The same kind of division that helped lead to Kevin McCarthy needing a historically lengthy series of votes before he actually became House Speaker has reappeared now that the leading Republican and President Joe Biden have struck a deal on raising the debt limit.
Doing so is a necessary move to ensure the government can accommodate past expenses to which it was already committed. Republicans, though, resisted just taking that step and moving on, instead trying to force other concessions from Democrats before many members of the party, which controls the House, supported taking the necessary debt action. Though there are some wins for conservatives, like slashes to funding for the IRS, other right-wing priorities went unfulfilled in the deal that was eventually reached. The included expansion of work requirements for federal benefit programs was evidently much, much smaller than what Republicans had been supporting. No new work requirements for Medicaid will be established at all.
Though McCarthy and Biden reached their deal, it still needed votes from Congress. “The usual establishment people are popping champagne over this debt ceiling deal. It’s more worthy of a Bud Light,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said. (In case you missed it, right-wingers have lost their minds over a transgender influencer named Dylan Mulvaney promoting Bud Light.)
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) also wasn’t thrilled. “NPC’s Rejoice!” he said in one post, discussing the deal. NPC is an acronym for non-playable character, and it refers to characters in video games who are just part of the plot and don’t really have their own agency. Conservatives like Gaetz have for some reason adopted it as a favored insult.
GOP Reps. Ralph Norman (S.C.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), and Chip Roy (Texas) also all expressed opposition. Norman is historically a prominent Trump ally, though he’s endorsed Nikki Haley for the 2024 primaries. “This “deal” is insanity,” Norman wrote on Twitter. “A $4T debt ceiling increase with virtually no cuts is not what we agreed to. Not gonna vote to bankrupt our country. The American people deserve better.”
The Republican majority in the House is actually slim, so on this or any other initiative, something supported by leadership needs nearly unified support for passage, if not Democratic backing. In the Senate, Republicans like Mike Lee and Rand Paul were also mad — so clearly, McCarthy’s leadership of the GOP cause in the House isn’t going as well as he’d probably hope.
