It was one of House conservatives’ biggest demands: more representation on key committees and in senior roles. They got both, and they’re still bragging about it.
At a House Freedom Caucus fundraiser in Tennessee last month, the conservative group’s chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) boasted to donors about what it extracted from McCarthy. That included gaining the Homeland Security Committee gavel for a group member after securing Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) eventual chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee (he first served as the top Republican on the House Oversight panel).
Jordan’s position, Perry claimed at the event, was based on “leverage, too.” In reality, though, that position had long been expected given Jordan and McCarthy’s increasingly close relationship.
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a member of the Freedom Caucus who was present at the event, now chairs the homeland security panel after the protracted speakership battle.
“Now we knew we were going to have a dog in the fight … we also knew the competition,” Perry said of the homeland chairmanship race – apparently referring to Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) — according to an audio recording obtained by POLITICO.
“And one of the conversations was: If that other person becomes the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, then you will not be speaker.”
While the GOP Steering Committee mostly decides panel chairs, the process is heavily influenced by the speaker. (Green’s position, as well as other competitive chair positions, were decided by the Steering panel after McCarthy’s election on the floor.) Green’s allies have argued that his win was more than just a tradeoff, saying it was a win-win given his resume and vision for the panel. A Crenshaw aide, responding to Perry’s words, called the apparent deal the “worst kept secret in Washington.”
Additionally, two of the GOP’s most conservative members — Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — were placed on the lower-profile but powerful Rules Committee. It was perhaps the most decentralizing move McCarthy made; the Rules panel decides exactly the way legislation comes to the House floor, empowering Roy and Massie to block certain bills or push for changes.
Conservatives gained more representation on other key committees, too. Two of the 20 holdout members landed on the Financial Services panel and two others got seats on Appropriations. And even Freedom Caucus members who were supportive of McCarthy landed on other top panels, like Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), who received a spot on Energy and Commerce.
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The White House and congressional Democrats are preparing to ramp up attacks on House Republicans over the bill, targeting swing-district members for endorsing policies that would strip investments in their home districts and gut funding for popular programs. Biden’s party insists it’s feeling little pressure to now deliver on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s biggest ask — a true negotiation over the debt ceiling.
“If you reward hostage taking, it simply repeats,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally. “I don’t expect the president to now say, ‘Oh my gosh, you passed a bill with two votes that imposes draconian cuts across programs that most Americans would never support. Now I have to come and give you whatever you want.’”
Biden is refusing to budge from his demand that Congress pass an unconditional increase to the debt ceiling, betting that he still holds the stronger hand in the face of an economic catastrophe. And while a smattering of moderate Democrats have begun urging the president to actually negotiate with Republicans, the majority of the party seems content with showcasing a GOP bill they see as a self-inflicted wound in swing seats.
But Democrats’ public confidence that they’re winning the messaging war masks private concerns over how this all ultimately ends — and what damage the standoff may do to a fragile, recovering economy that’s critical to Biden’s case for re-election.
Biden allies had expected McCarthy’s bid to pass a sweeping debt ceiling bill to fail, especially after watching him struggle to win the speakership and quickly abandon his plan to construct a full budget proposal. Even the Republicans understood the skepticism directed at them with the thin majority.
“Nobody thought we would have this. Nobody thought we could get together and get anything to [the Senate],” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said in an interview Thursday. “If they want to say it’s not good enough, then I’m sorry that they’re doing that to the country.”
But once it became clear that McCarthy lacked the influence to wrangle his conference, Biden’s team reasoned, Republicans would lose most of their leverage and eventually soften their demand for concessions. The White House had harbored doubts about the bill’s chances of success even after McCarthy announced plans for a vote, privately questioning whether he could win over the last handful of conservatives trying to push the bill further to the right.
The speaker only had room to lose a handful of members. “Maybe he’ll eventually get it, but boy, who knows what they’ll have to put in it,” one adviser close to the White House said on Wednesday morning, as McCarthy raced to lock down the votes he needed.
Yet after the speaker pulled it off, notably winning broad support from his conservative wing, the dynamics shifted. An emboldened McCarthy vowed to make the next several months far more complicated for the White House than aides had initially hoped.
“No clean debt ceiling is going to pass the House,” McCarthy said to reporters on Wednesday as he did a victory lap.
In the aftermath of the vote, Biden allies and advisers privately acknowledged that there’s no clear endgame to the debt ceiling standoff — and that McCarthy’s victory makes it more difficult to convince moderate Republicans to back a clean debt ceiling increase for fear of economic disaster.
The White House signaled that Biden would now be willing to meet with McCarthy for the first time since early February — while sticking to their longstanding position that any negotiations be over the broader federal budget, and not the debt ceiling.
“I don’t think that it should be a debt ceiling negotiation, I think that it should be a budget negotiation,” said Robert Wolf, a prominent Democratic fundraiser and former Obama-era economic adviser, characterizing it as a “thread the needle” challenge for the White House to draw the distinction.
GOP leaders, meanwhile, were left livid that the White House had once again brushed aside their opening bid — still refusing to meet with McCarthy on the debt limit.
