In his first speech as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, an election won early Saturday morning after a bloody and debilitating battle with the most radical wing within the Republican Party, kevin mccarthy he stated, “I hope one thing has been made clear: I never give up.” The 57-year-old California congressman, after 14 humiliating failed votes and four days of drama and mayhem broadcast live before the whole country, he finally had the position that he has coveted practically since he entered politics. The price he has paid to achieve it, however, threatens to be high, for him and for the country.
McCarthy has only achieved the presidency by momentous concessions to the ultra-conservatives. With some of them, such as allowing a single legislator to start the process to remove him, it has greatly diminished his own power. But, with others, such as giving the most radical a determining role in vital committees for the functioning of the Chamber or the ability to alter the debate on legislative proposals of spending has raised the relevant weight that the most radical faction will have within the already radicalized Republican Party and in American politics.
divided government
McCarthy’s capitulation, crossing red lines that he had promised not to cross, comes at a time when the fragile majority in the Lower House and the Democratic control of the Senate and the White House already made it possible to anticipate two years of almost total legislative blockade in the US. And there are words that McCarthy himself, in his first speech as ‘speaker’, or the president Joe Biden, in their message congratulating him, they called for cooperation, although from any realistic perspective it is clear that options for bipartisan collaboration are minimal.
The empowerment of populist extremists and with a prominent anti-government vein and contempt for institutions has been evident this week in the embarrassing election show and in McCarthy’s difficulties to unite his bench. And he triggers fears about the difficulties that the Republicans will have to govern, and those that they will create for the government.
The debt ceiling
In no area is this fear more accentuated than when it comes to the debt ceiling. The US will have to raise it this year, according to current calculations in the third quarter, If you do not want to enter your default history for the first time, something that would have serious global repercussions. But to reach the presidency of the Chamber, McCarthy has promised with the ultras that there will be no rise if she is not accompanied by parallel deep cuts in federal spending (something Republicans conveniently forgot during Donald Trump’s tenure).
They are resurrected like this, but intensified, the ghosts of 2011when a similar duel between Barack Obama and the Republicans then marked by the extremism of the tea party It was about to cause a cataclysm. It was resolved only at the last moment, and it did not prevent the US from seeing its debt rating downgraded.
The pact negotiated by McCarthy, which will be fully revealed on Monday when the House rules are voted on, heralds more budget nightmares. It proposes, for example, forcing any new item of spending to be accompanied by an equivalent cut. And vital legislation to fund Defense and other government departments and agencies is in jeopardy, further sending aid to Ukraine or maintain benefit programs for the lowest-income Americans.
The brand new ‘speaker’ has also agreed to use appropriation laws to reduce the salaries of positions or seek to remove them, something that Republicans could try to use for their campaigns against secretaries that they have in their target, such as Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkaswhom they hold responsible along with Biden for the immigration crisis.
Investigations and Trump
The McCarthy era will also arrive marked by the institutional stamp of battles that the Republicans have been waging in opposition for two years. And, in his first speech, the ‘speaker’ recalled that they are going to launch multiple investigations, from the origins of covid to the withdrawal of Afghanistan. He did not mention or have included in the proposed rules another investigation that is taken for granted: that of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
The president of the Chamber has also agreed to create within the Judicial Committee a special subcommittee to study the “use as a weapon of the Federal Government & rdquor; and, specifically, the FBI and the Department of Justice. And that panel will take to Capitol Hill again the denunciations of the alleged political persecution of donald trumpwhose figure continues to fly over everything in the Republican Party.
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On McCarthy’s dramatic election night, which coincided with the two-year anniversary of the storming of the Capitol, the former president called out several of the congressmen who were holding her back (in previous days their calls to vote for McCarthy had had no effect). And the new ‘speaker’, in his first statements to the press, wanted to give “especially thanks & rdquor; to trump. “I don’t think anyone should doubt his influence,” McCarthy said.
The submitted House rules package includes a proposal to give more funding to the resolution of disputes over election results.