Jan.09

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

What's the Deal?

In order to get the speakership, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had to give away the store—that is, weaken the speakership to the point where it's probably not worth having (not that he is likely to have it for very long). Here are a list of the biggest concessions McCarthy had to give the MAGA 20 in order to get them to vote for him (or, at least, vote "present"). Note that these are tentative and could change as the power struggle between McCarthy and the MAGA 20 continues.

• Vacating the chair: That is, a motion to send the speaker on a long vacation. McCarthy agreed that any member of the House could call for a motion to vacate the chair (what is called a motion of no confidence in other countries). McCarthy wanted to set the number at five. Actually, it doesn't really matter if calling for a vote requires one member or five members. Winning the vote requires 218. If a member who wants to fire McCarthy can't find four other members to join up, how will that person get to 218? The worst that can happen here is some time is wasted on pointless motions—unless there really are 218 members who want to dump McCarthy.
  
  
• Rules Committee: The MAGA 20 want to be well represented on the Rules Committee, which, well, makes the rules. See also below. They also want to be disproportionately represented on other committees and subcommittees. In addition they want a number of committee and subcommittee chairmanships. These are normally earned through seniority. If McCarthy fires a number of current chairs who have earned their titles by coming up through the ranks, they are going to be exceedingly grumpy and could give McCarthy a hard time going forward. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) called this concession "affirmative action for the smallest House caucus."
  
  
• Not interfering in primaries: McCarthy controls a super PAC that doles out money for House races. the MAGA 20 extracted a promise from McCarthy not to use this money to meddle in Republican primaries. In Turtle-speak, this would be: "We don't want you to interfere when we are trying to create a 'candidate quality' problem." This is one of the three concessions the Democrats will applaud.
  
  
• Cap spending: The MAGA 20 want to cap expenditures for the next fiscal year at the current level. This includes defense spending. That is an absolute nonstarter with the Republican defense hawks on the Armed Services Committee. They will never stand for it.
  
  
• Balanced budget: Wishful thinking here. The MAGA 20 want a balanced budget within 10 years. The idea is simple to express. The devil is in the details. Do they want higher taxes to cover the expenditures? No way. So the expenditures have to come down. Now where does the government spend its money? This chart shows both the mandatory and discretionary spending:
  
  
  
  Mandatory spending means "required by current law."" The law can be changed, of course, but that requires getting the changes through the Senate and getting the president to sign the bill. For example, Republicans might want to eliminate SNAP (food stamps), which is so small it doesn't show up on the chart, but that would require changing the law. In contrast, discretionary spending is for things Congress would like, but no law requires it. If the MAGA 20 want a balanced budget, they are going to have to come up with specific cuts. Eliminating NASA removes only 0.39% of the budget. If they try to cut any of the biggies, be sure to put on your noise-canceling headphones before the announcement because there will be a lot of resulting noise after the announcement. This is just so much pie in the sky.
  
  
• Holding the debt hostage: The debt celing has to be increased by July, give or take a month. The MAGA 20 want to hold it hostage to get spending cuts. If Biden says NO!, the U.S. government could default on its debt, which would result in the mother of all stock market crashes and might well plunge the world into a deep depression. The sane Republicans don't want the blame for that.
  
  
• No more omnibuses: No, this is not a line item in the transportation budget for more money for public transit. It is the practice of putting the entire federal budget in one bill with a straight up or down vote. This makes it much harder to vote against, say, housing for the poor because that would also mean voting against, say, money for the Pentagon. The MAGA 20 want separate bills for funding each department. That way they can give the Pentagon whatever it wants but cut HHS and HUD to the bone and then some.
  
  
• 72-Hour rule: This is the second part the Democrats will support. The idea is that before a vote can be taken on any bill, it has to be up on the House website for 72 hours so members can at least try to read it. Or, in the case of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), have someone read it to them. None of the members will actually read a thousand-page bill, but a few might tell a group of staffers to make an effort and report back. Further, if the bill is on the House website, reporters will take a look at it, and might find some shady stuff therein. In the past, the leadership would cook up a bill in the dark of night and then at 8 a.m. the next morning demand and up-or-down vote on it. Stopping the leadership (i.e., McCarthy) from doing this will reduce his power to sneak in things the members don't want.
  
  
• Holman rule: This is an obscure 1876 law that would allow to reduce the salary of certain federal employees or allow Congress to fire specific civil servants. This is something Donald Trump tried to do with Schedule F, but wasn't able to pull off. The idea is to get rid of civil servants who are doing their duty, when the Republicans would prefer that not be the case. Trump wanted to get rid of those he deemed insufficiently loyal, but what the MAGA 20 want is to fire the new IRS agents being hired as part of the spending bill the Democrats passed last year. Interestingly enough, what Rep. William Holman (D-IN) had in mind when he proposed this law was to eliminate political patronage jobs, not the jobs of people who try to uphold the law.
  
  
• Amendments: Finally, this is the third item the Democrats support. It will allow members to propose amendments to bills from the floor and have votes on them. If a Freedom Caucus member wants something in a bill and can't get the committee to put it in, this would give another shot at it. In the past, amendments were allowed from the floor and it led to "filibuster by amendment." Imagine that the Democrats don't like some bill so each of the 213 Democrats (once the vacancy is filled) offers some amendment. That could really slow the House down, especially if some member asks for 15 minutes to explain why an amendment to create "Medicare for all" is germane to the farm bill being considered (short answer: farmers also need health care).

There may be more things McCarthy gave the MAGA 20, but these are the main ones that have come out so far. (V)