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  • The Cold Calculus Behind the Shrinking GOP Presidential Field

    The Cold Calculus Behind the Shrinking GOP Presidential Field

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    Palin, though, is more likely to belt out another rendition of “Baby Got Back” on The Masked Singer than be the Republican standard bearer in 2024.

    That the GOP primary is developing more slowly this election, a departure from the accelerated trajectory of recent nominating contests, is by now plain to see.

    What’s even more striking three months after the midterms, though, is just how many Republicans are planning to sit out the White House race or remain on the fence about whether to run at all.

    For all the preemptive Republican panic about a 2016 replay, and Trump claiming the nomination again thanks to a fractured opposition, the 2024 GOP field is shaping up to be smaller than expected.

    “I would’ve told you last fall that there would be five senators in the race,” Ward Baker, a Republican strategist, told me, recalling a presentation he put together for lawmakers and donors projecting at least a double-digit sized group of contenders.

    Now, Baker and other well-connected Republicans believe the ultimate field may be closer to seven or eight serious candidates with an even smaller number still standing by the time the first votes are cast in the kickoff states a year from now.

    This is partly because of what those RNC members found in California last week.

    Trump has already declared for a third consecutive run and his imprint was all over the meeting and remains all over the party. Until he declared his candidacy, the RNC was still covering some of his legal bills. And the race for party chair was mostly notable for the fact that neither major candidate was willing to acknowledge the culprit for a disappointing midterm, largely because the committee members would rather focus on nefarious claims about Democratic ballot harvesting than the role of Trump, the man Democrats have organized, mobilized and fundraised off of for six consecutive elections.

    So, yes, a number of would-be Republican candidates this time see the party still in the former president’s grip, cast an eye at his preemptive attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and say: who needs it, I’ll check back in 2028 when, one way or another, Trump is out of the picture.

    However, it’s not only Trump who’s causing the Great Deep Freeze of 2023.

    “They don’t have a Trump problem, they have a DeSantis problem,” explains Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist, of the potential field. “It’s going to be hard fighting for the other 60 to 70 percent of the vote [not going to Trump] when another guy could get 90 percent of it.”

    DeSantis has, thanks to Covid and his ubiquity on right-wing media, become a “national conservative celebrity,” said Jennings, and the other would-be contenders are not likely to claim that status “by giving a bunch of speeches.”

    Republican officeholders and their advisers see the polling, public and private, demonstrating just how formidable DeSantis already is with Republican primary voters, who typically wouldn’t even know the name of another state’s governor this early in a race.

    That DeSantis has already burned in the conservative psyche was on display this week in Mississippi, where far-right State Sen. Chris McDaniel — whose proto-Trump 2014 primary nearly toppled then-Sen. Thad Cochran — opened a campaign for lieutenant governor by asking Republican voters: “Do you want a Trump or DeSantis, or do you want a Mitt Romney or a Liz Cheney?”

    That an undeclared Florida governor is already receiving equal billing on the conservative seal of good housekeeping with a former president and worldwide household name explains a great deal about how this contest is getting underway.

    Now, to be sure, it’s early and initial frontrunners can, and often do, fall.

    However, the history most on the minds of the Republicans considering the race, who are not named Trump or DeSantis, is what happens when there’s a bloody battle between top contenders. Spoiler: It augurs well for a third candidate.

    This is what’s giving hope to the other Republicans most likely to run. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who’s ready to announce later this month, hopes voters will turn to a younger, female alternative when the going gets rough between Trump and DeSantis. And older figures like former Vice President Mike Pence and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have told people they’re counting on a frontrunner food fight to create an appetite for a so-called adult in the race.

    Where it gets complicated for the would-be third option candidates is when it comes to money. As in: how will they raise it?

    And this question, as much as Trump’s grip or DeSantis’s strength as an alternative, is what’s giving (or what gave) a number of potential candidates pause.

    Among the party’s top contributors, as well as with many small-dollar givers, there’s simply no appetite for a prolonged, fractured primary that could pave the way for another Trump nomination-by-plurality.

    In this sense, the 2024 GOP donor is a lot like the 2020 Democratic primary electorate: They have one criteria and it’s who’s the safest bet to beat Trump. And the bundler bed-wetting about whether a larger field will merely open a path for Trump puts the onus on most every non-Trump candidate to demonstrate why they won’t just siphon votes from a single alternative.

    “The mega donors are going to keep their checkbooks in the desk for a while because they saw what happened in ’16,” said Dave Carney, a longtime GOP consultant.

    This will hurt Trump and DeSantis the least, in part because they’re already sitting on tens of millions of dollars that can likely be used for Super PACs and in part because they’re sure to be the most formidable online fundraisers.

    “If he runs that takes a lot of the oxygen out for others,” Carney said of DeSantis.

    The only other potential candidate even close to Trump and DeSantis on money is Sen. Tim Scott, who has over $21 million in his Senate account that he can transfer to a presidential campaign.

    Then there’s the matter of what wing of the party is not being represented. Between Trump, DeSantis, Pence, Haley, Scott and an anti-Trump Republican to be named later, most of the modern GOP’s factions are covered (and speaking of that anti-Trump Republican wing — let’s call it the John Kasich lane for the television interview-to-votes-received ratio — I hear New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is planning to meet with a group of well-connected Republicans about his plans when he’s in Washington later this month.)

    Still, as the current president demonstrates, there’s real value to running and losing because it can double as a vice-presidential tryout.

