In the thick of Republican infighting over last year’s omnibus, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave an ultimatum to GOP senators: Vote “no” on the $1.7 trillion spending bill, or any legislation you introduce will be “dead on arrival” in a GOP-led House.
McCarthy, courting members of his conference in his quest to become speaker, was endorsing a threat by hard-line Republicans upset over the timing of the December omnibus, which let Democrats set 2023 spending levels days before they lost control of the House following the midterm elections.
In all, 31 current and incoming House Republicans sent a letter to their Senate counterparts vowing to “thwart even the smallest legislative and policy efforts of those senators” who voted for the omnibus, which was being crafted with buy-in from GOP leadership in the upper chamber.
Yet the threat fell on deaf ears as 18 GOP senators voted for the package anyway, clearing the way for it to become law. At the time, senior Senate Republicans dismissed the letter as being sent in the heat of the moment and predicted that tensions would cool once Republicans took over the House.
SENATE OVERCOMES FIRST HURDLE TO REPEAL IRAQ AND GULF WAR AUTHORIZATIONS
The remarks are proving prescient little more than two months into the new Congress as lawmakers consider a bill to repeal the 1991 and 2002 legislation that authorized the Gulf and Iraq wars.
Seven of the 31 House Republicans have signed on to the repeal even though Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), its lead GOP sponsor in the Senate, voted for the omnibus in December. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who spearheaded the omnibus letter, is even an original co-sponsor.
Far from opposing the bill, hard-line Republicans in the House are making common cause with Young to advance a legislative priority they fought for in the last Congress.
What’s more, McCarthy, who has the power to kill the legislation by refusing to put it up for a vote, signaled on Sunday that he’s open to advancing the measure in the House once the Senate passes it later this week.
“I think it has a clear opportunity to come to the floor,” the speaker told reporters at the House GOP retreat in Orlando.
The change in posture suggests there’s room for pragmatism even among the House’s staunchest conservatives, who hold outsize influence over the chamber due to McCarthy’s slim majority. Yet the bitterness of the omnibus vote hasn’t fully receded.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), one of the 31 House Republicans who sent the omnibus letter, made clear there’s no love lost between her and Young despite her decision to co-sponsor the repeal legislation.
“Pulling our troops out of endless wars has been a priority of mine since long before Sen. Young started voting for trillion dollar spending packages and selling our kids’ fiscal future to China,” she told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
“This isn’t about Sen. Young’s priority, this is about a priority for our service members,” Luna, an Air Force veteran, added. “I really get irritated when people try to link the two.”
The legislation, which would symbolically end the decades-old wars in Iraq, has made for strange political bedfellows even outside the Republican Party, with the measure drawing the support of centrist and progressive Democrats as well. Uniting them is a concern that if the war authorizations are not revoked, presidents could abuse them to entangle the United States in unrelated conflicts abroad.
For lawmakers such as Young and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), the lead Democratic sponsor of the Senate bill, repealing the war authorizations, known as AUMFs, sends a message to Iraq that the U.S. no longer considers it an enemy as Congress tries to contain Iranian influence in the region.
“Let us be clear: Saddam Hussein is dead, and we are no longer worried about the threat posed by Iraq,” Young said in a floor speech last week. “Iraq has faced pressure from Iran for the past 20 years. The presence of the 1991 and the 2002 AUMFs has not changed that. Going forward, as Iraq continues to face Iranian coercion and violence, we must stand with them as partners — not as our enemy.”
Meanwhile, a majority of the GOP conference remains opposed to repeal, warning that it would embolden America’s enemies by signaling U.S. retreat from the world stage. McCarthy himself voted against it during the last Congress, though on Tuesday, he told reporters he agreed with revoking the AUMFs.
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Should the speaker take up the bill, it stands a strong chance of becoming law. The measure passed the Democratic-led House in 2021 with bipartisan support, and President Joe Biden gave the legislation his endorsement on Thursday after 19 Republicans joined Democrats to advance it in the Senate.
The upper chamber must now agree on a set of amendments senators will vote on ahead of final passage later this week.
