Elle Gyges

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.

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.

Would-be speaker Kevin McCarthy walked onto the House floor this week with a diminished hand. Before starting the new year, he’d already agreed to restore the motion to vacate the chair in the House rules package. This was a significant win for the House Freedom Caucus, and a major concession for McCarthy. Yet it still wasn’t enough to avoid this week’s floor fight. Cable news pundits have tried to sum up the drama as a tug-of-war between MAGA Republicans and ultra-MAGA Republicans, but this lazy explanation gives Donald Trump too much credit. (In fact, Trump’s recent statements backing McCarthy didn’t move the needle at all.

If there was any question as to how tenuous would-be Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s grasp would be on the gavel, then what happened on New Year’s Day should remove all doubt. On Sunday, the House Republican leadership team unveiled significant changes to the House rules in advance of the official swearing-in and start of the 118th Congress. Many of the changes are aimed at improving transparency and governance. But one rule change that could be far more significant was the restoration of the “motion to vacate the chair.” Under the proposed rules package, five members of the majority conference can band together and force a vote of no confidence in the speaker.

All that Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy wants for Christmas is the four votes he needs to hold the gavel as speaker of the House of Representatives. But at this point it looks like it will take a Christmas Miracle™. This past week, five members of the contrarian House Freedom Caucus restressed their antipathy for McCarthy. Representatives Andy Biggs, Ralph Norman, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good and Matt Rosendale have promised as a bloc to vote against McCarthy, denying him the 218 votes he needs to become speaker. Biggs ran against McCarthy for Republican majority leader after November’s lukewarm midterm elections — and lost. He knows he is playing spoiler. But what then?

With the make-up of Congress still taking shape after the midterms, perhaps the last thing anyone expected was any kind of bipartisanship. Yet despite a contentious campaign where rising crime featured prominently in attack ads, the first order of business in both the House and the Senate was a provocative move on marijuana. In the House, Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin and Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace cohosted a hearing on how state cannabis laws have developed and what reforms the federal government might yet undertake. The hearing was surprisingly friendly, save for an outburst from Texas congressman Pete Sessions who in a rambling monologue compared legalizing pot to profiting from slavery.

The 2022 midterm elections are less than a month away. And while the focus will be on the winners and losers, perhaps the more important story will be about the lawmakers who dodged the ballot entirely. Already this cycle, we’ve seen a remarkable number of retirements. Republican Senators Roy Blunt (Missouri), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard Burr (North Carolina), and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) have all announced they will not seek reelection. Those familiar with the Senate will recognize these as some of its more bipartisan members. Earlier this month, another senator joined them: Ben Sasse from Nebraska. Yet his move is more provocative: he has four years left in his six-year term.

For a party that claims it wants to move on, the Republicans are doing a remarkable job of turning the national spotlight back onto one of the worst days in their history. Last week, the GOP returned to its circular firing squad, issuing a statement that censured Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, the only two Republicans serving on the House January 6 Committee. At the same time, it suggested that the actions of rioters who stormed into the Capitol constituted “legitimate political discourse.” Such a statement from a national political party is unusual. Almost as unusual as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issuing a rebuke of his own party apparatus.

There are very few uncontroversial takes on what happened on January 6, 2021. Perhaps the only one is that that tumultuous day gave Americans a rare glimpse into what their republic looks like when its institutions fail. On the right, this would be taken to mean that the US election system, made up of fifty different state election regimes, failed to secure the ballot and that the mainstream media refused to report on obvious issues with the franchise. Even the judiciary, flush with judges appointed by President Trump, didn't hear the people. On the left, the same events are evidence that elections ought to be federalized to protect the vote, and that the Fourth Estate as a pillar of democracy requires buttressing against “disinformation” and outright sedition.