    But to a whole generation, and then some, of ambitious Republicans even that may not be compelling enough.

    Consider the roster of who’s not running or at least uninclined to run, absent a shift in the fundamentals of the race.

    From the 2016 field there’s former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas). Also on the sidelines from the Senate: Rick Scott (Fla.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Josh Hawley (Mo.). These are people, for the most part, in their 40s and 50s.

    Among the governors, it’s possible that Sununu, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Georgia Gov, Brian Kemp, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and a pair of former governors, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and New Jersey’s Chris Christie, could all run. But it’s more likely they won’t.

    To speak with members of the RNC is to understand why so many Republicans in the prime of their careers are, at the very least, uncertain about running for president.

    It’s not that Trump’s lieutenants, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, were issuing be-with-us-or-else threats alongside some magnificent views of the Pacific or that Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign chief, used her dinner speech to demand fealty to Trump.

    Yet their presence and the refusal of the two candidates for chair to actually grapple with Trump’s impact on general election voters helps reinforce a sort of code of silence among most of the committee.

    The most frequently cited fig leaf for not offering an opinion on the presidential race is that, as committee members, they’ve taken a vow of celibacy when it comes to primaries.

    What they actually mean is they don’t want to be seen as telling their states’ voters what to do, in part because that could alienate Trump’s diehards, risking their own posts, and in part because Trump could weaponize any such intervention.

    As Luis Fortuño, the former Puerto Rican governor and one of the few RNC members to speak candidly about the committee’s calculations, told me: “There’s a sensitivity to his base in the sense that 30 percent of them will be with him and we need everyone at the end of the day.”

    There were, however, private indications of an eagerness to move on from Trump. While Ronna McDaniel easily won re-election, and with the tacit support of Trump, two candidates for other RNC offices he openly endorsed both lost.

    In the treasurer’s race, Florida GOP chair Joe Gruters was defeated in part because he had Trump’s backing — and trumpeted the endorsement to committee members.

    Gruters’s allies texted committee members the day of the vote with a siren emoji, an all-caps headline: “PRES. TRUMP ENDORSES JOE GRUTERS FOR RNC TREASURER” and a message from Trump about his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

    However, Gruters told me it was only supposed to go to about 20 Trump diehards on the committee and instead went to the entire 168-member party roster. That, according to Fortuno and other Trump skeptics who want a neutral leadership slate, caused a backlash on the floor and doomed Gruters’ candidacy.

    Not that many potential presidential candidates were there to witness or even hear about what transpired.

    The only likely 2024 contender to show up was Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, who’s a longshot but would bring perhaps the most sterling resume to the field. Now a certified member of the old guard, he was once a Reagan-appointed U.S. Attorney, House impeachment manager against Bill Clinton and DEA chief and top border official under George W. Bush before serving two terms in Little Rock.

    Hutchinson wasn’t in the actual RNC program, but didn’t ask to be included. Unlike a number of once-hungry Republicans he’s still intent on testing the 2024 waters — he was the only potential candidate to show up for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’s inauguration and legislative breakfast last month. He believes the case has to be made directly against the former president.

    Citing a much-read Peggy Noonan column from December, Hutchinson told me flatly: “The only way to get rid of Donald Trump is to beat him.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP looks to prove whipping mettle on Omar ouster

    House GOP looks to prove whipping mettle on Omar ouster

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    “We’ve watched what she has done,” McCarthy said Tuesday morning to reporters. “I just think she can serve on other committees. It would be best if the Democrats didn’t put her in the position of Foreign Affairs. If they do, she will not serve on Foreign Affairs. They can choose another committee for her.”

    The House Rules Committee held an “emergency meeting” Tuesday night to push through the resolution on Omar, and a procedural vote to move forward passed the House Wednesday along party lines. That teed up a full House vote on whether to officially kick Omar off the committee as early as Thursday, though Republicans could be forced to punt the vote into next week due to a handful of expected absences.

    The resolution to remove her was introduced by first-term Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish and says he has not spoken with Omar personally. He cited various comments she has made with antisemitic overtones, while also arguing that Democrats watered down a resolution to condemn her for those remarks in 2019 when they held the majority. Omar, for her part, has largely apologized for her previous comments.

    “As an American Jew and as somebody who served in the Marine Corps, I believe that her comments are vile. And while she may have apologized in the past, she continues to erect a pattern of antisemitic rhetoric,” said Miller in an interview about his motivations for leading the resolution.

    Miller added that he put forward the resolution ”in conjunction” with McCarthy, and that he ”obviously expressed interest in wanting to carry this resolution as one of two Republican Jewish individuals within the conference.”

    Democrats, meanwhile, blasted the move as political revenge and are set to unanimously back Omar against the effort to remove her from the panel. She was set to become the top Democrat on a subcommittee on African policy.

    “Kevin McCarthy is acting out of revenge instead of focusing on the real issues,” said No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark (Mass.) in the caucus’ weekly whip meeting Wednesday morning, according to a person in the room. “How does he speak of ‘integrity’ while packing committees with election deniers?” she added.

    And Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a fellow member of the progressive “squad,” praised Omar as an “incredible legislator” and said “the Republicans are full of shit.”

    Just days ago, three GOP lawmakers were vowing to oppose the resolution, and party leaders could only afford to lose four votes assuming full attendance. And that was far from guaranteed, as they’d expressed concerns over potential absences, including one GOP member who is recovering from serious injuries.

