The White House is underscoring House Republican dysfunction, with Rep. Kevin McCarthy‘s (R-CA) bruising speakership battle, the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and Rep.-elect George Santos‘s (R-NY) campaign misrepresentations.
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After Democrats needled Republicans over Santos and McCarthy during the holidays, White House aides have planned two political split screens for President Joe Biden to open the new year: first, an infrastructure event with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the latter’s home state before a Jan. 6 anniversary address in the East Room. Republicans concede this will not be a good week for the GOP, but party strategists are confident their House lawmakers will succeed in holding Biden to account for the next two years now they have control of the chamber.
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As House Republicans rendered McCarthy the first candidate in more than 100 years to lose a speakership vote on the first ballot, one GOP strategist complained the “antics” of a couple of lawmakers have provided Biden with “another week of vacation” before the chamber’s oversight “kicks into gear.” House Republicans are poised to investigate Biden’s deadly withdrawal from the Afghanistan War, his son’s foreign business dealings, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas‘s response to the southern border, Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s management of the Justice Department, and Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic during the 118th Congress.
“The beach vacations and the Kentucky photo ops will be short-lived for Biden as the focus will shift quickly to 2024, congressional hearings, and an economy heading in the wrong direction,” the Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner.
Biden and his aides have repeated the president’s trip to north Kentucky with McConnell on Wednesday is not political. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, for one, has contended Democrats outperforming expectations in the 2022 midterm elections was a message that the public prefers bipartisanship.
“The American people said very loudly and clearly they want us to work together,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It can highlight that we do big, profound things for the country when we work together,” she added of the trip.
Biden himself stressed he and McConnell have “been friends a long time” after he returned to the White House following a week on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix. The president is anticipated to promote $1.6 billion in proposed federal improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge, financed in part by the $550 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, in Covington, Kentucky, on Wednesday.
“Everybody is talking about how significant it is,” he said of the project. “It has nothing to do about our relationship. … It’s a giant bridge, man. It’s a lot of money. It’s important.”
But the Kentucky trip coincides with the White House’s sharper criticism of House Republicans. That scrutiny has also amplified differences between House and Senate Republicans, including McCarthy threatening to undermine the agendas of GOP senators who supported Biden’s $1.7 trillion government funding bill in his chamber before predicted disagreements over the country’s debt ceiling, which could lead to a default.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates, for example, started pitting House Republicans against their Senate GOP counterparts last month in consecutive notes emailed to reporters, long before McCarthy’s speakership race was adjourned to continue at noon Wednesday.
“As Senate Republicans are saying themselves, this is an important test of the House GOP’s willingness to govern,” Bates wrote of the omnibus measure. “Will they keep choosing an unnecessary shutdown in the name of elevating ultra MAGA members, or will they stop attacking fellow Republicans for putting families above scorched earth partisanship?”
The Kentucky trip has been scheduled before a separate Jan. 6 speech on Friday, days after the House select committee investigating the attack was disbanded with the dissolution of the 117th Congress. The White House declined to preview Biden’s Jan. 6 remarks on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the White House has insisted Biden will not “insert” himself in McCarthy’s speakership debacle, exacerbated by McCarthy’s lack of strategy and the determination of his detractors, but other Democrats have happily spoken about the drama. Democratic National Committee spokesman Ammar Moussa, for instance, reminded reporters “extreme” House Republicans will be “calling the shots” if McCarthy is elected speaker.
“The path to the Republican speakership runs through extreme MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene — and the only way McCarthy wins the speaker’s gavel is by cutting a deal with extreme right wingers like her,” Moussa wrote of the Georgia Republican.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) added McCarthy’s speakership problems demonstrate how “disastrous” House Republican control “is going to be.” DelBene described House Democrats as being “clear-minded, unified, and eager to get to work for the American people” in comparison.
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“No matter who becomes speaker of the House or how many votes it takes, the contrast is clear, and in two short years, voters will reject this MAGA chaos and confusion,” she wrote.
