House GOP Made No Official List of Detailed Concessions McCarthy Made to Become Speaker
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talks with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
Despite a widely predicted “red wave” of Republican victories in the November 2022 elections, the GOP emerged with only a razor-thin majority in the House, creating a unique situation in which party leaders rushed to win over a small group of party holdouts who leveraged their position to advance their faction’s agenda.Following inauguration of the new US House of Representatives on January 3, it took House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) 15 rounds of voting to accumulate sufficient support to become House Speaker, the powerful, agenda-setting congressional office that is also third in the line of presidential succession. With each round, he made increasing pledges of policy changes in an effort to satisfy a small group of Republicans who are close supporters of former US President Donald Trump.Ironically, Trump supported McCarthy’s bid and played a role in pressuring the holdouts to vote for the California lawmaker, but they persisted, in the end exacting considerable concessions, including changes to chamber rules, commitments on policy actions, and committee assignments.That list of promises, according to Tuesday media reports, seems to exist only in verbal form.McCarthy has reportedly told GOP caucus members during a closed meeting that there was no official list of the concessions he made to a small group of dissident Republicans in order to get control over the gavel, according to insider reports published in US media on Tuesday.US media also reported that many lawmakers were only learning the details of those deals when they appeared in the news and not from those involved in the talks, including McCarthy.
Americas‘Let’s Get in the Room Now’: House GOP Lawmaker Calls for Battle Over US Debt CeilingYesterday, 09:56 GMTSome of those known concessions include restoring the ability of any House lawmaker to move for vacating the Speaker’s office; a pledge not to let the top-line budget in 2024 exceed that in 2022; launching a Church Committee-like investigation of the FBI and other US security agencies; and several committee appointments for members of the Freedom Caucus, the pro-Trump faction from which the dissidents hailed.While the agenda is widely seen as far-right in nature, differing sharply from typical GOP priorities, some aspects have won approval from some of the House’s most left-wing members. For example, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said it was “pretty exciting” that McCarthy would be launching the security agencies probe and had pledged to cut the Pentagon budget.Several House Republicans on Monday also called for defunding the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency long reviled by the far-left, following US President Joe Biden’s visit to the US-Mexico border over the weekend. However, their motivation for the demand stems from a belief that DHS is failing to secure the border, even with its substantial budget.