    Those concerns were mostly assuaged by Wednesday. Spartz (R-Ind.) said Tuesday she would back the measure after it was tweaked to include language about an appeal to the Ethics Committee, despite it containing in a nonbinding “whereas” clause with no legal teeth. And Buck also changed his position Wednesday, saying “the commitment is that [McCarthy] will work with me on clarifying what the standard here is” on removing members from committees, as well as making the process “more transparent and consistent.”

    Generally, Republicans argue Omar can serve on other committees and say this is a watered-down resolution compared to a Democratic-led votes to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) from their committees. Democrats took those actions, with some Republican support, over threatening comments and social media posts made by both lawmakers — statements GOP lawmakers are quick to point out that, in Greene’s case, were made before she was sworn into Congress.

    Republicans warned at the time that if Democrats wanted to change the longstanding precedent of allowing parties to decide panel assignments and removals internally, then they, too, would have those tools at their disposal when in power. Now, they’re making good on that promise.

    “We are taking an unprecedented rule that the Democrats put in place last Congress and using it effectively against them,” Miller said.

    Some Democrats have since expressed concern about how the Gosar and Greene situations were handled, with Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the Ethics Committee, saying in Tuesday’s Rules Committee meeting she didn’t think “it was the correct process” when the two Republicans were booted. Wild voted in favor of removing both at the time.

    The lack of Democratic support for removing Omar, though, is in part a product of time. In her previous two terms, Omar faced intense pushback from some in the caucus over her controversial comments about Israel and Jews, and while some Democrats may have even supported a measure back then to condemn her remarks, one never came up on the House floor. The House instead passed a resolution generally condemning bigotry. Since then, she’s worked to mend relationships with her fellow lawmakers.

    The vote follows McCarthy’s announcement last week that he would block two California Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell — from the House Intelligence Committee. McCarthy can take unilateral action against members on that committee, due to the nature of the panel, while removing Omar requires a majority vote in the House.

    But Republicans may not get total unification in booting Omar. Mace said Wednesday afternoon her opposition to removing Omar has not changed. When it was noted that both Buck and Spartz had flipped after receiving certain commitments from McCarthy, Mace distinguished that those promises regard “future” incidents, but the GOP leader is not “gonna use it for Omar.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Dems name former Trump impeachment officials to GOP investigative panel

    Dems name former Trump impeachment officials to GOP investigative panel

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    Plaskett, a former prosecutor, made history in the role as the first delegate to serve as an impeachment manager. Fellow impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), now the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, was once her law professor at American University.

    Jeffries also nominated three members of the Oversight Committee for the select panel: Reps. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.). Connolly and Lynch ran against Raskin for the top spot on that panel but fell short. And Goldman, a freshman, previously served as counsel for House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment trial.

    Democratic Reps. Linda Sánchez (Calif.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Colin Allred (Texas) and Sylvia Garcia (Texas) also got seats on the select subcommittee. Technically, McCarthy appoints all members of the panel, meaning he’ll need to sign off on the Democratic picks, but the California Republican has said he would let Democrats name their own members for the subcommittee.

    Jeffries, in the letter to his colleagues, said that the Democrats leading their party on the committees would need to “stand up to extremism from the other side of the aisle.” In addition to picking Plaskett as the top Democrat on the weaponization subcommittee, Jeffries also picked Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) to be the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee after McCarthy blocked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the longtime lead Democrat, from serving on the panel.

    The minority leader also tapped Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) to head Democrats on a select committee on strategic competition between the United States and China and Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) to be the party’s top official on a subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.

    “It remains my goal to prioritize and value input from every corner of the Caucus so we may unleash the full potential of our team. The members of the select committees reflect the tremendous experience, background and ability of the House Democratic Caucus, and authentically represent the gorgeous mosaic of the American people,” he added.

    Under a fix passed by the House earlier Wednesday, the select panel members were expected to include Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who serve as chair and ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee, as well as an additional 19 lawmakers — no more than eight of whom would be Democrats. But Jeffries, in his announcement, said that Nadler would instead serve as an ex-officio member. The overall break down of the panel is 12 Republicans to 9 Democrats.

    Democrats on the subcommittee will be tasked with finding an offensive lane to counter the GOP investigations, with Republicans on the panel expected to expand the scope of their probes to include the intelligence community, the Department of Education, big tech and other targets.

    The minority party largely avoided naming any bomb throwers to the subcommittee, but their members are well-steeped in investigative tactics and procedural mechanisms Republicans may choose to deploy as they pursue their own favored probes.

    In addition to serving as an impeachment manager, Plaskett was also on the Ways and Means Committee in the last Congress, which was at the center of the fight for Trump’s tax returns. Sánchez is also a member of the tax writing committee.

    Connolly, in particular, also has a long history of tangling with Jordan and other GOP members of the panel through their time on the Oversight Committee.

    Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP leaps headlong into divisive Mayorkas impeachment debate

    House GOP leaps headlong into divisive Mayorkas impeachment debate

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    It marks another test for House GOP leaders, as they try to balance the demands of more moderate members and a base that’s eager to go scorched-earth against President Joe Biden and other administration officials. Not to mention that Republicans will have to navigate a barrage of criticism from Democrats and their allies, who accuse the GOP of using the border as a wedge issue to enact political revenge over policy differences.

    Republicans who want to impeach Mayorkas acknowledge they haven’t reached a critical mass within their own conference, though Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) predicted that there would be “a lot of sentiment” among GOP lawmakers to remove the DHS secretary. If a resolution came to the floor, Republicans could only afford to lose four votes within their own party.

