When House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) released a 320-page bill to lift the debt limit in exchange for spending cuts last week, some of the most conservative members of his conference offered cautious praise of the legislation.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said the plan looked “pretty good,” while Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said he generally approved of the framework.
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The note of support showed just how far McCarthy had come since his speakership election in January when it took 15 rounds for him to lock down the votes of some of those same lawmakers.
McCarthy and his leadership team have spent the months since then attempting to get buy-in from what are known as the "five families" of the GOP conference for the bill, meant to be the opening offer in debt ceiling negotiations with President Joe Biden.
But as McCarthy tries to secure 218 votes, the bare minimum needed to pass the legislation through the lower chamber, he still faces some of the same rabble-rousing from his right flank, along with new problems from centrist holdouts.
The spending bill House Republicans unveiled on Wednesday would lift the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March 2024, whichever comes first, in exchange for lower spending and a rollback of Biden’s legislative accomplishments.
It would set next year's discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels, tantamount to a $130 billion budget cut, and then limit growth to 1% a year thereafter. Moreover, the bill would claw back unspent COVID-19 relief funds, end green energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, and cancel Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
In total, the proposal is expected to cut $4.5 trillion from the budget.
The bill is a nonstarter for the White House, which is demanding a debt ceiling hike without conditions, but the vote is meant to bring Biden to the negotiating table through a show of Republican unity.
The legislation is the biggest test yet for McCarthy. If he fails to hit 218, it would mark a dramatic blow to the credibility of his speakership.
Although he does not appear to have the votes yet, McCarthy expressed confidence on Sunday that the bill will pass the House. His leadership team has spent the last handful of days on the phone with undecided members.
“We will hold a vote this week, and we will pass it, and we will send it to the Senate,” McCarthy said on Fox News.
House GOP leadership is encouraged by the early whipping operation, sources told Punchbowl News, but with a threadbare majority in the House, McCarthy can only afford to lose four votes.
Already, several conservative Republicans have expressed they’re on the fence, leaving McCarthy with the same problem that dogged his speakership bid: a group of reluctant Republicans taking an ever-harder line with McCarthy to win their votes.
Despite making heavy concessions to the House Freedom Caucus in January, McCarthy repeatedly failed to win over a group of 20 holdouts demanding the very spending cuts McCarthy is pressuring Biden to enact today.
He ultimately won the gavel, in part by doling out spots on influential committees. The question for McCarthy now is whether he can overcome the same hurdle in the debt limit fight.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), the former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, is leaning “no” on the GOP bill, telling reporters last week that he takes issue with the idea that Congress should raise the debt ceiling at all. Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Eric Burlison (R-MO) expressed similar reservations.
Biggs instead floated the idea of letting the Treasury Department prioritize payments with just the revenue coming in each month, which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called "default by another name."
Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who praised the inclusion of work requirements in the GOP proposal, nonetheless wants them to be more stringent.
Instead of requiring able-bodied adults without children to work 20 hours a week to receive Medicaid and food stamps, he’s calling for that threshold to be raised to 30 hours a week.
Although the situation may seem familiar, McCarthy finds himself in a much stronger position with the debt limit vote. Whereas Biggs and Gaetz were “hard noes” during his speakership bid, they are leaving the door open to voting “yes.”
“I’m trying to keep an open mind,” Biggs told HuffPost.
In a sign of confidence, House GOP leadership has expressed little interest in amending the bill, calling for a vote on the package as it stands today. The House Rules Committee will mark up the bill Tuesday afternoon, with a vote of the full House as early as Wednesday.
But McCarthy is contending with a new difficulty as his team whips the votes. Although he basically had unified support outside of the hard-right flank in the speakership election, he is now facing reservations from other factions of the conference.
There are broader concerns from Midwestern lawmakers given the bill would remove ethanol tax credits. And individual lawmakers who voted for McCarthy in January aren’t sold on the bill.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY), the scandal-plagued congressman who refused to resign after it came to light he fabricated parts of his backstory, is pushing for stricter work requirements.
He announced he was a “hard no” shortly after the bill text was released, but his office has since said he’s “undecided.”
Meanwhile, centrist and purple district Republicans such as Reps. Nancy Mace (SC) and Tony Gonzales (TX) have raised concerns. Gonzales, who has threatened to vote "no" if a separate immigration measure is brought to the House floor, is undecided, while Mace told CNN on Monday she is “leaning against” the proposal since it doesn’t balance the budget and could hurt green energy jobs in her state.
The dissent underscores the difficulty McCarthy will have in the coming weeks even if he can pass a bill out of the House.
Some Republican centrists are willing to vote for the bill because they view it as an opening offer and are confident a compromise version will be scaled back.
Meanwhile, hard-line members such as Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) have signaled they are unwilling to water down the budget cuts.
If Biden does come to the negotiating table, McCarthy will still have the same problem on his hands — a right flank hesitant to yield any ground and centrist members worried that the proposal will imperil their reelection prospects in 2024.
House Democrats have already made clear they will use the GOP proposal to link moderates in blue districts to the “MAGA” wing of the GOP.
After Rep. Mike Lawler, one of four Republicans to flip blue districts red in New York last year, publicly endorsed the debt limit proposal on Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dubbed him a “rubber-stamp” for hard-liners in the GOP.
“Mike Lawler is nothing more than a rubber-stamp to the extreme MAGA Republican majority and their far-right agenda, and his support for this plan is unacceptable,” spokeswoman Nebeyatt Betre said in a statement.
Any deal will also have to make it through the Senate. Not only do Democrats control the upper chamber, albeit narrowly, but Senate Republicans may be reluctant to go along with some of the provisions in the House package.
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So far, the senators are giving McCarthy space to negotiate a deal, with the understanding that passage of the House bill will give Republicans a stronger hand with Biden.
“Most of us are conjecturing that it won’t get a lot of forward movement in the Senate,” Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), one of a handful of bipartisan GOP deal-makers in the upper chamber, told reporters. “But I think the purpose here is to unify House Republicans to improve our negotiating position moving forward. I agree with the strategy, and I am hopeful they meet with success.”