“I think it’s absolutely tone deaf,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-Ga.), a McCarthy deputy who helped craft the party’s debt limit. “I could not believe he made such an arrogant statement.”
“We’ll continue to reach out to the White House,” Graves said. But, he added with his eye on the opposite chamber: “Obviously, it’s the Senate’s ball at this point.”
A White House official said that Biden has consistently challenged Republicans over their various proposals, including criticizing an early blueprint from the Freedom Caucus at several points, and maintained from the outset that he was open to negotiating the budget but not the debt ceiling.
White House officials have kept in close touch with Senate leaders over their plans to maintain Biden’s no-negotiation posture, believing they can still grind enough Republicans down over time — especially as pressure and political attacks on swing-district lawmakers begin to mount. Despite McCarthy’s victory on Wednesday, Biden allies noted that he still lost four members on what was effectively a messaging bill — and needed Rep. George Santos to vote yes and bail him out of potential embarrassment.
Still, there is recognition that the bill’s passage means Biden’s “show us your plan” dismissals will no longer cut it. Aides downplayed the idea that a meeting with Biden represents a direct reward for passing his bill, and stressed that any sitdown would include other congressional leaders.
Biden is also unlikely to meet with Republicans on the issue until May at the earliest, with the House leaving Friday for recess until May 8. (McCarthy allies, though, had said he’s willing to fly back to D.C. for such an occasion.)
For now, though, most Democrats seem comfortable with Biden’s position.
“Most Americans want Republicans to take action to avoid default. They don’t want the price of that to be throwing a million people off Meals on Wheels,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who endorsed Biden early in the 2020 primary. “After that’s done, on a bill that should be about [the debt ceiling] and nothing else, you can have lots of discussions about appropriations level.”
Those kinds of Democratic attacks — targeting the GOP’s proposed cuts to popular social programs — will likely make up much of Biden’s messaging going forward. Though White House officials remain nervous about how and when the standoff will end, Biden’s more politically minded advisers see the House bill as an early gift to a re-election campaign that will rely heavily on contrasting Biden’s agenda with the goals of the GOP’s conservative wing, two people familiar with the campaign planning said.
Still, battleground Republicans argue that it’s Democrats, not their own party, that will face backlash if they keep sitting idle.
Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), who won a seat that swung towards Biden in 2020, said he is “looking for a president that actually shows up to the table.” But he also acknowledges that what Republicans passed was the first salvo in what is expected to be a tense standoff — even if other members of the right wing disagree.
“McCarthy has been very clear: This is the first step to change, right? But you got to be in a negotiation,” Garcia said Tuesday. “You have to have another party at the table to negotiate with, so we will not negotiate with ourselves anymore.”
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The introduction of that plan and Biden’s speech demanding a debt limit hike with no strings attached represented significant steps in a standoff with major financial and political implications. The debt limit clock is ticking, with experts predicting the U.S. could default as early as June.
The House GOP proposal would raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, or through March of next year — whichever comes first — ensuring Biden has to relitigate the issue with House Republicans before voters pick the next president. It also cuts federal funding by $130 billion in the upcoming fiscal year, turning back discretionary spending totals by about two years.
Actually passing the bill is likely to prove complicated, however — rank-and-file Republicans aired internal frustration about the path forward during a closed-door conference meeting this week. But already, McCarthy is seeking to put the onus on Biden and top Democrats to make the next move in the debt limit standoff.
“They have no more excuse to refuse to negotiate,” the speaker said on the floor after privately briefing Republican lawmakers. “President Biden has a choice: come to the table and stop playing partisan political games, or cover his ears, refuse to negotiate, and risk bumbling his way into the first default in our nation’s history.”
The president and speaker haven’t communicated on the looming debt crisis since February, prompting McCarthy’s bill proposal and subsequent planned vote next week. The GOP plan aims to repeal a swath of clean energy tax credits, in addition to yanking back tens of billions of dollars that Democrats included for IRS enforcement in their signature tax, climate and health care bill last year. The proposal would also end Biden’s pause on student loan payments and interest, block his student loan forgiveness plan and increase work requirements for “able-bodied adults without dependents” receiving SNAP benefits.
It would also claw back unspent pandemic aid, ease permitting requirements for energy projects and overhaul other welfare requirements, including for Medicaid.
Biden began speaking just minutes after the plan’s introduction. But in his remarks, he still accused McCarthy of advancing a plan that would benefit only the wealthy and major corporations and vowed to reject GOP attempts to roll back his administration’s accomplishments in exchange for averting a financial catastrophe.
“They’re in Congress threatening to undo all the stuff that you helped me get done,” he said. “You and the American people should know about the competing economic visions of the country that are at stake right now.”
The White House has repeatedly dinged McCarthy for delaying a release of a budget proposal that would theoretically outline the Republican goals for slashing the federal deficit. That budget plan now appears indefinitely on ice as the speaker presses ahead toward passage of his debt-limit offer.
