“You’ve got guys who came in saying they will never raise the debt ceiling. Democrats are already signaling they won’t negotiate at all, let alone offer the draconian spending concessions the right flank is demanding. At some point next year - likely in the third quarter, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center - McCarthy will have to figure out a way to raise the federal debt limit or risk a national default, a move that will tear the GOP conference in two. Instead of having to negotiate a politically precarious funding agreement with Democrats in his first months as speaker, McCarthy won’t have to go there until September at the earliest.īut even McCarthy allies tell us the real looming threat is the debt ceiling deadline. The question on everyone’s mind is: When? The year-end spending deal struck between Democrats and Senate Republicans clearly bought McCarthy time. Many Republicans are already predicting the Freedom Caucus will use that tool, known as the “motion to vacate,” against McCarthy as soon as he strays from a conservative hard line. If he’s able to lock down the 218 votes he needs to be speaker, the thinking goes, he likely will have given away the store to conservatives - including the “Never Kevin” crowd’s demand to make it easier to call a vote to oust the speaker.
On the first question: There’s a consensus among many House Republicans, one that few would dare utter publicly, that if McCarthy starts the 118th Congress as speaker, he’s not likely to end it that way. McCARTHY'S MUDDLE - Five days out from the high-stakes speakership vote, House Republicans are starting to ask themselves two “what-if” questions surrounding KEVIN McCARTHY’s fate: 1) If the California Republican gets the gavel, how long will he be speaker? And, if he doesn’t, 2) how does he serve out his remaining days in Congress? “In those letters, obtained exclusively by POLITICO, Sauber described such requests as constitutionally illegitimate because both Jordan, who is expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer, who is expected to head the Oversight Committee, made them before they had any authority to do so.” Read the Comer letter … Read the Jordan letter JAMES COMER (R-Ky.) and JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio), White House Special Counsel RICHARD SAUBER said that the Biden administration had no immediate plans to respond to a slew of records requests that both men made the past several weeks. The details: “In respective letters to Reps. THE NEW WASHINGTON ORDER - President JOE BIDEN’s administration is taking a shot across the bow of the incoming House Republican majority, our colleague Heidi Przybyla scoops this morning: A top White House lawyer told two key incoming chairs that their oversight demands would be disregarded unless and until their requests are resubmitted next year in the new Congress.
| Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo DRIVING THE DAY Kevin McCarthy's bid for speaker is facing two big “what-if” questions five days away from a vote.
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