WASHINGTON — A bipartisan deal to suspend the government debt ceiling and set federal funding limits advanced on Tuesday toward climactic House votes, even as hard-right Republicans revolted over the deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, claiming that their party was squandering an opportunity to force fundamental spending changes.
A bipartisan deal to suspend the government debt ceiling and set federal funding limits advanced on Tuesday toward climactic House votes, even as hard-right Republicans revolted over the deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, claiming that their party was squandering an opportunity to force fundamental spending changes.
The legislation scaled its first major obstacle on Tuesday night, when the House Rules Committee voted to clear the way for a debate on the plan on Wednesday, after right-wing opponents failed to muster enough allies to block it.
“Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, an influential member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, said hours before the committee vote. “We will continue to fight it today, tomorrow, and no matter what happens, there’s going to be a reckoning about what just occurred unless we stop this bill by tomorrow.”
Roy and Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, another ultraconservative member of the panel, broke with their party to oppose allowing the plan to be considered, but a third right-wing Republican on the committee, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted to move it to the floor despite some misgivings. Seven Republicans voted in favor of advancing the measure, while four Democrats joined two Republicans in opposition.
“My interest in being on this committee would not be to imprint my ideology,” Massie said, adding he did not think it was his role to deny the full House a chance to deliberate on the plan.
It was a boost to McCarthy’s effort to push through the agreement that he hammered out with Biden in days of difficult talks, and which must pass the House and clear the Senate by Monday to be enacted in time to avert a default.
The compromise has drawn the ire of right-wing Republicans, leaving open the possibility that its passage could jeopardize McCarthy’s standing on Capitol Hill, where any one lawmaker has the power to call a snap vote to oust him thanks to a rule McCarthy agreed to while he was grasping for support from the far right to be elected speaker in January. Some prominent conservatives said a challenge to his leadership now would be premature, but one member of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, said Tuesday that he considered the debt and spending deal grounds for ousting McCarthy from his post.
“I’m fed up with the lies. I’m fed up with the lack of courage, the cowardice,” Bishop said, adding later of McCarthy’s negotiations on the debt limit bill, “Nobody could have done a worse job.”
Despite the outcry, McCarthy continued to express optimism that the legislation would pass, shrugging off the criticism and dismissing any concern for his own survival with a terse “no” during brief comments at the Capitol.