The news late last week that McCarthy would issue a debt-limit proposal rather than a budget prompted a flurry of strategizing inside the administration ahead of its unveiling, as officials gamed out options for a response. But McCarthy’s decision to stock the plan with a wish-list of conservative priorities — combined with doubts over whether it could win enough GOP support to pass the House — left Biden officials unconvinced there’s any reason to budge off their current hardline stance.
“They say they’re going to default unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have,” Biden said, singling out McCarthy for risking a default that would leave the nation “devastated.”
McCarthy said he would use passage of his proposal, which includes deregulatory and energy moves beyond spending cuts, to keep pushing for a sit down with Biden. The 320-page debt-limit package was strategically sponsored by House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who would naturally be the lead sponsor of the traditional budget resolution Democrats have been pressuring House Republicans to unveil and approve.
The White House, however, insists there is nothing Republicans can offer that will convince them to compromise over the debt limit. Biden officials in recent days have worked to maintain a united front among Democrats on Capitol Hill, warning that a debt ceiling negotiation would set a dangerous precedent.
Biden personally called Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday to stress that there would be no negotiation, a Democratic aide said.
The White House also distributed two memos to congressional Democrats this week detailing support from economists and business leaders for a clean increase, as well as polling showing broad opposition to the cuts included in the GOP bill.
Democratic senators quickly made clear that Republicans’ opening offer is doomed if it reaches the upper chamber.
“There are no policy concessions that should ever be attached to avoiding default — it doesn’t matter which policy concessions they are,” said Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, adding that Senate Democrats remain “100 percent” behind that stance.
Still, Democrats’ universal panning of the GOP proposal masked growing urgency among lawmakers to make progress toward a resolution. Budget forecasters now predict the nation could hit its borrowing limit earlier than expected. The approaching deadline has motivated a bipartisan group of House moderates to try to craft a potential fallback compromise, while sparking broader speculation across the Hill over the potential for a short-term extension that might buy Congress more time.
McCarthy has vowed to push through his legislation, blasting the upper chamber on Wednesday for what he portrayed as legislative laziness.
The Senate “named March maple syrup month and then yesterday they congratulated UConn on winning the national championship. It’d be interesting if the Senate ever does anything,” the speaker said.
But on Wednesday, Biden indicated that the proposal would have no effect on the White House’s own set of demands.
“Take default off the table, and let’s have a real, serious, detailed conversation about how to grow the economy, lower costs and reduce the deficit,” he said.
Olivia Beavers and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.
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McCarthy has made targeting these adults, who generally don’t have children in their household, central to his efforts to shrink welfare programs as he tries to balance competing demands from various wings of the GOP caucus. Republicans who represent swing districts President Joe Biden won in 2020 are wary of going too far in tightening restrictions, prompting an outcry from some voters. At the other end of the party spectrum, conservatives are pushing McCarthy to pursue much stricter limits on SNAP and other federal assistance programs.
Given Republicans’ slim majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes in the House, leaving him and his team with very little room for error.
The speaker and his allies have yet to share a final debt limit bill with fellow Republicans. A spokesperson for McCarthy’s team didn’t respond to a request for comment about the plan.
Several members stood up during the House GOP Conference meeting Tuesday and called for McCarthy to go even further on his proposals to expand work requirements, according to two people in the room who were granted anonymity to discuss internal caucus matters.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s an appropriate conversation for this debt ceiling conversation at this point,” said Republican Rep. Mike Garcia (Calif.), who represents a district Biden won.
Garcia said he supports McCarthy’s effort to expand work requirements for food assistance for “able-bodied” people of working age who “can get a job.”
“Now, if once employed, you still fall into those demographics, whether it’s age or whatever it is, and you’re still needing assistance for food stamps, then I’m supportive of that as well,” Garcia said.
“The conversation has been not to impact those with dependents, and not certainly single moms,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), who represents a Biden district and is being targeted by Democrats in 2024. “I just want to see what they’re actually proposing.”
Democrats, however, warn McCarthy’s proposed spending cuts in the debt limit talks would slash other key food aid — including programs with strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. More than one million low-income moms, babies and young children would lose access to baby formula and food benefits, while another million largely home-bound seniors would lose access to food through the meals on wheels program, according to the Biden administration.
Senate Republicans have been generally skeptical of the House GOP effort to shrink food aid via the debt limit talks. And, as McCarthy and House GOP leaders try to push for a final vote before the end of the month, some key GOP members like moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) are starting to suggest Republicans could drop the SNAP plans from the debt limit bill, and leave it for upcoming negotiations on the farm bill.
“I’ll let the speaker and the chairman wrestle with that,” Bacon said, referring to House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.). Thompson agreed that he’d rather the fight over SNAP work requirements be left to the farm bill. “But I don’t have control over the debt ceiling,” he added.
Republican leaders are looking to reassure vulnerable members about the scope of their SNAP proposal. Senior Republicans have been telling members that work requirements for able-bodied adults without young children at home are popular in swing states, pointing to a non-binding ballot initiative in Wisconsin that advised the state legislature to require “able-bodied, childless adults” to “look for work in order to receive taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.” The measure passed with 80 percent approval.
“This is popular with the American people,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a top McCarthy ally. “It’s smart policy that reduces debt and has a long term effect on our workforce and economy.”
Senate Democrats, however, firmly rejected talk of new SNAP restrictions on Tuesday, arguing what the House GOP describes as targeted measures will still hit millions of vulnerable people.
“Let’s be clear, this is a non-starter,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
Stabenow, a member of Democratic leadership and the chair of the Agriculture Committee that oversees SNAP, noted in a brief interview that there’s already “stringent” work requirements in place for the program, set to return in July after a pandemic pause, including the “able-bodied” group.
“Frankly, I don’t think they understand that,” said Stabenow. “And we’re certainly not gonna tie it to whether or not we default.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently told House Agriculture members who oversee SNAP that the “able-bodied” group of low-income Americans without dependents receiving assistance is “mostly male and mostly homeless,” including homeless veterans. People who have just aged out of foster care are also in the group. This population of SNAP recipients tends to have lower education levels, as well.
Vilsack also highlighted recent research that shows tightening work requirements “didn’t impact the earnings or employment opportunities” for recipients. “So in other words, you can talk about restraining that, but it’s not going to do what you think it’s going to do,” Vilsack told lawmakers.
As a former governor of Iowa, he also argued the move would ultimately “hamstring” governors’ ability to respond to disasters and other crises — since current SNAP exemptions are designed to help provide food to the most vulnerable low-income Americans in areas with high unemployment. Republicans argue Democratic governors exploit that exemption.
Molinaro said Tuesday he also wants blue states, like New York, to “make sure those [SNAP] dollars get to the people who are most vulnerable.”
Asked whom he considers “the most vulnerable,” Molinaro replied: “That’s a great question.”
“Let me see what they’re proposing and then I’ll take a look at it.”
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While praising the intent behind the House GOP efforts to expand work requirements for SNAP, which used to be known as food stamps, top Republican senators have sought to temper expectations about the proposal’s prospects in the upper chamber.
“I’m sure it won’t be easy,” said John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, noting his party will get a second bite at the apple later this year during the farm bill reauthorization process.
A GOP Senate aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, was less diplomatic: “I mean, Godspeed. Get what you can. We’re going to live in reality over here.”
Senate Republicans have been voicing similar skepticism since House Republicans began privately pitching new proposals to rein in SNAP last year, after they won back the chamber in November.
Asked about the prospects for such measures in the next Congress, Sen. John Boozman (Ark.) the top Republican on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP, said in an interview a week after the 2022 midterms that the effort “would be difficult to pass in the Senate with 60 votes,” a nod to the threshold needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.
And, given the GOP’s unexpectedly slim majority in the House, there’s no guarantee such controversial proposals could even get out of the lower chamber, Boozman pointed out. “You look at the margin in the House,” he said, “It might be difficult to pass it in the House.”
McCarthy and his team are now confronting that reality as they try to hold together their own caucus vis-a-vis the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House. McCarthy, Graves and other top House Republicans have briefed most of the caucus on their plans in a series of calls that stretched into the weekend. So far, leaders have avoided key defections by staying away from too much detail — for example, they have yet to outline a specific plan to close the so-called “loopholes” in the existing SNAP work requirements, which Republicans complain primarily blue states are using to waive some work requirements. Taking a tough line would please the most conservative GOP members, but alienate Republicans from swing districts, and vice versa.
Already, the talk of shrinking SNAP, which currently serves 41 million low-income Americans, is raising pressure on many Republicans that represent districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. Several of those members have raised internal concerns, especially about proposals from their colleagues that would add work requirements for some low-income parents who have children under 18 living at home, according to two other people involved in those conversations, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal caucus matters. A handful of GOP freshmen from New York, one of the states that consistently asks the federal government to waive some work requirements for SNAP recipients, are in an especially tricky spot. Constituents have begun pressing them to oppose efforts that would further restrict SNAP and other key assistance following the loss of key pandemic-era aid — which Biden administration officials argue helped keep the country from falling into a deeper hunger crisis in the wake of Covid-19.
At a farm bill listening session in Rep. Marc Molinaro’s (R-N.Y.) upstate district last Friday, local farmers, food bank operators and anti-hunger advocates urged lawmakers to defend and even expand current SNAP programs.
One state administrator called for “easing burdensome and complicated work and reporting requirements” to provide better access to the program, as the administration’s pandemic-era pause on certain SNAP work requirements is set to end in July. A food bank operator warned of a looming “hunger cliff” in the country as families continue to reel from the fallout of Covid-19. She urged members of Congress “not make decisions on the back of the most vulnerable people.”
Eric Ooms, vice president of the New York branch of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s leading agricultural lobby, told the lawmakers who attended the listening session not to think of SNAP as a “city thing,” noting that the program is a key lifeline to low-income Americans in rural areas where food insecurity “is higher than it’s ever been.”
Molinaro, who says his family relied on food stamps during his childhood, has indicated general support for some SNAP reforms, saying he understands the “inefficiencies” of the program through his experience as a former county executive charged with overseeing it. But he has declined to say if he would support the proposals to expand work requirements that his colleagues have been pushing for months.
In his closing remarks on Friday, Molinaro sounded a note of support for SNAP but indicated only the most needy should get aid — an argument Republicans have used in their campaign to reduce the size of the program.
“Yes, those that struggle the hardest need to know that they have the support, not only of SNAP, but of other wrap-around services,” he said.
Derrick Van Orden, a Trump-aligned Republican who represents a swing district in Wisconsin, spoke during the listening session of his family’s struggle with poverty and reliance on food stamps when he was a child. While he acknowledges some flaws in the current system, he said, “I’m a member of Congress because of these programs.”
“There’s a lot of people who have not gone to bed hungry at night, and I have. And there’s no place for that in America,” Van Orden said.
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Instead of owning up to failure, McCarthy appears to be looking for a scapegoat.
Behind the scenes, he’s been trash-talking his own GOP colleagues, according to a blockbuster New York Times story Thursday by Jonathan Swan and Annie Karni.
Among its revelations: McCarthy has “no confidence” in House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), whom he regards as “incompetent” and considers House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) “ineffective, checked out and reluctant to take a position on anything.”
Conversations with more than a half-dozen senior Republican lawmakers and aides revealed some additional context on the “Mean Girls” drama playing out in McCarthy’s leadership circle:
There’s a reason McCarthy is singling out Arrington and Scalise, and it’s about more than just disagreements over policy or strategy. People close to McCarthy tell us that he perceives both men as disloyal — and he’s known to hold a grudge.
McCarthy never forgave Scalise for an incident years ago when the Louisiana Republican refused to rule out challenging McCarthy for GOP leader, and he feels that Scalise didn’t do enough to help him win the gavel this year. As for Arrington, the Texas Republican privately floated Scalise for speaker when McCarthy was unable to lock down the votes for himself in January.
McCarthy’s issues with Arrington have been apparent for a while. Several weeks ago, when Arrington suggested Republicans wouldn’t introduce a budget until May, McCarthy pushed back and said they’d do so in April — leaving Arrington’s staff scrambling to clean up the mess.
Something similar happened when Arrington told reporters that Republicans were finalizing a debt ceiling offer of sorts, what he dubbed a “deal sheet,” for Biden. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” McCarthy shot back when asked about Arrington’s comments.
That jab caught several senior Republicans off guard, not just because McCarthy was publicly rebuking one of his own chairs but because the speaker was, in fact, already crafting an opening offer of sorts to Biden that was soon publicly released.
McCarthy’s defenders say that Arrington, a fiscal conservative with a reputation for wanting to move quickly, is stirring up trouble in the conference. They argue that McCarthy has to protect his frontliners and that Arrington hasn’t been sensitive enough to their political needs. They also note that some in the GOP leadership have been unimpressed with Arrington’s private budget presentations.
But Arrington’s defenders say it’s unfair for McCarthy to blame him. They note that it’s odd for the speaker to call him “incompetent” despite repeatedly asking him to give presentations on fiscal matters to Republicans at both the House GOP leadership retreat earlier this year and the full GOP conference retreat in Orlando a few days ago. (At the latter, there was little pushback on a menu of options Arrington presented, and some members even stood to praise his proposals.)
Another Arrington defender noted that GOP leadership is typically involved in drafting the budget given how difficult it can be to muster support on the chamber floor — especially with a slim, five-seat majority like the Republicans currently have. And yet McCarthy has given little guidance to Arrington, according to a senior GOP aide.
“Jodey has been working in good faith, and has largely been hamstrung by Kevin,” the aide said. “They need someone else to blame.”
Republicans we spoke to found McCarthy’s lack of pushback on the Times story to be quite conspicuous. McCarthy, they note, rarely speaks ill of his members in meetings, and if he does, it rarely leaks. His paltry response did not go unnoticed.
“He made a bunch of promises during the speaker race that were always untenable, but he made them anyway,” one senior Republican said. “At a certain point, a lot of that stuff is going to collide, and he’s getting nervous and looking for others to blame.”
Senior Republicans always knew that passing a budget with a slim majority was going to be difficult. But the interesting part of all this palace intrigue is that it’s not factions inside the rank and file causing the problems; it’s McCarthy’s own leadership team that’s in disarray.
That doesn’t bode well for House Republicans’ budget efforts — or their bid to extract concessions from Biden on the debt ceiling. And without a unified GOP front, Democrats won’t take Republican demands for spending cuts seriously.
“Allies of @SpeakerMcCarthy trying to cast blame on others — before there is any actual blame to cast — doesn’t instill confidence House Rs are ready for primetime,” The Washington Post’s Paul Kane tweeted Thursday.
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“I’m watching it on TV,” Graves said of the January stalemate over electing McCarthy, as he recalled thinking: “We look like idiots.” So he began dialing conservative holdouts as well as GOP moderates resistant to the right’s biggest demands. The 51-year-old even grew a beard that he refused to shave until McCarthy prevailed.
And when McCarthy won, he appointed the self-described policy “nerd” to his leadership team — a remarkably central role given that Graves chairs no committee and won no leadership election. Graves has embraced the jack-of-all-trades adviser identity, helping smooth intra-party conflicts while building his clout in the House.
That emerging profile of “assistant coach,” in McCarthy’s words, raises the question of how Graves fits in an elected leadership team that includes fellow Louisianan Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s formal No. 2. But Graves said he’s been careful not to get in the way — and also suggested the gubernatorial run he openly mulled this year may not be the end to his statewide ambitions, declining to rule out a Senate bid in 2026.
“I’m very cognizant of the fact that all these folks were actually elected positions,” Graves said in an interview, referring to Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) He portrayed his role as “blocking and tackling” and “plate-spinning” to give McCarthy an extra assist.
“I think the intent here is to benefit the entire leadership team, the entire conference,” he added. “If ever that’s not happening. I obviously need to move on.”
He’s spent this week helping keep the House GOP together on perhaps its biggest agenda win yet, a nearly 200-page energy bill incorporating a decade’s worth of Republican energy ideas that passed Thursday, 225-204.
Yet even that broadly popular package required plenty of hands-on work with just four votes to spare. Graves and other members of leadership raced to resolve intra-party policy spats, several of which involved coastal Republicans resistant to offshore drilling.
The GOP’s energy project permitting push is a particular personal highlight for Graves, who’s literally handled thousands of permits at the state level — first as a teenager working for his parents’ small engineering firm, and later as head of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. At the latter job, he helped devise a multibillion-dollar program to rebuild coastal levees damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“He learned his way around” on energy issues as the coastal authority chief, said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), whom Graves replaced in the House and could, at some point, face in a statewide primary. “You put all that together and you have a guy others respect. And it gives him greater influence.”
While Scalise officially led the House GOP’s energy bill effort, Graves has been a central part from the start, leading McCarthy’s task force on the subject last year. He sat with senior staff to draft the details of the permitting section, a rare display of policy chops from a lawmaker. One senior GOP leadership aide described him as a “bonus chief of staff.” (A former long-time energy aide himself, Graves even tried to attend staffer committee briefings when he arrived in Congress in 2015.)
But Graves’ identity on energy policymaking has another, politically charged dimension: He got elected as a rare Republican willing to call out his party on climate change, as Donald Trump was falsely deriding it as a hoax.
And the Louisianan’s message didn’t always sit right with his party. When McCarthy first picked Graves to lead GOP pushback on Democrats’ new climate panel in 2019, some colleagues were skeptical.
“I don’t think when he got chosen [that] immediately he was everybody’s number one pick,” recalled Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), who first got to know him on the panel. Armstrong now calls Graves “one of our most effective” members, full stop.
That’s a big reason why fellow Republicans answered his calls in January, when Graves first jumped in to help McCarthy’s election math problem. He and a handful of other McCarthy allies began bringing leadership and the holdouts into the same room for real talks.
Centrist Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) has called Graves “one of the unsung heroes” in the speakership battle. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a conservative holdout, said Graves excelled at convincing each side that common ground existed.
It doesn’t hurt that Graves, though sometimes seen as sharp-elbowed, also wins friends easily, despite (or perhaps due to) being a notorious prankster. “He’s the kind of guy who will give you a hard time, then he’ll step back and make sure you’re all taken care of,” said Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah).
The same players, from Graves to Roy, will soon play similar roles as the party grasps for a workable strategy to resolve the imminent debt limit crisis. But for now, Graves is wrapping up the House energy bill — which is DOA in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
During his eight years in office, he’s taken solace in seeing elements of his party move closer to the message he shaped as a coastal Republican: a readiness to talk about the disastrous effects of a warming planet alongside calls for more U.S. oil and gas production.
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who chairs the Conservative Climate Caucus that launched in 2021 with Graves as a founding member, credits his colleague’s “ability to explain these concepts in a way that helps Republicans get their climate feet underneath them.”
Graves is elated to see others in the party parrot his language on clean energy, including McCarthy: “I love the fact that the Republican mainstream is now talking about lowering emissions.”
Democrats who’ve worked with him, though, say he’s doing little but paying lip service to the threat of climate change by not using his sway to advance GOP policy solutions.
One who worked closely with him on the now-disbanded climate committee said that Graves isn’t interested in alienating an oil and gas industry still dominant in his coastal district, which is also vulnerable to sea-level rise from climate change.
“When no cameras are on, I love Garret. When cameras are on, he does what he needs to do. But he’s a good human being and someone I get a beer with,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).
Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who led the climate panel which McCarthy disbanded this year, said Graves under-delivered there. “He is a fierce defender of the oil and gas industry — he makes no bones about it,” she observed.
Graves dismissed those Democratic criticisms of him and the GOP’s energy bill, which was written to ease production and export of oil and gas, but also to streamline permitting reviews that affect electric vehicles and renewable energy supplies.
And he did so with characteristic bluntness, calling Democrats’ arguments “complete bullshit.”
“Those people that have the bulls-eye on oil and gas, those people haven’t run companies and thought through how you do this. Does that mean we do away with wind, solar, and geothermal? Hell no. We need absolutely everything,” Graves said.
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“I’m going to try to make the argument that it should be repealed,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of McCarthy’s chief antagonists in the January speakership race, said in a brief interview about the upcoming debate.
McCarthy gave a symbolic boost to conservatives like Gaetz this week by saying that he’s willing to repeal the 2002 war powers measure, known as an authorization for the use of military force. Yet that comment came with a big caveat: The California Republican doesn’t plan to fast-track a war powers bill to the floor any time soon.
“Just because a bill passes in the Senate,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday, “doesn’t mean it comes directly to the floor.”
Such a delay may stall, but wouldn’t alleviate, a major headache for McCarthy’s team. Conservatives and Democrats, if they align on repealing both the 2002 and 1991 military force authorizations, have a coalition big enough to overpower Republican strategy on the floor.
McCarthy is leaning on some of his biggest national security hawks to craft a workable alternate war powers plan, including Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas), a longtime skeptic of repealing the 2002 Iraq War authorization. And as he gears up to lobby his libertarian-leaning colleagues, McCaul is reviving an infamous GOP phrase from its anti-Obamacare days: Repeal and replace.
“I would prefer if we’re going to repeal it, to replace it,” McCaul said. “We’re having discussions with the speaker’s office on that, just to update it.”
That decision won’t be in McCarthy’s hands forever. The House Armed Services Committee, which takes the lead on a massive defense policy bill every year, likely has a slim majority of votes to nix the 2002 war powers authorization. And McCarthy’s earlier vows to allow “open season” on amendments to big spending bills would allow Republicans — or Democrats — on either side of the war powers debate to force their own floor votes on the matter.
Should a standalone war powers repeal bill come up, only a handful of Republicans would need to vote in favor of repeal in order for it to pass, since virtually every Democrat is on board. (If that happens, however, it would break a longtime House Republican principle that states no bill should pass without a “majority of the majority” on board.)
Then there’s the likely long-shot Plan B to force floor debate on war powers: a so-called “discharge petition,” which allows rank-and-file members to force a bill past leadership and to a vote by collecting signatures from a majority of House members. McCarthy allies, though, are skeptical that a discharge petition would work.
But before all that, the Senate needs to act. The upper chamber is set to officially nullify the president’s blank-check powers in Iraq as soon as this week, marking nearly 20 years to the day since the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. The same vote would also formally end U.S. war powers related to the 1991 Gulf War and turn the spotlight across the Capitol.
“I am encouraged that in the House members from both sides of the aisle seem to be open to taking action once the Senate passes this resolution,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “And there are members of the Senate Republican leadership who seem very strongly for the bill. That’s a very good sign.”
Nineteen Republican senators backed an initial procedural vote to repeal the war authorizations last week, an early sign of big bipartisan backing. Schumer on Tuesday promised a “reasonable amendment process” but said “AUMF repeal in the Senate is now a matter of when, not a matter of if.”
Some House Republicans said they couldn’t predict how their conference would treat the bill, given the uncertain status of amendments. And McCarthy is clearly trying to hit the brakes on a potential floor confrontation, saying he wants to “front load” the details of a potential deal through committee rather than in a free-for-all on the floor.
That’s where McCaul comes in. He’s currently pitching a repeal of the 2002 law packaged with a simultaneous replacement in the form of a new military authorization for terrorist groups that are not country-specific as well as Shiite militias inside of Iraq. (He argues a broader 2001 “war on terror” authorization doesn’t do that, though not every lawmaker agrees with him. And Democrats are also skeptical of the Texas Republican over concerns he’ll try to drag the 2001 authorization into any war powers discussion, setting a much higher bar to a deal.)
But McCaul is already trying to think of how to win over potential GOP detractors who might be worried about green-lighting another decades-long war power, planning to add a built-in expiration date to whatever might replace the 2002 law.
“I would really like to start working toward replacement, because I think people are just getting tired of these old authorizations. And I would also put a five-year sunset in these things, so that Congress is forced to take it back up,” he said.
Though McCaul is already privately suggesting his plan to McCarthy, he said its fate is in “leadership’s hands right now.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), asked about how to bring up a bill without losing a majority of GOP members, signaled that Republicans are still squarely in the discussion phase about “this question of if it is time to revise or revisit” the war powers measures. He did not address the potential timing of House action.
“The threats of terrorism are still real, but the battlefields have changed,” Scalise said in an interview, adding that “all the committees of jurisdiction are starting to have that conversation.”
At least one of McCarthy’s close allies has been vocally pressing for repeal — and senses that the time could be ripe to finally unite Congress and the White House on the issue. President Joe Biden said recently that he would sign a repeal of the 2002 war powers.
“It sounds like opposition is softening, and certainly McCarthy seems more open to it,” said House Rules Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), one of the leading sponsors of a 2002 war powers repeal.
Cole added there could be additional steps, such as attaching amendments to the Senate version and going to conference — a much longer process. Still, he sounded upbeat: “I’m just glad to see that opinion is beginning to coalesce around getting this done.”
Olivia Beavers, Anthony Adragna and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report. Ferris reported from Washington.
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Yet, McCarthy’s decision to let Carlson access thousands of hours of Capitol footage from the riot has left a lingering cloud over his own leadership team, which was repeatedly pressed about the move as Carlson continues to downplay the violence of the siege by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Senate Republicans heaped criticism Tuesday on Carlson’s portrayal of the riot, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (though few directly dinged McCarthy).
