ANALYSIS
Kevin McCarthy has made sweeping concessions to right-wing hard-liners in the Republicans. Now he’s Speaker of the House of Representatives, but putty in their hands.
There can be no talk of a march through. Kevin McCarthy sat out vote after vote after vote, which can at best be described as an embarrassment. Only after the 15th attempt did the Republican cross the finish line as the new chairman of the US House of Representatives (). He bought the post dearly.
Election to the chair of the Chamber of Congress is usually a formality, but for McCarthy it turned out to be a fiasco. Several refused to support him, gradually undermined the power of his position and strengthened their own – because they could. McCarthy needed every vote given his party’s slim majority in the chamber and was ready to scrape it together under sweeping concessions.
“He’ll be the weakest speaker,” , a Democrat. “The problem is that he has also weakened the institution in general – all because he wants the vain title of speaker but without the power or potential responsibility.”
Kevin McCarthy is paying a heavy price for the post
In fact, McCarthy has made sweeping concessions to the extreme right in the Republican ranks, leaving him hostage to their favor. In the future, a single MP will be able to request a vote of no confidence against the speaker, and report – a repeated concession by McCarthy, who initially wanted to lower the hurdle to five MPs.
Theoretically, he could be deposed at any time, but in practice it could be blackmailed. Hardliners in particular are likely to be tempted to push through their extreme positions by threatening a vote of no confidence – especially since McCarthy has given the fatal impression that he is prepared to make all sorts of concessions for his supremacy.
Chaos in the US Congress
A terribly divided family: These are the main actors in the Republican drama about Kevin McCarthy
McCarthy also had to promise, to put it simply, that the Republican party leadership would intervene for the House of Representatives. The result could be that in the future even more hardliners will prevail against more moderate candidates and move into the House of Representatives.
In addition, McCarthy assured the right wing . The committee decides which law is put on the agenda and in what form – or not. As a result, important legislative projects could already fail before they even reach the large semicircle in Congress. On top of that, legislative proposals for spending state funds, so-called spending bills, are to be examined in the future according to so-called open rules, which enable each member to put an unlimited number of changes to the vote – and potentially grind them down.
Last but not least, a struggle is looming over raising the debt ceiling of the US budget. To avoid a default that would likely result in a global financial crisis, the House and Senate must agree on a common line. McCarthy appears to have let the hardliners talk him into pledging to raise the debt limit — a move likely to face solid resistance in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Putty in the hands of hardliners
“The concessions he (McCarthy) has made mean that because of the Freedom Caucus (the right-wing wing) it will be a minority of a minority of the minority who can dictate the outcome of legislative performance,” . “The problem for him is that with every concession, he has to wake up every day and wonder if he’ll still have his job. Because the slightest disagreement could lead to a motion to remove him from the speaker’s post.”
Even after the election as spokesman, the hardliners are likely to keep McCarthy on their heels, knowing that he’s putty in their hands, so to speak. That doesn’t make it any easier for him to organize the narrowest possible majority of divided Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, . McCarthy surrendered himself to a “fringe element” in his party in order to get the necessary votes. His “dream job” could become “a nightmare” for the American people.
Sources: , , , , , with material from the DPA news agency
Source: Stern
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