Array
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to a close adviser who helped him lock up the votes to be elected speaker for an even tougher assignment: brokering a deal to avoid a historic default on country’s credit limit.
Rep. Garret Graves isn’t a top elected leader or committee chairman, but his low-key demeanor and expertise on energy policy landed him a seat across from the president’s top aides in the debt ceiling talks.
South Dakota GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson recently summed up Graves’ approach in a House GOP conference that is full of lawmakers with national nicknames who make the rounds on cable news and have large social media followings: « Garret Graves is anonymous to everyday Americans, and that’s exactly the way he wants it. »
Graves helped McCarthy round up the votes to be elected speaker — after 15 ballots over 4 days of tense talks. Now he’s pushing the speaker’s agenda for shrinking federal spending as part of a deal to increase the country’s borrowing authority.
« The numbers are foundational here — the speaker has been very clear: a red line is spending less money and unless and until we’re there, the rest of it is really irrelevant, » Graves said after one negotiating session at the Capitol.
Over days of talks, he fields questions from a growing pack of reporters covering the various negotiating sessions. On Tuesday he was blunt: « I’m telling you that we still have substantial distance between us and them on the numbers right now, » referring to the gulf between the House Republicans and the White House negotiators.Graves’ role brokering GOP bills among ‘5 families’
The Louisiana Republican played a critical role for McCarthy during the drawn-out fight for the speakership in January, which put him in the middle of a bloc of members who were issuing demands.
Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern, R-Okla., who heads a group of fiscal conservatives that includes Graves, says it was good practice for what was to come.
« You have to appoint people that can sit there and grind this out, » Hern said of the debt limit negotiations.