    “I think when you lay the case out as any impeachment happens, I think [support] grows. Obviously, it’s not going to happen instantaneously,” Hern said when asked if the conference should move toward impeachment without the votes locked down.

    Yet other leadership allies are warning against officially moving forward with impeachment without a baked-in result. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), part of a shrinking pool of House GOP pragmatists, warned against forcing members to stake out a stance on a controversial topic if it’s not guaranteed of success.

    “I just don’t think it’s helpful to put people in that position,” he said.

    The eager-to-impeach right flank has so far largely lobbed two broad arguments against Mayorkas: That he’s lost operational control of the border, and that he lied under oath when he told Congress the border was secure. And while their early hearings are focused on the border broadly, GOP lawmakers have signaled they will try to use the bully pulpit of their majority to demonstrate that the administration hasn’t complied with the law.

    The administration and congressional Democrats, meanwhile, argue Republicans are overstating what amounts to policy differences over the handling of the border. Democrats, and even some Republicans, are quick to point out that is a far cry from the high bar for impeachment of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

    Mayorkas has repeatedly defended his handling of the border, signaling he has no intention of giving into the GOP calls for his resignation. Asked during an MSNBC interview on Tuesday about the House GOP impeachment articles, Mayorkas urged Republicans to take up legislation that would fix what he called a “terribly broken” and “outdated” immigration system. The party has attempted sweeping changes to immigration law and border security multiple times in the last decade, to no avail.

    “We are doing everything that we can to increase its efficiency to provide humanitarian relief when the law permits and to also deliver an enforcement consequence when the law dictates,” Mayorkas said.

    Hill Democrats are privately betting that conservatives’ impeachment pledge will put its moderates in a bind. A House aide, granted anonymity to speak frankly, predicted that “those members are going to start getting real antsy real fast,” as others try to get into “crazy, wacko border security stuff.”

    And it’s more than members in purple districts who may feel squeezed by impeachment talk. Republicans will also be playing defense in a cache of blue-leaning seats come 2024 when their thin majority is on the line. Some GOP members in those districts, even if they strongly disagree with Mayorkas’ handling of the border, are openly skeptical their voters want to see him removed.

    “I do think what’s going on at the border is negligence, dereliction of duty, but I’m not convinced that impeaching Mayorkas is going to solve the problem. I think we need the election in 2024 to change the White House,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said, though he cautioned that hearings could give a better sense of how voters feel about the issue.

    Others, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), have warned that they think the party needs to focus on policies like fighting inflation. And then there’s border Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), emerging as a vote to watch in the GOP-controlled House, who is viewed as an impeachment skeptic after describing it in January as a “in case of emergency break glass” option.

    Gonzales reiterated during a sit-down interview with POLITICO on Tuesday that he wasn’t going to get ahead of any potential proceedings.

    A recent spate of polling offers its own cautionary tale for Republicans. Fifty-five percent of respondents to a recent NBC News poll said they expected Republicans leading investigations into Biden and the administration “will spend too much time on the investigations and not enough time on other priorities.”

    Nearly three-fourths of respondents to a separate CNN poll said they thought Republicans hadn’t yet paid attention to the country’s “most important priorities.” Nearly half named economic issues as the most important topic, compared to 11 percent listing immigration.

    So far, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is only pledging an investigation. Asked recently about his November remarks calling for Mayorkas to resign, the California Republican told reporters that that the House GOP will conduct their probe and said that could lead to an impeachment inquiry. But he wouldn’t pre-judge an outcome, as many top Republicans hope the case made in committee hearings will win over enough wary colleagues and disinterested voters.

    “If a person is derelict in their duties and they are harming Americans and Americans are actually dying by the lack of their work, that could rise to that occasion,” he told reporters.

    The Wednesday Judiciary Committee hearing will include testimony from non-administration officials: Brandon Dunn, the co-founder of Forever 15 Project, a group that tries to raise awareness about Fentanyl poisoning; Dale Lynn Carruthers, a county judge in Texas; and Mark Dannels, a sheriff in Arizona. The latter two have both been critical of Biden’s border policies.

    Over on the Oversight Committee, Comer announced on Tuesday night that the Department of Homeland Security had offered, and he had accepted, to have two Border Patrol officials testify next week: Gloria Chavez and John Modlin, chief Border Patrol agents.

    Neither of the two GOP chairs are ruling out using subpoenas to try to get witnesses and documents they want from the department. Their panel members have backed up that strategy.

    “We’re going to use the power of subpoena,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said. “And we’ve got to use the power of subpoena to haul Mayorkas in front of the Judiciary Committee.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Omar, now a Dem unifier, faces down her GOP critics

    Omar, now a Dem unifier, faces down her GOP critics

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    With what she sees as some of her most important work on the Hill under threat, Omar’s fellow Democrats are rallying around her and looking past the previous controversies, including members who once criticized her for remarks on Israel and U.S. foreign policy. No longer a fresh-faced new member, she’s formed alliances with powerful players and groups who are ready to jump to her defense. Asked about her Democratic support in a Tuesday interview with POLITICO, Omar responded with the advice she said her father used to give: “It’s hard to hate up close.”

    It’s clear that Omar sees the Foreign Affairs panel as more than just a committee position. The assignment is personal, given her background as a Black Muslim woman whose family had fled the Somali Civil War. After bearing firsthand witness to the impact of the Cold War on U.S. policy in Africa, she said, she even campaigned on wanting to be on the panel — making her one of the few lawmakers to do so besides a former chair, Eliot Engel.

