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What Did We Win?
Paula Bolyard at PJM reports these are the concessions our valiant little band extracted from the Uniparty:
Concessions reportedly include:
- A single member can move to “vacate the chair”
- A hard line on the debt limit
- Votes on term limits and border security
- McCarthy’s leadership PAC will stay out of open primaries
- “Open rules” on spending measures, and the ability to bring up stand-alone appropriation bills
- Discretionary spending cap
- A commitment to set up a committee on the “weaponization” of the government
First impressions: I want to know more about a single member moving to vacate the chair. Is it possible for a transient opposition majority, which might exist during a snowstorm or after a nuclear strike on a city, to cause mischief?
What is this debt limit hard line? Does anyone trust a “spending cap?”
At least representatives can propose standalone appropriations bills. That’s a long way from ending pre-programmed omnibus spending.
It isn’t good that the most hopeful thing in the list is McCarthy staying out of open primaries. Term limits, yeah, but we aren’t getting those short of Article V.
If Boebert, Gaetz, Roy, and the rest of the band can hold it together for two years, maybe they can limit the damage. The one thing we know is they’re all targets now.
Published in Politics
The single member moving to vacate the chair effectively means that a motion from the floor for a “no confidence” vote on the current Speaker is always in order. It will presumably serve as a deterrent to a Speaker dealing too chummily with the dark side.
My understanding is that the single member motion to vacate the chair existed for every Speaker prior to Pelosi. She eliminated it under her iron-fisted regime.
Such a motion would require a second, and a subsequent vote of the full House, so it’s not a tool to be used lightly, or as a mere threat.
Barfly, I sympathize with these sober reflections.
I remember several times when I’ve woken up the morning after a really great party and had the same kind of thoughts.
They could kill four birds with one stone by enacting a rule that members of congress can not serve the next term if the budget isn’t balanced.
It was a good party.
Only an amendment to the Constitution can change the eligibility for members of Congress.
It’s also always been a “privileged” motion; that is, no other business can be considered until the motion to vacate is resolved. So it can bring the House o’ Representin’ to a screeching halt.
And as I noted on another post, it’s been used exactly twice in over 100 years. But I don’t presume to predict how this bunch will use it.
They could “pass” a $1 “budget” and say “See? We did it!”
Oops, I read that as “passed,” not “balanced.”
Of course they could always pass a “balanced” budget too, just making the numbers look good even if reality is very different.
McCarthy committed to no clean debt limit increase bills, i.e. there would have to be some changes to spending in order to increase the debt limit. The Senate will presumably pass a clean debt limit, and then there will be a battle with the Senate, the chief dementia resident, the media, and the Establishment all on one side in favor of a clean debt limit increase against a small band of evil, stubborn, terrorist, bomb-throwing, crazy, radical, irresponsible Representatives who don’t want to pay our nation’s bills.
So it’s a victory for good government, but it’s far from the end of the story on the debt limit.
Reading the list of gains, was the first time I ever actually laughed in incredulity in my life. I think it was reading “McCarthy’s leadership PAC will stay out of open primaries” that did it.
What do they mean by “open primary” anyway?
As far as I can tell, an open primary is one that doesn’t have an incumbent.
I thought an open primary was one which had candidates other than the incumbent. But one definition is:
And Willipedia says:
I don’t get the significance of the new rule, but the thought of any PAC sticking to prior promises is funny to me.
That may be it, but from the context I took it to mean that it was about whether or not there was an incumbent. Which was the excuse for supporting Murkowski in Alaska against her far-superior Republican challenger.
Like in California.
Maybe “Open primary” means something different each time it’s used. Or perhaps those exacting this concession believe that his PAC will scuttle more MAGA candidates by backing Democrats.
But my amusement is much simpler. Getting any promise from McCarthy himself, especially over a corporate political entity run at least in part by others, seems utterly naïve and empty.
An “open seat” election describes one without an incumbent. Same interpretation for a primary makes sense to me. “Open primaries” plural would seem to describe the other situation.
