A Lie Agreed Upon
House Republican leadership has committed to spending cuts that it simply will not be able to deliver but for the purposes of assuaging its hard-right flank it has agreed to pretend it can
This is the third in what is turning into a series on the new House Republican majority. I apologize if this seems a bit redundant or is impeding with more interesting pieces (at some point I need to write a review of ‘Chip War’, ‘Knives Out: Glass Onion’ and ‘Summer of Blood’), but my last tenure working in the House was in 2013 which featured a similar dynamic of an empowered far right, a Republican House facing off against a Democratic Senate and White House, and House Republican leadership trying to split the difference, so I have fairly strong thoughts on the situation.
I also want to make clear that the title and the argument should not be read as some sort of moral condemnation of the commitments made by Speaker McCarthy. Politics is to a significant extent finding ways to convince a wide array of groups that you support their causes and share their concerns. Frequently this involves making unrealistic promises. I believe that the budgetary commitments made by Speaker McCarthy and his leadership team should be viewed largely in that vein. This piece instead will focus on the actual mechanics of why these budgetary commitments are likely to fail and, to a lesser extent, why many of the people involved almost certainly understand that in spite of their public rhetoric.
This piece will focus on the agreed-upon lie that is Speaker McCarthy’s spending and budget commitments to House conservatives. McCarthy was Whip and Majority leader during the Tea Party Congresses that followed the 2010 election. He had a front-row seat to the last attempt by House Republicans to compel the rest of the government to bow to their deficit reduction goals. He, as well as anyone in the House Republican caucus, knows how brutal the vote counts will be - even within his own caucus. While Congress does indeed have the power of the purse, that power can only truly be wielded when both chambers speak with the same voice. Speaker McCarthy will struggle to even get his own caucus to pass legislation, nevermind compelling the Senate to adopt House spending goals, and, without Senate support, he most certainly cannot compel Joe Biden’s White House to do so either.
While I have no doubt that the more committed members of the conservative faction believe that this can be done through sheer willpower, for House GOP leadership, this has simply been a process of committing to things they have no ability to deliver in order to get votes. This will set up a year of tumultuous budget activity in Congress, almost certainly leading to a government shutdown or a prolonged continuing resolution while McCarthy attempts to thread the needle of compromising with the White House and Senate and avoiding bringing down the wrath of his conservative members for his inevitable betrayal. One hopes that this particular dynamic is limited to the budget process, as the consequences for its application to the debt limit could be far more disruptive to the country and to the global economy.
The reason that this will fail extends beyond the opposition of the White House and Senate. Spending cuts of the nature these commitments envision would result in major reductions to a variety of federal agencies that are very popular. There is a long-standing truism that Americans are philosophical conservatives and operational liberals. This means that while in the abstract, Americans believe in limited government and reduced spending when it comes to the specifics, they generally believe in government activity. McCarthy’s attempts to pass appropriations legislation at the FY 2022 level will result in dozens of unpopular cuts that will make more vulnerable members of his caucus unwilling to support them. Thus it is likely that the appropriations process even within the House will
As has been amply documented elsewhere as part of ending the prolonged Speaker election, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy committed to a series of proposals around reducing government spending. These include, but are not limited to:
A return of discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels (a $130 billion reduction in spending out of a total of roughly $1.7 trillion and a more significant real cut when inflation is factored in)
A ten-year budget resolution that will balance (this would require approximately $16 trillion in deficit reduction over this period or roughly 21% of Federal spending - estimated to be $72 trillion by the CBO).
That none of this deficit reduction could be accomplished through increased revenues.
In addition, McCarthy committed to budget process reforms to make things more transparent which are largely oriented around passing individual appropriations bills rather than omnibus bills. This hypothetically would be a return to historical practice. Normal procedure before the last fifteen years of dysfunction involved the House and the Senate passing twelve individual appropriations bills and then negotiating over the details. The process McCarthy committed to guarantees the following:
The House will consider all twelve appropriations bills on the floor individually.
The House will consider these bills under an “open” rule, so any member will be able to offer any amendment they would like to the bill.
The House will not negotiate with the Senate on appropriations until the Senate passes its version of the relevant appropriations title (the Senate has been notably worse than the House in passing individual bills for years now).
These commitments are almost guaranteed to fail on all levels.
First, typically House leadership is loathe to put bills on the floor unless they are reasonably confident they will pass. In order to meet the budgetary requirements laid out above, each of the non-defense discretionary spending bills will contain cuts of roughly 30%. This will result in howls of pain from a wide variety of stakeholders in members’ districts, whether its mayors and governors upset about cuts to transportation funding, people losing access to health care services, or cuts to research and development, it is almost certain that not all Republicans will want to support these specific cuts and risk attack ads. During the FY 2014 budget process, which is both a useful example and something I lived through, Republicans were only able to pass six of twelve appropriations bills and that took enormous effort. Republicans in the 113th Congress were unable to deliver on the commitment to consider all 12 bills when they had a 240-191 majority, it is difficult to see how they’ll do better with a majority of four.
The second reason this will fail is that opening up bills to allow members’ to offer any amendment they would like is a recipe for further problems. Basically on the House floor, the clerk will go through the sections of the bill and members will be able to offer any germane amendment. The recent practice has been to consider appropriations bills under a managed rule, whereby the House Rules Committee preselects a set list of amendments. Instead, under an open structure it is entirely possible for leadership to be blindsided by a proposal that would endanger the passage of the bill. Democrats will be able to potentially offer poison pill amendments that cause problems for the narrow GOP majority. Alternately, House conservatives could force votes on unpopular or risky provisions, further upsetting the vote count. The fluid nature of an open amendment process promises further uncertainty.
Lastly, it’s entirely unclear how the House refusing to negotiate with the Senate will accomplish anything. The House and Senate have a longstanding, historical animosity. A longstanding quote from the post-World War II Democratic House majority has it that “House Republicans aren’t the enemy, they’re the opposition. The enemy is the Senate.” The feeling is not much warmer on the Senate side. Regardless, the Senate almost never moves to consider all appropriations bills and, in many years, doesn’t even adopt a budget resolution (the bill managing the toplines for the 12 appropriation bills). Failing to negotiate prior to this happening simply ensure that the exit period for any continuing resolution or shutdown will take longer because the massive spade work that goes on behind the scenes between the two chambers will not have started. In reality, I expect that this commitment will be honored in word while ignored in practice - there won’t be official negotiations but staff-level engagement will, hopefully, continue.
I am certain that Speaker McCarthy is aware of all of this. He had the misfortune to live through this when John Boehner was Speaker and through similar histrionics under Paul Ryan. He knows how ungovernable the House can be. I am less certain, but believe it likely that, Rep. Chip Roy and the rest of the House rebels are similarly aware that there is a tilting at windmills element to this plan. The way to get things done in Congress is to get 218 votes in the House and 51 (or more realistically 60) votes in the Senate and the President’s assent. Absent that, procedural changes will muddy the path for work to get done but ultimately fail to accomplish the rebels’ goals. Thus the lie agreed upon to wrap up the Speaker nomination sets the stage for a turbulent year but, in does not, in fact, guarantee any of the budgetary goals of the far-right.