    After coming to the U.S. admiring the country’s ideals, Omar said, her goal was to “make sure those values and ideals are actually being lived out in the policies that we put forth and the ways in which we carry out those policies, and that they don’t just remain a myth.”

    And the fight to keep her spot has become personal, too. Controversy over her past comments has aimed a deluge of invectives, abuse and even death threats at the high-profile progressive. Just before the interview Tuesday, her office received a phone call unpleasant enough that a staffer politely ended the call within seconds of picking up.

    “This isn’t about reprimand. This isn’t about accountability, because I’ve held myself accountable,” she said.

    Fellow “squad” member Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) attributed the rush to boot Omar to fellow lawmakers making snap judgments based on sound bites or tweets before getting to know her personally, describing an unwillingness to “get the context to understand the person, meet the person and know the person.”

    “But I think that since she’s been here, people have been able to see who she is, and to understand her position better,” Bush said.

    If Republicans do prevail in Wednesday’s vote to remove Omar from her Foreign Affairs perch, she said she worries about it further dividing the panel — injecting more partisan politics into an area that typically requires more cross-party unity on both policy and bipartisan trips abroad.

    Her Republican counterpart on the Africa subpanel, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has been publicly noncommittal on how he’ll vote on the removal resolution, and she observed that when Democrats eventually retake the House, “I will have the gavel, and they will end up being my ranking, and that changes the dynamic and the relationship.”

    Meanwhile, Democrats have been trying to lobby their Republican colleagues to support Omar. New York Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the party’s top member on the Foreign Affairs panel, said some Republicans had privately indicated to him they wished the whole issue would just “go away” because they didn’t actually want to vote to remove her, though the New Yorker declined to identify whom.

    Omar too said she had been talking with “a few” Republicans about her panel assignment, but she also declined to name the members.

    And she’s not alone in her fight, drawing from strong wells of support both within the Congressional Black Caucus and among previously critical Democrats. She’s been spotted having intense, one-on-one conversations during votes this week with some of Democrats’ strongest Israel proponents, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), and had a long hallway conversation with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who’s long helped lead an annual tour to Israel.

    “I think we’re rallying around her like we would any member,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who as Black Caucus chair last Congress made a point of building bridges with the group’s more liberal members like Omar.

    Then there’s Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), who’d condemned Omar’s rhetoric in previous rounds of controversy in what he said “now seems like forever ago.” But in this case, he added, “to politicize the committee assignments is something I think either side shouldn’t be doing. It should be based on current actions and current deeds.”

    Republicans, on the other hand, are projecting confidence they’ll be able to round up the votes in the end. And there are some positive signs for GOP leaders — Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who’d previously opposed removing Omar from Foreign Affairs, signaled on Tuesday she was open to changing her mind. The House Rules Committee took up a resolution to remove Omar from the panel Tuesday evening, with a vote expected on Wednesday.

    The GOP is citing Omar’s previous comments that appeared to lean into antisemitic tropes as the reason it’s moving to force her off the Foreign Affairs Committee. Certain tweets not long after she came to Congress had even enraged some of her fellow Democrats, though she deleted the posts and has apologized.

    She also drew a conservative backlash for comments in 2019 about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which she said Republican critics have taken out of context. She also quickly clarified and apologized two years later for comments on war crimes that appeared to compare the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban.

    And she’s plainly frustrated that Republicans have forcibly compared her with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), two conservatives Democrats removed from committees last Congress with some GOP support in response to incendiary rhetoric aimed at fellow lawmakers. She’s aggressively made the case that her situation is entirely different.

    “I would love for this to be an actual debate. But it’s a smear, it is an attack, and to me in many ways it feels like it’s McCarthyism that’s being carried out by the new McCarthy,” she said.

    Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP sets its expectations low for McCarthy-Biden debt meeting

    House GOP sets its expectations low for McCarthy-Biden debt meeting

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    But the GOP is also entertaining hope that the president shows a shred of openness to taking its demands seriously, even as very few of its members specify what they want Biden to negotiate on. A rare Republican with a concrete proposal was Texas Rep. Chip Roy, who on Tuesday called directly for federal spending caps.

    “It’s a lot of work. We got to do it. We’re in a big hole because of irresponsibility on both sides of the aisle,” said Roy, who has also specified that the cuts shouldn’t touch the Pentagon’s budget or programs like Medicare or Social Security. “But there is a path, and we ought to sit down and figure it out.”

    That growing fiscal slash-and-burn pressure from the GOP’s right flank leaves both parties in a state of high-stakes uncertainty as Congress veers towards a summertime cliff that draws parallels to the Obama administration’s flirtation with debt calamity more than a decade ago. And this time around, Biden’s lead negotiating partner won’t be his generational counterpart Mitch McConnell but the younger speaker from California, who brings a more Trump-friendly conservatism and less predictable style to the table.

    McCarthy will also be speaking for a conference where fiscal hawks hold significant sway and spending caps are gaining momentum as a proposed solution. That outcome would be similar to the 2011 debt limit standoff, which ended with Congress enacting strict spending limits that technically lasted a decade, but were waived more times than not.

    “I think the first thing [Biden] should do, especially as president of the United States, is say he’s willing to sit down and find a common ground and negotiate together,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday morning when asked what he would need to see from Biden to consider the meeting a success.

