile committees.
“I think it’s about like you’d expect. I think the bulk of the center right conference is gonna support this. I think some of the more colorful members on the edges are not,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), an ally of McCarthy, said before the vote. “There was never going to be any kind of a deal that was gonna get Bob Good and Tim Burchett on board. I don’t know that this is unfolding in a way that is particularly surprising.”
Some, however, aren’t ready to give McCarthy a pass. And others are indicating trouble is still brewing. Asked about whether there are ongoing discussions about a motion to vacate, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said he doesn’t know what to make of it after having “multiple” people call him “today really bugged by how this has gone down.”
“There are people, not [Freedom Caucus], who came up to me and told me this very same thing today,” Biggs said, leaving the floor after the debt bill passed the House. “And they’re using rather colorful language. They were telling me that it’s not good. And in that, in their opinion, that they probably just shot Republican’s agenda next year.”
Still, the anger on the right over McCarthy’s debt negotiation illustrates the bind he can’t escape: appeasing conservatives famously hostile to compromise, while also proving the GOP’s ability to govern alongside Biden. Both McCarthy and the president proved they could work together despite frequent frustrations, with the speaker even surprising his own party by praising Biden’s team on their negotiating skills. Regardless, the two proved they were able to secure a joint political win — or enough of one — to keep their bases happy.
But when it comes to House Republicans, the conservatives’ threats against McCarthy reopen wounds from the bruising battle over his speakership election. A handful of the 20 Republicans who sought to block him are now threatening to seek revenge over the debt deal.
“There are still some pretty deep divisions,” said senior Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.). “We’ve rocked along pretty well, got quite a bit accomplished in this Congress. But as I predicted months ago, we really don’t know the true character of this conference until you have your first heavy lift. And this is it.”
Some of that tension was exposed at Tuesday night’s roughly two-hour conference meeting, where dozens of members lined up to speak up about the deal. While attendees described a mostly united party, some McCarthy allies had warnings for their conservative colleagues. Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the former Agriculture Committee chair, sought to remind Freedom Caucus members that their tactics with the 2013 farm bill had cost them $20 billion in fiscal cuts.
It’ll only be a few more months before Republicans will need to strike another deal with Democrats on a massive government spending bill. And until then, senior Republicans acknowledge there’s work to be done to rebuild trust that’s been lost between McCarthy, his allies and conservatives. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) is Exhibit A — he’d been a cheerleader of the GOP’s original debt bill but became furious with the bipartisan deal, encouraging “every Republican” to vote against it.
“I’m not going to lie, we have some relationship repair that needs to happen. We do,” said lead GOP negotiator Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who was visibly frustrated by fellow Republicans who have criticized it as a bad deal.
Roy, when asked about efforts to persuade him to support the compromise, argued “no one was confused about my position. The only question is how to move forward.”
Graves and Roy, who were in touch on a near-daily basis during negotiations and even held joint press briefings, have spoken privately about their frustrations with each other. And the Louisiana Republican quipped that they’ve agreed that they will both need to sit down and talk “over several bottles of something” to hash things out further.
“There are some pretty raw feelings, I think, on both sides right now,” Graves said.
For now though, few Republicans are seriously worrying about any real threat to McCarthy’s speakership. Despite some saber-rattling, the GOP’s right flank isn’t united on pursuing the idea — and some in the conservative wing voiced disappointment that a small number of their colleagues would leap straight to threatening a no-confidence vote.
“The point was that this is a work in progress. They worked their butts off. And this is a start,” said Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member who likes the debt bill but says he was “inundated” by his constituents to oppose the bill. “And for the discussion to start being about vacate the chair? Come on.”
“We haven’t had a sit down and said, ‘Okay, what’s our strategy on the motion to vacate?’” added Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), another Freedom Caucus member who said the talk was premature. “But before we even get down there, there’s a lot more discussions that have to happen and they just haven’t happened yet.”
There would be fierce conservative resistance to the plan.
Oberlander, 16
Jonathan—professor and chair of Social Medicine and professor of Health Policy & Management at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, "The Virtues and Vices of Single-Payer Health Care," The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 374, p. 1401-1403
The substantive virtues of single-payer programs are compelling. But so are their political liabilities. Medicare for All, which aims to constrain health care spending, faces intense opposition from insurers, the medical care industry, and much of organized medicine. It would trigger fierce resistance from conservatives and the business community and anxiety in many insured Americans fearful about changing coverage and the specter of rationing. The ACA's comparatively conservative reform approach inspired false charges of "socialized medicine," "pulling the plug on grandma," and "death panels." It takes only a little imagination -- or a look back at the history books -- to predict the reactions that an actual single-payer plan would evoke.
Single payer would also require the adoption of large-scale tax increases. Although Americans would save money by not paying premiums to private insurers, the politics of moving immense levels of health care spending visibly into the federal budget are daunting, given the prevailing antitax sentiment. Furthermore, converting our long-established patchwork of payers into a single program would require a substantial overhaul of the status quo, including the ACA.4 Then there are the familiar institutional barriers to major reform within U.S. government, including the necessity of securing a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
In short, single payer has no realistic path to enactment in the foreseeable future. It remains an aspiration more than a viable reform program. Single-payer supporters have not articulated a convincing strategy for overcoming the formidable obstacles that stand in its way. Nor have they, despite substantial public support for single payer, succeeded in mobilizing a social movement that could potentially break down those barriers. The pressing question is not about whether Medicare for All can be enacted during the next presidential administration -- it can't -- but where health care reform goes from here.
Loss of McCarthy leverage forces him to capitulate to conservatives in spending fights to preserve his speakership---that activates the ‘penny plan.’
David Sivak 6/23, Congress & Campaigns Editor at the Washington Examiner, “Congress and Biden barrel toward fall showdown over Washington spending,” Washington Examiner, 6/23/23, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/congress-president-joebiden-fall-showdown-washington-spending
A $120 billion disagreement over federal spending threatens to send Washington hurtling toward a government shutdown later this year, even as lawmakers race to pass their annual appropriations bills.
For a moment, it seemed as though Congress might avoid the kind of last-minute stalemates that have come to define the appropriations process. Lawmakers had pledged to move the 12 annual bills individually after years of catchall packages that often included extraneous measures and what critics consider bloated federal spending.
More importantly, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), leveraging a June deadline to raise the nation's borrowing limit, struck a deal with President Joe Biden that effectively keeps the current level of nondefense spending in place. The compromise allowed House Republicans, holding a narrow majority, to argue they had curbed federal spending, while the Biden administration and Democrats, in control of the Senate, could claim they curbed larger GOP-sought cuts.
Yet no sooner had the country avoided default, raising the nation's debt ceiling to allow for more borrowing, than lawmakers faced a new showdown.
A small group of conservatives staged a revolt over McCarthy's compromise with the White House, grinding business on the House floor to a halt. The speaker, as a promise he made to win the gavel in January, pressed Biden to roll back spending to 2022 levels but walked away with far more modest cuts.
Members of the Freedom Caucus, who hold outsize influence in the House given Republicans' five-seat majority, were left fuming. Caucus members and allied House conservatives even entertained the idea of holding a "no confidence" vote on McCarthy's speakership.
They relented from their blockade, however, after McCarthy agreed to draft spending bills at 2022 levels. The top lines he and Biden agreed to would be a ceiling, not a floor, said Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) three days later as the House nailed down spending levels for each of the 12 bills it will pass in the coming months.
Yet it quickly became apparent that McCarthy had traded one headache for another. Democrats accused him of "reneging" on his deal with Biden, while centrist Republicans grumbled more loudly than ever about his acquiescence to members of the Freedom Caucus.
“Do you think any of us would have made a deal if we thought your number was the deal? What kind of deal is that? What kind of respect for yourselves is that?” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, chided Republicans earlier this month.
The Senate is enduring far less drama as it crafts its own appropriations bills ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the federal government. In fact, Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), have pledged to work on a bipartisan basis.
Yet they know any respite in legislative drama over spending will be brief. They have committed to crafting their spending bills at the levels established in the debt ceiling deal, setting Congress up for a House versus Senate clash.
The two chambers have agreed to spare defense, veterans care, and homeland security from budget cuts, but conservatives want to slash the rest of the discretionary budget. Granger doled out top lines that cut some appropriations bills by more than a third relative to 2023 levels.
The result: a yawning, $119 billion gap between the House and Senate budget plans.
Deep reductions are a nonstarter for Democrats, who control the White House and Senate. Even some centrist Republicans in the House will be reluctant to go along with McCarthy's plan.
Lawmakers, perhaps with the exception of the Freedom Caucus, fundamentally understand that to avert a shutdown starting Oct. 1, it will take another bipartisan compromise such as that seen in the debt ceiling fight.
“You cannot pass appropriations bills without them being both bipartisan and bicameral. The president will not sign,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters earlier this month.
“So, I think this notion that you can deal with 2022 levels, that appears to have been a part of this secret deal, you then may be looking at guaranteeing a shutdown,” added DeLauro, who led the Appropriations Committee from 2021-23.
Yet some House conservatives are already shrugging at the prospect of a shutdown. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said this month he's happy to shutter Washington for weeks if it means reining in federal spending.
For now, Senate appropriators are keeping their heads down. On June 21, they gave each of the 12 Appropriations subcommittees their spending allocation levels for the coming fiscal year. The full Appropriations Committee also amended and rewrote, or "marked up," two of the dozen federal spending bills, for military construction and agriculture.
"I'm focused on getting our job done right now," Murray told the Washington Examiner.
The push is notable — the full Senate has not passed an individual appropriations bill since 2019. Murray and Collins's predecessors, who retired at the end of the last Congress, preferred to cut behemoth spending bills outside of the committee process.
Collins told the Washington Examiner she hopes the return to some semblance of normalcy will ease tensions for conservatives, who seethed at what they viewed as years of backroom deals that excluded input from the rank and file.
She plans to have the "vast majority" of bills reported out of committee before the August recess.
The House Appropriations Committee has already approved funding for agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
But the entire process has appropriators irked since the cuts are too severe for Democrats to stomach. To compensate, Granger is eyeing billions in funds Congress previously allocated but never spent, despite warnings from conservatives that the clawbacks are no substitute for lower discretionary spending.
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), a member of Appropriations and the No. 3 Democrat in the House, worried aloud that the House would end up short-changed in the process.
"We are completely ceding the appropriations process to the Senate at this point," Aguilar told reporters this month. "The Senate is the only entity that is marking up to the agreed-upon numbers."
He predicted the House would eventually wind up voting on whatever the Senate produces.
That vote may not come in the fall. If history is any guide, lawmakers will extend government funding to late December, teeing up a now-familiar scramble to avert a shutdown before the Christmas recess.
The stakes are not nearly so high as in the debt ceiling fight. There's mostly a political cost, usually shouldered by Republicans, to pay when the government shuts down.
But Congress is incentivized to reach a deal by a provision in the debt ceiling compromise that forces a 1%, across-the-board cut if lawmakers fail to act by the end of the year.
Crushes readiness
Caroline Coudriet 5/31, staff at Roll Call, “Hawks worry about defense caps in debt limit deal,” Roll Call, 5/31/23, https://rollcall.com/2023/05/31/hawks-worry-about-defense-caps-in-debt-limit-deal/
A debt limit compromise that would cap defense spending for the next two years is aggravating congressional defense hawks who want the Pentagon to get a significant funding boost.
Many Republicans in particular have spent months arguing that the Biden administration’s proposed $842 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2024 shortchanges the Pentagon at a time of widespread concern about China’s military ambitions.
Now, they’re being asked to vote for a bill that would stave off a catastrophic debt limit breach but lock in the defense spending level that Biden proposed.
“We're accepting Biden's defense budget, which is actually a cut,” said Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., in a Fox News interview, suggesting that the 3 percent increase in the deal would amount to a cut in practice given inflation rates. Waltz, chairman of the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee, vowed to vote against the bill.
“That's cutting submarines,” 

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