I believe it was sloppy reporting. I thought the promise referred to contested primaries, especially in the states that still have closed primaries (only registered members of that party can vote in the primary). Open primaries like the dreadful Top Two in CA and WA, or those in states where voters can vote in any one party’s primary, regardless of registration, should absolutely be interfered with, though probably not by McCarthy’s PAC. Same applies to the dreadful ranked choice states.
Here’s how it was related from ZeroHedge:
And I think the Tweet below sums up my thoughts:
Jesse Kelly: “Do keep in mind that 90% of the GOP pundit-class fought against these things for the last few days. You would have had none of this if they got their way.“
After The “Citizens’ United” ruling by SCOTUS, would the following be enforceable?
McCarthy’s leadership PAC will stay out of open primaries
And even if the SCOTUS ruling does apply, it is still true that all the various Big Pocketed donors to McCarthy’s PAC are not known to the public, so a separate PAC could still be organized using the same Corporate and billionaire donors, right?
A stinking fish called by any other name is still a stinking fish.
Say it again.
I don’t agree that 90% of the GOP fought against these principles. Some of them certainly did. But some of them felt there were better ways to accomplish the same objectives. For example, Jim Jordan is a strong advocate of liberty (even the 20 rebels wanted him as Speaker), but he felt that as chairman of Judiciary he could accomplish more by exposing the deep state.
I’m sure others (I don’t have an example) had given their word to McCarthy to support him, and they felt they could not break their word. This shows the importance of having an actual candidate campaigning for the office months or even years ahead of time so that representatives have a choice when the GOPe candidate comes asking for support. The rebels did what they could once they realized the leverage of their position, but it is critical to have leadership candidates who are preparing the ground ahead of time.
Yes, but, don’t blame the few if the many didn’t do the ground work ahead of time.
The few didn’t do their ground work ahead of time, either. They had no candidate. They hadn’t twisted arms. They didn’t have an alternative rules package ready.
You can say that they couldn’t have known they would hold the trump card (no pun intended), but you can never know what the situation will be. You have to prepare for a range of outcomes. They got an amazing deal given their ad hoc campaign. But this should be a lesson to the freedom caucus that you have to prepare to take power long ahead of time.
Moaning about it after the fact without preparing for the next time will leave us in the same position again.
I think part of the point was that they didn’t want or need A Particular Candidate. Anyone but McCarthy seemed to have been acceptable to them. In the meantime they voted for Biggs and Jordan.
Looks like that position was worthwhile given what we got out of it.
And then consider that these were concessions. Which is to say, agreed to with reluctance, rather than things that McCarthy was already planning.
We’ll be picking up the crumbs and complaining about the Establishment until we have a strong candidate and prepare ahead of time. What we got was great for not being prepared, but it’s not nearly enough to change the direction of the country. In that respect, Chip Roy is a valuable asset – let’s hope he gained experience in leadership fights in this round and will be ready to go whenever the next round presents itself.
I don’t think you’ll know what was won until 2 years from now, or at minimum one year. I’m oversimplifying, but it all comes down to budgets. What you spend your money on, and how much, represents the priorities. Knowing that there’s a ton of negotiation on budgets is understood, but that’s where the rubber meets the road.
The rest, investigations, a committee to investigate the gov’ts actions, etc – that might generate interesting information but it’ll be so out of phase by the time findings are published that it won’t mean much in terms of elections, or significant outrage from enough voters that imperils politicians.
No matter how good or bad things get, only half the country votes. It’s pretty clear even the half that votes isn’t paying a lot of attention. Which is how we get to $31 trillion in debt and $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The biggest swath of taxpayers who will be forced to deal with it (especially as debt service chews up a larger percentage of discretionary spending) is the middle class, where the dollars are, from a revenue perspective.
So while we read the tea leaves, wonder what tomorrow will bring, based on our lens into the motivations of 535 chowderheads, the clock keeps ticking, and no one in Congress is going to address the core financial threat to the nation, because it’s political suicide to talk about it (see: Paul Ryan).
These sound like generally good ideas. Let’s see.
However, before we default on the debt, I would anticipate a discharge petition and several Republicans signing the discharge petition. Then again, it would be interesting to have a discharge petition, and then an “open rule” on amendments. We shall see.