    House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) put it more simply: “It would be awesome if the president would admit he is going to negotiate. That would be awesome.”

    But GOP members are still fiercely split over major issues like whether to slash the Pentagon’s budget or touch entitlement programs, and broad domestic spending cuts could prove problematic for more moderate, electorally vulnerable members.

    Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), another conservative who supports limits on domestic spending, said of Biden: “He wants to do a free debt ceiling. And I don’t think that’s what the American people want.”

    The first step this time, as House Republicans see it, is for Biden to acknowledge to their leader that the U.S. needs to start chipping away at the nation’s rising borrowing bills. While GOP leaders have agreed to look at capping spending at fiscal 2022 levels in future spending bills, there’s been little open discussion about whether those demands would carry into the debt conversations.

    “We can’t even talk about it without the president and Democrats coming to the table,” said House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

    Democrats, meanwhile, are looking for their own concessions. Biden plans to seek a commitment from McCarthy that the U.S. will never default on its financial obligations, according to a White House memo released earlier Tuesday. Administration officials also said they plan to unveil their proposed budget for the coming fiscal year on March 9, demanding that House GOP leaders reveal their own blueprint detailing their vision for spending cuts.

    Some Senate Democrats have said they’re willing to discuss government funding as part of the annual appropriations process, but not while using the nation’s borrowing limit as a bargaining chip.

    “There shouldn’t be a negotiation about whether or not we pay our bills,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of the chamber’s Democratic leadership. “If they want to talk about next year’s budget, certainly that’s a legitimate thing. But we don’t negotiate to pay our bills.”

    Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), however, has said it would be a mistake for the White House not to negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling. Manchin met with McCarthy last week, after which he said the GOP leader agreed not to cut Medicare and Social Security.

    “I think those two can get something done,” Manchin said Monday night of the president and House GOP leader. “I really feel confident about that.”

    Unlike some House Republicans, though, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said he hopes Biden will entertain changes to ensure the long-term solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare, which “are both headed for bankruptcy.”

    “That doesn’t mean you have to cut programs, but it does mean that you’ve got to make reforms … that will translate into making those programs more sustainable for the long term,” Thune said Tuesday. “If you take that off the table in these negotiations, it does obviously limit the amount of the budget that you can address.”

    More than a decade ago, then-Vice President Biden and Senate GOP leader McConnell successfully hashed out a spending caps deal to stave off a market-rattling default. But this time, McConnell has said McCarthy should take the lead, arguing that nothing would get through the Democratic-led Senate if it can’t pass the Republican-led House.

    McConnell said Tuesday that the 2011 deal was successful when it came to restricting spending in the short-term, but it squeezed defense funding too much.

    “We’re all behind Kevin and wishing him well in negotiations,” McConnell said.

    Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a senior party appropriator, said Biden will ultimately have to negotiate with the GOP to stave off a debt default that — in Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent words — could result in a “global financial crisis.”

    “No one holds all the cards,” Fleischmann said.

    Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Dems name new members to combat GOP investigations — including Schiff

    Dems name new members to combat GOP investigations — including Schiff

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    Democrats will get their first test run on pushing back against Republicans on the panel, chaired by McCarthy-antagonist-turned-ally Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), on Wednesday during the committee’s first hearing, centered on the border. In addition to investigations, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will be at the forefront of any impeachment inquiries, as Republicans have called for forcibly removing Mayorkas over his handling of the border.

    Meanwhile, several new freshmen members have joined the Oversight Committee, including Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was counsel to House Democrats during the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

    The panel’s Democrats also named Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to serve as vice ranker, a possibility reported by POLITICO last week. It’s a move that could be highly significant if Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has to miss hearings as he undergoes cancer treatment.

    The new members “have come from all over America to fight for their communities. Now they join the Democrats on the Oversight and Accountability Committee — the ‘Truth Squad’ — to conduct thorough and fact-based oversight to ensure an effective, efficient, and accountable American government that delivers for the American people,” Raskin said in a statement about Democrats’ line up.

    Republicans on the Oversight Committee have vowed to investigate dozens of areas within the Biden administration. But they’ve signaled panel Republicans’ main focus will be targeting President Joe Biden himself, primarily by delving into Hunter Biden’s business dealings and other members of the Biden family; the coronavirus pandemic, including federal government directives and the “origins” of the virus; the border, and the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    And the panel includes some of the House GOP’s most right-leaning members, including Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

    Democrats still need to pick their members for a Republican-run select subcommittee that will look into the “weaponization” of the federal government, a concession McCarthy made to conservatives in order to secure the speakership.

    McCarthy unveiled the GOP picks for the panel last week, naming 11 Republicans plus Jordan to lead the sweeping committee — more members than expected. The House is expected to pass a resolution expanding the size of the subcommittee, which would proportionally boost the number of Democratic seats.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Santos forgoes his committees as House GOP struggles to boot Omar

    Santos forgoes his committees as House GOP struggles to boot Omar

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    230120 santos magazine francis 36 edit

    Santos’ move drew immediate praise from his home-state GOP colleagues, several of whom have already called for his resignation amid the growing controversy over his misstatements about his past.

    “I think it’s obvious it’s the right decision,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who toppled House Democrats’ former campaign chief in a swing-district midterm triumph two months ago.

    Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) echoed that sentiment: “As I said, I think he should resign and focus on his defense. But, do welcome this decision.”

