Kevin McCarthy

An admission of personal bias: I have little to no respect for academics or intellectuals who write about the Congress of the United States. As a student, I was taught by brilliant professors about the dynamics of legislative decisions and negotiation, the nooks and crannies of process and debate, the give and take, the game theory at play. Then, when I arrived on Capitol Hill, within a month I discovered that a certain member had completely changed his position on a piece of legislation — a 180-degree reversal from where he stood before. When I asked an aged veteran legislative aide about why this was possibly the case, he looked at me, bemused, and asked — “He’s getting a divorce. Which lobbyist do you think his wife slept with? This is personal, not politics.

Naomi Biden, Hunter Biden’s eldest daughter, is now the latest Biden to come under scrutiny for doing business with foreign nations.According to an investigation by the New York Post’s Jon Levine, the president’s granddaughter lawyered on behalf of Peru’s government while living with her grandpa at the White House.The twenty-nine-year-old joined Arnold & Porter in January 2021, right around when Joe Biden was moving into the presidential residence. Eight months after joining, her name appeared in a filing that showed that she was representing the South American country’s government in a case regarding the operation of an oil refinery in the Peruvian Amazon, where the company demanded close to $600 million in damages.

A stopgap government funding bill was signed into law by President Biden late Saturday, keeping the government open for another forty-five days, through November 17. The proposed bill, which passed the House of Representatives earlier Saturday afternoon, does not include the $6 million that the Senate’s own funding measure would have. It will, however, increase federal disaster assistance by $16 million, meeting President Biden’s full request.  The bill passed the House of Representatives 335-91, despite resistance from MAGA Republicans that led to a standoff over spending for weeks. Ninety House Republicans led by Representative Matt Gaetz, voted against the bill.

The choose your own adventure surrounding House Republican leadership is leading to a predictable dead end. The approach House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has used to great effect to this point, achieving far more legislatively than he was expected to in a Speakership with a razor-thin majority, has been to let conservatives get a seat at the table to demand what they want, and work from there. The strength of that strategy was giving House conservatives buy-in on the negotiating process, thus using them as an ally, not an adversary. The weakness of that strategy? It doesn’t work when the conservatives can’t agree about what they want.

Impeaching a president may not have the same power it once did in Washington. But the announcement of an official inquiry today by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is the first time Capitol Hill Republicans have seriously deployed impeachment in a quarter century. Much as Republicans hated Barack Obama, and much as they could have found a path to impeaching him with their large post-Tea Party Congressional majorities, they never went down this path. This is the new aggressive politics in an age of lawfare — but it’s also justified by what we already know, and what we’ve learned in the past year. “I’m directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy announced.

The House will vote on Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden’s debt-ceiling deal this evening and, by all accounts, the speaker has stuck the landing. Having reached an agreement with the White House, McCarthy got his way in a crucial Rules Committee meeting yesterday, fought off a Freedom Caucus rebellion and looks set to win support for his deal from a majority of his conference.  To the great disappointment of those banking on a bruising Republican civil war, McCarthy evidently feels secure in his position. Asked about the possibility of disgruntled hardliners filing a motion to vacate today, McCarthy replied: “Look, everybody has the ability to do what they want. But if you think I’m going to wake up in the morning and ever be worried about that, no. Doesn’t bother me.

After multiple rounds of negotiations to raise the debt ceiling with President Biden's team — not the president himself, of course, because he was busy eating his ice cream — the House Republican leadership announced an agreement in principle, subsequently putting up language up over Memorial Day Weekend for members to consider. There are hurdles to overcome, but based upon initial reactions, majorities of Republicans and Democrats are agreed on this deal, with opposition coming from fiscal conservatives and progressives: particularly environment-focused progressives angered by the inclusion of energy policy priorities for Republicans and for Senator Joe Manchin.

Welcome to a later-than-usual debt-ceiling brinkmanship special edition of the DC Diary. The mood music was encouraging as Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden sat down for talks in the Oval Office this evening. “We still have some disagreements, but I think we may be able to get where we have to go,” said Biden to pool reporters. “We both know we have a significant responsibility.” McCarthy was similarly positive. Hours earlier, treasury secretary Janet Yellen wrote to lawmakers telling everyone what they already knew: that the US is “highly likely” to run out of money to pay all its bills if “Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt” as early as June 1. Not news, exactly, but an effort to focus minds.

Political years are the opposite of dog years: they pass by in a blaze, with entire epochs elapsing in the course of a few news cycles. Ideas, even movements, fade abruptly, recalled only years later when you clean out your garage and stumble on that old tricorn hat from your Tea Party days. If you want to know how jarring political change can be, consider that at this time in the 2016 election cycle — around the late spring of 2015 — the predicted frontrunner for the GOP nomination was Rand Paul. This was no coincidence. In those days, we were said to be in the middle of something called a libertarian moment. Voters were leery of Barack Obama’s deficit spending, Washington’s endless wars, the NSA surveillance that had been unveiled by Edward Snowden.

