Kevin McCarthy won the support of the Freedom Caucus by making a few promises. One of those concerned the return to Regular Order.
In Regular Order, there is not one big vote on one gigantic spending bill that funds all of government. In Regular Order, there are twelve spending bills that cover the 12 main areas of spending. Each of these bills is voted out of the appropriate committee, and "marked up," with the committee adding and hopefully, sometimes, even cutting spending.
The theory is that you can get a better handle on out-of-control spending if you go through the Regular Order of appropriations. That it's easier to keep spending down in 12 separate bills than in one gigantic mega-bill that must pass or OH MY GOD SOME BUREAUCRATS WILL BE FURLOUGHED FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS! DOOM AND MAYHEM!
By the way those c*cksuckers are always paid for time time they were furloughed -- they wind up with multi-week paid vacations.
But they scream the loudest about the furloughs, because they're almost all Democrat partisans.
I don't know if I buy the procedural solution to getting a handle on runaway spending. I don't think procedural solutions can solve most substantive problems. The substantive problem we're dealing with his that when Republicans suggest small cuts in the rate of growth of spending, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) attack them, and Republicans always cave.
However, we all agree that something must be done. Everything must be tried. And a return to Regular Order counts as one of those things that must be tried.
And Kevin McCarthy promised there would be a return to Regular Order. So even if you doubt that dividing one gigantic mega-spending bill into 12 smaller but still gigantic mega-spending bills would help control spending -- McCarthy still promised he would do this, and he got the Speaker position on the basis of this promise.
But then he blew the promise off.
Kevin McCarthy became the first-ever speaker of the House of Representatives to be ousted, after eight of the most conservative Republicans on Tuesday gave up on the California Republican's leadership, saying he failed to deliver on promises he made in January, including especially to fight for cutting federal spending back to pre-COVID pandemic levels.
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Key to understanding why the day's events came about as they did is found in one word, "trust," according to multiple Republican House members interviewed by The Epoch Times, most of whom spoke on background.
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"The reason we got to this point was a failure of Kevin McCarthy. All he had to do to avoid where we are was keep his word, keep his commitment and at least fight for that, but he did not do that in August," one of the McCarthy opponents told The Epoch Times before the vote.
"He dillied and he dallied and stopped and started and couldn't decide. He was a feckless leader who didn't cast a vision to drive us to do that, to get those spending bills through. That's what he should have done, that's what he promised to do but he didn't," the representative said.
He was referring to Mr. McCarthy's promises when he was elected speaker in January to cut federal spending back to pre-COVID levels, to avoid at all costs resorting to continuing resolutions (CRs) or omnibus spending bills, and instead return the House to "regular order."
The regular order of both chambers in Congress is to write a dozen major spending bills in committees during the spring, then debate, amend, and finally pass them in the summer and early fall before the Sept. 30 end of the federal government's fiscal year.
But Mr. McCarthy abandoned those promises, according to the opponents, in dealing with President Joe Biden in April by agreeing to a debt ceiling increase packet that also assumed federal spending would continue at or very near the hyper-levels that began in 2020 under President Donald Trump in response to the pandemic.
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On Sept. 30, the speaker offered a 45-day CR that kept current spending levels and it passed, thanks to Democrats voting with 91 Republicans in favor. Ninety-one GOPers opposed the 45-day CR.
"That was the last straw," another representative told The Epoch Times, because it all but rendered Mr. McCarthy's January promises irrelevant, and put the House back on course to being forced by Senate Democrats and the president into agreeing to kick the can down the road yet again.
The last time Congress approved all 12 major spending bills in regular order was 1997.
McCarthy wasn't the only one to blame. Republicans failed to pass those 12 major spending bills in a timely manner, provoking the current crisis. McCarthy could have canceled their recess to make them work on the bills and pass them, but he didn't.
But you know, of course, that he didn't cancel the recess because of pressure from the Republicans. Who were themselves late in delivering the spending bills.