“It seems like some in the press want to talk about Jan 6 every day. So do Democrats. They only want to talk about certain parts of it, though,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters during a press conference where every question focused on the Fox News footage.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a battleground district, said that House Republicans see attention to Carlson’s portrayal of Jan. 6 as “more of a media thing.”
“In the end, everybody should get access,” Bacon added, “but literally, I don’t hear anybody back home talking about it.”
With many in the GOP eager to change the subject, McCarthy and his leadership team are slated to hold a second press conference later Wednesday, focused squarely on President Joe Biden’s budget release.
But not everyone in the party is prepared to let it go. In one sign the GOP will continue to go on the offensive: Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) are working to set up a congressional delegation to visit people jailed for alleged crimes on Jan. 6, as POLITICO first reported.
Greene, who pushed GOP leadership to commit to a probe of Jan. 6-related detention, would lead the trip.
In addition, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) told reporters Wednesday that the GOP conference is starting to more closely review the work of the last Congress’ Democrat-run Jan. 6 select panel. Loudermilk recently secured the speaker’s permission to let accused Jan. 6 rioters — and eventually the public at large — access Capitol Police security footage that is in the House GOP’s possession.
“Part of it is: Why did they not address [Capitol security]?” Loudermilk asked of the select committee, which devoted one of the appendices of its final report to that issue. “And so we have [to] really pick up where they left off. And so we have the documents, we have the videos, we have a lot of information. And we’re going through that.”
While a handful of House Republicans openly criticized McCarthy’s decision to give the footage to Carlson, none mentioned the speaker by name and all pointed to the clips Fox News showed to argue that the Jan. 6 select committee only presented one side of the riot.
Since the first Jan. 6 segment aired on Monday night, several House Republicans have parried questions by claiming they did not see Carlson’s show or by otherwise avoiding the media. Others privately argued that McCarthy had made a strategic choice to engage with Carlson, one designed to appeal to the party base as he leads the GOP conference with a razor-thin majority.
Carlson, who has blasted McCarthy on-air in the past, stated on his show that he got no interference from the speaker’s office or his own higher-ups at Fox before broadcasting his segments. And McCarthy, for his part, has fiercely defended his decision to share material with Carlson in the face of criticism from the Senate GOP as well as Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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Boasberg’s ruling is the latest ripple caused by McCarthy’s decision to widen access to 44,000 hours of Capitol security footage from Jan. 6. The Capitol Police had previously turned over about 14,000 hours of the day’s footage that leaders said encompassed crucial time periods of the riot, as well as the relevant camera angles.
It’s unclear whether the additional footage includes evidence that will influence any of the 950-plus Jan. 6 criminal cases. But several defendants have said they intend to access the materials, which House Republicans have agreed to facilitate. The Justice Department has yet to indicate whether it, too, will attempt to obtain and review the footage.
At Friday’s hearing, prosecutors opposed Carpenter’s request, saying they had pieced together the “overwhelming” amount of her movements using CCTV footage, leaving only “a matter of seconds” unaccounted for. Carpenter already has access to a “massive” trove of CCTV footage, they noted, and defendants have the ability to request specific camera angles they would like to focus on if they believe they need additional material.
Prosecutors also suggested that they remain largely in the dark about what the cache of footage newly unearthed by McCarthy might include.
“We don’t have what the speaker has,” said assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Cook, adding, “In any case, there’s always the possibility some information may be out there.”
Prosecutors are required to disclose to defendants any potentially exculpatory evidence they possess — a particularly thorny challenge in Jan. 6 cases as a result of the massive amounts of video evidence captured by Capitol security cameras, policy bodycams, journalists and rioters themselves, who recorded hundreds of hours worth of footage.
But that requirement isn’t limitless, particularly when it comes to evidence that is in the possession of another agency — like the Capitol Police, an arm of Congress — and if courts determine the government has made good-faith efforts to provide as much material as possible to defendants.
Carpenter’s attorneys argued in court Friday that McCarthy’s batch might help fill “gaps” in the footage that would provide context to the actions Carpenter took inside the Capitol. They contended that it might help contextualize some of the actions she took that resulted in the felony charges DOJ lodged, including for obstructing Congress’ proceedings and for participating in a civil disorder. She sought a 60-day delay in her trial, which is set to begin Monday, in order to determine whether any of the new footage might be relevant.
Boasberg agreed that the request was legitimate. Any attorney would want to see a new batch of potentially exculpatory evidence, he said.
“It’s certainly not a frivolous request by any means,” he said.
But Boasberg agreed that the gaps Carpenter’s attorneys described were “minimal” and that the defense lawyers didn’t explain specifically why any additional footage might help Carpenter’s case.
Prosecutors trying the seditious conspiracy case of several leaders of the Proud Boys also recently confronted the issue, when a defense attorney asked the Justice Department whether it would help organize access to the additional footage. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough called it a “serious question” and a “serious issue,” but said it was too soon to say how DOJ would be handling the matter.
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