    Santos declined to comment to POLITICO when asked about the move, just upon exiting the weekly closed-door meeting. He replied: “I don’t know.”

    And there appeared to be some uncertainty on Tuesday about whether Santos — who faces multiple investigations on the federal, state and local levels into potential false statements about his background — would try to return to his committees.

    Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Tuesday morning that Santos had apologized and described his move as a temporary recusal, after which “he’ll come back” to the panels he’d not yet been seated on.

    “It sounded to me like it’s temporary,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), who chairs the Small Business Committee. “I think, until there’s a level of what he thinks the issues that he’s a distraction from are over.”

    Despite the multiple probes Santos is currently dealing with, Williams said he didn’t sense the move stemmed from looming legal issues.

    “I’ve seen members do that before, usually when they were under some sort of legal question or something like that — just step back on their own. If they don’t do it, we quite often do it ourselves,” House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said, adding that Santos “deserves some credit for doing it” before any internal move that may have been made against him.

    The small business panel had not yet named its Republican members as of Tuesday. A panel spokesperson attributed the delay on Monday to reasons other than Santos.

    Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

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    #Santos #forgoes #committees #House #GOP #struggles #boot #Omar
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘Intellectually bankrupt’: Biden allies blast GOP debt-limit backup plan

    ‘Intellectually bankrupt’: Biden allies blast GOP debt-limit backup plan

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    The White House and Treasury are already putting up resistance to the idea, which Treasury says would amount to a default. But disclosures over the past several years — driven in part by investigations by House Republicans — have revealed that officials believe the government has the technical capacity to implement payment prioritization, though it would be experimental and risky.

    “Most investors who follow this closely are very aware the United States will not default on its bonds,” Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chair of research at Barclays, said in an interview.

    The debate around the potential backup plan underscores the economic uncertainty that’s already being triggered by the political stalemate around raising the debt limit, the total amount of money that Congress authorizes the government to borrow. Many on Wall Street doubt payment prioritization would work.

    It’s also a window into the fraught choices awaiting the Biden administration if lawmakers are unable to resolve the impasse. Paying bondholders instead of everyone else — individuals and businesses depending on checks from the government — would likely trigger a political backlash and potentially slow the U.S. economy as a possible recession already looms, depending on how long it lasted.

    “The notion is intellectually bankrupt,” former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who led the department under President Barack Obama, said in an interview.

    But even some critics of payment prioritization concede it might be the least-bad of what are all bad alternatives, such as legally questionable proposals like minting a trillion-dollar coin to pay the government’s bills. Conservatives, including Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), have suggested maintaining payments on Treasury debt, Social Security, Medicare, veterans and the military.

    “Of all the unilateral options on the debt ceiling, prioritization is probably the healthiest horse in the glue factory,” Cowen policy analyst Chris Krueger said.

    Washington and Wall Street are ramping up discussions around contingency plans after the U.S. hit its legal borrowing limit on Jan. 19. Treasury is now using accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to keep paying the government’s obligations. In this case, Treasury is suspending investments in government retirement accounts.

    The department hasn’t publicly outlined its ability to pick and choose whom to pay if it breached the “X-date” — the deadline when it wouldn’t have enough cash to cover all its bills. The idea came into focus when the U.S. nearly went over the cliff during the 2011 debt limit fight — an episode of brinksmanship that resulted in S&P downgrading the country’s credit rating for the first time in history.

    House Republicans spent the ensuing years investigating what Treasury could and couldn’t do.

    In a 2014 letter to the GOP chair of the House Financial Services Committee, a top Treasury official said systems at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be “technologically capable of continuing to make principal and interest payments while Treasury was not making other kinds of payments, although this approach would be entirely experimental and create unacceptable risk to both domestic and global financial markets.”

    The official, then-assistant secretary for legislative affairs Alastair Fitzpayne, said “no decision regarding what to do in such a situation was made during the recent debt limit impasses, and potential responses have not been tested.”

    J.W. Verret, who worked on the investigation as an aide to the Financial Services Committee, said Treasury and the Federal Reserve made available documents that showed in-depth tabletop exercises for how to prioritize payments. They indicated “there’s no inherently structural issue that stops them from doing it,” according to Verret, who reviewed the documents.

    The committee’s Republican leaders — including current Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) — told Treasury in a 2014 letter that documents prepared by the New York Fed “exhaustively detail how the department and the bank would implement any plan to prioritize payments on Treasury bonds.”

    Lew confirmed in the interview that officials ran an exercise to see whether the government could physically pay bond payments and nothing else. He still thinks it’s a bad idea.

    “As a tabletop exercise, we reached the conclusion you might be able to,” he said. “It’s never been tested in the real world. We don’t know what the cash flows required are. We don’t know how that would interact with other systems being on or off.”

    Lew, who argues that prioritization is “accepting default,” said the two presidents he worked for — Bill Clinton and Obama — never made the decision to pay bonds over other obligations.

    “Only the president can make that decision,” he said. “It’s not a decision the Treasury secretary alone can make. No president should be forced to make that decision.”

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also come out forcefully against the concept.

    “A failure on the part of the United States to meet any obligation, whether it’s to debt holders, to members of our military, or to Social Security recipients, is effectively a default,” she told reporters earlier this month.

    She added that Treasury’s systems were built to “pay all of our bills when they are due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another.”

    PIMCO, a bond-trading behemoth, has added its voice to the naysayers.