Tick. Tick. Tick. That’s the sound of the clock as the United States approaches the limit of its borrowing power. Tick. Tick. Tick. It’s also the sound of the US debt clock. Actually it's more of a whoosh as it tries to keep pace with the sheer clip of the national debt, which totals some $31.7 trillion or over $240,000 per taxpayer. For fiscal hawks, these two measurements have set the tempo for a seemingly endless set of battles over the nation's debt ceiling and financial footing. To be clear, the government already hit its debt limit. That was back on January 19, a mere twelve days after Kevin McCarthy survived his bid to claim the speaker’s gavel.

West Virginia governor Jim Justice announced that he is running for US Senate on stage at the Greenbrier, the swanky hotel owned by his family, yesterday. “I absolutely will promise you to God above that I will do the job, and I will do the job that will make you proud,” said the larger-than-life Justice, with his pet bulldog (and political mascot) Babydog sitting in a red armchair next to him.  The announcement sets up the possibility of an epic showdown between Justice (a former Democrat, now a Republican) and his friend Joe Manchin. The race could be decisive when it comes to control of the Senate after 2024. Manchin is one of three Democratic senators up for reelection who represent states won by Donald Trump in 2020.

Kevin McCarthy rose to the speakership despite being loathed by a lot of very online conservatives and a rump portion of his own party in the House. He had to win that role across multiple votes, which the media pronounced as humiliating, indicative of a GOP incapable of governing and all the normal tropes that partisans such as Jake Tapper deploy in place of real informed analysis of the situation. This is why they’ve proven to be so utterly wrong about McCarthy’s strength as a leader since taking the gavel.

Why everyone lacks credibility on the debt ceiling Time to cough up, America. Tomorrow is Tax Day and, fittingly, Congress returns this week with negotiations over the debt limit at the top of the agenda in Washington. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy set out his stall this morning with a speech in Manhattan. With the summer deadline on the fiscal cliff fast approaching, McCarthy today vowed that “in the coming weeks, the House will vote on a bill to lift the debt ceiling into next year,” adding that the legislation would also “save taxpayers trillions of dollars, make us less dependent on China, and curb high inflation, all without touching Social Security or Medicare.

Too much Trump, or not enough Trump? That is the question that everyone from journalists to Republican elected officials had on their minds as the House GOP apparatus descended on the Marriott in Orlando for its annual retreat. Cockburn managed to sneak into a spare hotel room. During the Hotel California-esque conference, Republicans ate, drank and were merry. But Donald Trump was on everyone’s minds, both during the daytime sessions and at the happy hours that stretched into the wee hours of the morning.  You'll be shocked to hear that no one expressed support for Alvin Bragg, the George Soros-funded district attorney who may or may not be arresting the former president. Many of those gathered compared the Manhattan DA's actions to those of a tinpot dictator.

Congressional Republicans are gearing up for their four millionth attempt to rein in government spending, and surely this time will be different. After years of posturing in favor of budget cuts that never seem to materialize, the national debt growing to 130 percent of GDP is finally a threshold they won't cross. A Fox News hit? By gum, there's no time! Republicans exclaim as they raise a quivering red pen to the latest defense authorization bill. This job is about policy, not going on TV, dammit! You'll forgive me if I sound a bit cynical. After all, Republicans controlled the elected government for two years under Donald Trump and the deficit only got bigger. Yet as another debt ceiling fight looms, this time the GOP sounds like they might be serious about shrinking the state.

Earlier in the week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy gave an evening address about the urgency of raising the debt ceiling and cutting federal spending. Technically, the government has already taken on the amount of debt it’s allowed to carry. The Treasury Department is employing “extraordinary measures” to shuffle money around to service the national debt and make government payrolls. But these measures can’t keep the government afloat forever. Hence the need to raise the debt ceiling or risk catastrophic default some time in the summer. The timing of the speech — one day before President Biden's third State of the Union address — was conspicuous.

Ugly. Chaotic. Disruptive. These and other pejoratives graced headlines last week as House Republicans wrestled with the question of who would be the next speaker of the House of Representatives. One missing descriptor? Necessary. After five days of push and pull between different factions of the Republican House majority, Kevin McCarthy of California won his long-sought post as speaker. But as the negotiations wound down and McCarthy inched close to the gavel, he and his allies pivoted their narrative from anger to aspiration. We started to hear: “this is what democracy looks like” and “it’s not always pretty.

“President Biden should be impeached by the incoming House Republican majority over his ongoing destruction of the southern border,” proclaimed National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy on New Year’s Eve. Once the preserve of the GOP’s right wing, which introduced nine failed impeachment resolutions against Biden prior to the midterm elections, the idea of impeaching Joe Biden is gathering ground. Even staid moderates are beginning to realize that six million illegals pouring across the Rio Grande might not be such a blessing of liberty. Rank-and-file Republicans are hungering for revenge against Democrats for twice impeaching former president Donald Trump.

And then there was Kevin. In the wake of a forecasted red wave that never materialized, now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy plotted with friends and foes alike to secure the magical 218 votes necessary to take the helm of a rowdy, openly feuding House Republican caucus. After fifteen rounds of voting, Republicans eventually united behind him. Key players in the machinations spoke with The Spectator about the breakdown in the negotiations that had started in earnest after November’s elections. “Whirlwind.” “Shitshow.” “Weird.” At times, last week’s history-making votes felt more like a slog through purgatory than a victory lap over the long-awaited firing of Nancy Pelosi.