House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), facing a rebellion from his right flank, is eyeing deeper spending cuts than the ones he agreed to in his debt ceiling deal with the White House.
But his willingness to go below those budget caps, which he signaled in remarks to reporters on Wednesday, has Senate Democrats warning him not to “renege” on the agreement.
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Hard-liners in McCarthy’s conference erupted over the compromise, grinding House business to a halt on Tuesday until he renegotiates the commitments he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January. Those commitments meant McCarthy placing limits on his own power but also promising to rein in federal spending. With a four-seat majority in the House, he had little choice but to agree.
The budget deal did enact modest spending cuts, effectively a two-year freeze in discretionary spending, but members of the Freedom Caucus feel he short-changed them in his negotiations with President Joe Biden.
Now, McCarthy is caught between two unhappy camps — conservatives threatening to depose him and the Democrats whose votes he needs to get legislation signed into law. He’s sought to appease the hard-liners in his conference by insisting that he can get further cuts in the appropriations process later this year.
“The one thing you’ve got to realize, whenever you put a cap, that’s the ceiling,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “We can always spend less. I’ve always advocated for spending less money.”
But his overtures to the Freedom Caucus have only angered Senate Democrats who were disappointed in the spending freeze in the first place.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters he knew of no precedent for Congress to appropriate lower than the top lines set by the party leadership. He said that if the House chooses to do so, it would be a violation of the deal McCarthy made with Biden in January.
“Clearly, it’s a violation of the agreement,” Van Hollen said. “I mean, why wouldn’t we just have higher top lines if they can always come in under a top line? Why were they so insistent on having lower top lines?”
Senators themselves, both Republicans and Democrats, have sought to ignore the budget caps, insisting on emergency supplemental bills for Ukraine and domestic spending before the ink was dry on the debt ceiling legislation. But Democrats are previewing the partisan fights ahead if McCarthy ushers bills through the lower chamber that come in below the agreed-to caps.
Van Hollen told the Washington Examiner he understands that members of the Freedom Caucus are going to saber-rattle over the deal but that he’s ultimately looking to McCarthy to not “run away” from it.
“You know, the MAGA Republicans in the House who voted against it, obviously, they weren’t part of this agreement. They’re going to do what they’re gonna do. But Speaker McCarthy and those who supported this agreement and negotiated this agreement need to keep their commitments.”
Senate Democrats are not surprised by the dysfunction on display in the House after witnessing the chaotic speaker’s election in January.
“We knew that Speaker McCarthy had a razor-thin majority when he got elected speaker,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said.
But they are reminding him that they, too, are needed to pass all 12 appropriations bills before a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government. For them, that means not backtracking on the debt ceiling caps.
“Let’s hope a deal’s a deal,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told the Washington Examiner. “You should never renege on a deal, you lose all credibility.”
Senate Republicans, for their part, want nothing to do with the gridlock. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, is happy to keep her head down and pass the legislation through the Senate. She hopes to get the “vast majority” of bills reported out of committee before the August recess.
“I think the House has to work out its own problems, I really do,” she told the Washington Examiner. “I’m happy I’m not in the House.”
But eventually, the two chambers will have to reconcile their differences.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) expressed little sympathy for the predicament McCarthy finds himself in. “He’s got to sleep in the bed he made,” he told the Washington Examiner.
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But he expects the two sides will come together to pass a compromise, in much the same way they did in the debt ceiling fight.
“You gotta do this in a bipartisan way, and [McCarthy] knows it,” Murphy said.