    PIMCO head of public policy Libby Cantrill said in a statement: “We take Secretary Yellen and previous Treasury secretaries – both Republican and Democratic – at their word that prioritizing payments under Treasury’s existing systems is simply not viable and should not be viewed as a feasible alternative to Congress raising the debt ceiling.”

    But warnings aren’t enough to dissuade some financial industry analysts and executives that Treasury could pull it off.

    “They have the tools available to be able to avoid a default or a disruption in the capital markets,” said Unlimited Funds CEO Bob Elliott, who previously led research at hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates. “We would expect them to use those tools to ensure that the U.S. doesn’t experience a default.”

    Bank of America rates strategist Ralph Axel said Treasury should be more forthcoming.

    “They need to tell everybody what the real deal is with the Treasury market and whether or not this is a true massive threat or if it’s actually completely benign, which I think it is,” he said.

    But payment prioritization believers on Wall Street still argue that it carries risks.

    Even if the market for Treasury securities avoided disruption, the missed payments to other individuals and businesses could be a drag on the rest of the economy.

    Elliott said the real risk is that it goes on for months, in which case people would start to cut spending.

    “My fear is that X date is hit. The day after, not a whole lot happens and a bunch of people who are holding out say, ‘See, everything’s totally fine,’” Rajadhyaksha with Barclays said. “This is a slow burn. The longer it takes the worse it gets.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP grits its teeth for the ‘big lift’: A budget battle

    House GOP grits its teeth for the ‘big lift’: A budget battle

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    At the same time, party leadership will have to ensure steep domestic cuts won’t hurt moderates back home, bruising members in vulnerable districts and threatening an already slim House majority. And in the center of what seems like a near-impossible effort — to draft a budget plan with broad GOP support — sits newly installed House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

    In an interview, Arrington acknowledged that it’s going to be a heavy lift for a conference deeply split by federal spending issues. If the budget measure ever makes it out of committee and to the floor, Republicans can only afford to lose four of their 222 votes.

    “It won’t be easy,” Arrington said. But he added that he’s “looking forward to the challenge of pulling that 218 together so that we can know what it feels like to succeed, and know that we can succeed.”

    Passing a budget resolution — which is technically non-binding — would set a “very defined measure of success” for Republicans, Arrington added, by laying out party demands and putting the negotiating onus back on Democrats in talks over hiking the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit.

    Republicans in the upper chamber are also pressuring the House GOP to adopt a fiscal 2024 budget, particularly Senate fiscal hawks who want to adopt a measure that embraces military funding cuts, in addition to reductions to domestic programs.

    “I think it’s going to be difficult,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said of getting a budget through the House, even as he urged the GOP not to hold military funding “sacrosanct.” Adopting a budget would show that House Republicans “have their ducks in a row” as they pursue fiscal restraints, Braun added.

    Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) echoed that sentiment, saying his House GOP counterparts have “a big task ahead of them.

    “We want to do everything we can to support their efforts, but also encourage them,” Johnson added, “because the crucial aspect to what they need to do is they have to pass these things with Republican votes.”

    At the same time, House Republicans have to mind the political headaches their fiscal choices will pose to their vulnerable members — which is particularly true when it comes to the messy internal politics of entitlement reform. Some of their members are hesitant to touch mandatory spending and others insist that reforms are necessary for the long-term solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) this week said Speaker Kevin McCarthy assured him that those programs are safe from cuts.

    Many House Republicans are loath to take a knife to the Pentagon’s budget, however, and doing so would almost certainly jeopardize broad support for a GOP budget plan.

    Despite all its potential to cause intraparty angst, a budget resolution isn’t a particularly detailed document. While it could detail the GOP’s vision for slashing spending over a decade, outline preferred discretionary spending limits, and instruct committees to work on taxes or mandatory spending changes, the budget wouldn’t outline cuts to specific programs.

    Such a plan is considered a basic task of the majority party, but it often gets skipped during the annual budget process.

    Drafting one is a high-stakes dance that many former Budget Committee leaders know all too well. That includes former House Budget Chair Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who shepherded the adoption of a budget resolution in 2017 — allowing Republicans to pass their party-line tax bill.

    Black described it as a “nailbiter” of a vote that followed months upon months of navigating warring factions within the GOP conference. This time, Republicans may not have that kind of time, with a debt default threatening the U.S. in a matter of months, she warned.

    “I think it’s a big lift,” Black said. “I don’t know, frankly, because of where they are right now … that they really have the time to dig in and do it that well. Maybe they do.”

    “There definitely is a time element to how you get everyone on board, given what they’ve already been through with the leadership process,” Black added, referring to the 15-ballot speakership race that consumed the conference earlier this month.

    Former Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), who chaired the House Budget Committee until he retired last year, watched his own budget resolution crash and burn on the floor in 2019, when Democratic leaders were forced to cancel a vote on the measure as progressives decried defense funding levels they deemed too high.

    “Jodey Arrington is a really reasonable guy,” Yarmuth said of his successor. “He’s setting a bar that he may not be able to get over, and Jodey knows that, I’m sure. But they’ve committed to do it, so he’s going to have to try to do it.”

    “When you have the margins that they have … it’s going to be very unlikely that they can bring a budget resolution to the floor that can pass,” Yarmuth added of House Republicans. “That’s the problem we always had.”

    Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), now his party’s top member on the Budget Committee, echoed that point, saying that “getting 218 votes for a budget resolution is difficult under ordinary circumstances.”

    Republicans “have a grueling battle ahead if they decide to pursue this unpopular path,” he said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )