A ‘historic and hysterical’ house flees after a tumultuous year

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday concluded a year of paralysis and dysfunction with the latest in a series of failures to act on an urgent crisis, reversing a sweeping emergency spending measure to once again send money to Ukraine for its war against Ukraine. Russia.

It was a surprising outcome, but also a fitting finale to one of the most tumultuous and unproductive legislative years in recent history, marked by Republican infighting and a slim majority that left Republican leaders in the House of Representatives struggling to achieve even the absolute to do a minimum of governing.

The inability to reach an agreement with the Senate to support a key U.S. ally taking on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — even though there are clear majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate strongly supporting it — only underscored but the disorder.

Never mind that the House of Representatives left town without making a dent in a pile of unfinished work on spending legislation to keep the government funded and planned to return after New Year’s, with only eight business days to spare avoid a partial closure if they fail to complete it.

The first session of the House of Representatives of the 118th Congress will be best remembered for the unprecedented fifteen roll call votes it took in January to elect a speaker, who was then unceremoniously dumped by a Republican mutiny ten months later. That left the House leaderless and unable to work for weeks.

“This fall has been a very active stupid political climate because of a mistake and deception,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who served as speaker to oversee the election of Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson.

Like more than three dozen of his colleagues in the House of Representatives so far, Mr. McHenry, a 10-term veteran, has weighed in on the state of the House by announcing this month that he will not run for office next year eligible for re-election. On Thursday alone, two more retirees announced their plans to leave as Republicans and Democrats gave the House of Representatives failing marks for 2023 and went home for the holidays.

“It was historic and hysterical,” said Rep. Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, which helped block the election of Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, as chairman. “In one word I would say: ‘disappointing.’”

The House barely managed to avoid complete disasters of its own making. Congress narrowly avoided a disastrous federal default that far-right Republicans provoked by refusing to raise the debt limit without deep spending cuts. She also tried, without wasting time, to avoid a government shutdown, once again sidestepping the objections of the far right, while its members continued to refuse to budge without cutting spending and imposing conservative social policies. Their positions proved impossible to maintain now that Democrats had control of the White House and Senate.

Ultimately, Speaker Kevin McCarthy embraced legislation to avert both economic crises and was forced to rely on Democrats to get the debt limit suspension and relief bills on President Biden’s desk. His bow to reality led a handful of Republican opponents, led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, to force a vote to vacate the presidency, unseating Mr. McCarthy and sending the House of Representatives into a spiraling search for his successor ended up.

Speaking for the final time Thursday, McCarthy, who began his career as a rising Republican star in another era of factionalism in the House of Representatives, said he would take the same steps again even if he knew what the outcome would be. are.

“If your philosophy brings people more freedom, don’t be afraid it could cause you to lose your job,” he said as his California colleagues celebrated his time in the House of Representatives. “I knew that the day we decided to pay our troops as the war broke out rather than stop was the right decision.”

The House of Representatives ended the year with bipartisan approval of a sweeping Pentagon policy measure. But again, this could only be accomplished in the Republican-led House of Representatives with significant Democratic support. Far-right Republicans balked, unhappy that provisions aimed at ending what they considered “woke” military policies on abortion, transgender care and racial diversity were being dropped, and some members of both parties objection to an extension of supervisory powers without justification.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, took the opportunity to remind Republicans that what little they have done should be credited to Democrats.

“Everything that has happened productively in this Congress — which isn’t much, because of the extreme MAGA Republicans — has happened because the Democrats in the House of Representatives have taken the lead,” he said.

The far-right segment of Republicans in the House of Representatives started the year well, having won significant concessions from Mr. McCarthy in return for their support for his bid for speaker. They saw themselves in the driver’s seat when it came to spending and other policy issues. They flexed their muscles in non-traditional ways, including opposing the procedural motions required to bring bills to the floor, which have historically been strict party-line votes. That prevented their leaders from going ahead with the measures they opposed. Their party’s narrow margin of control gave them more power.

Mr. McCarthy often veered in their direction, but the path was usually a dead end, as the more extreme policies were opposed by both mainstream Republican conservatives and Democrats in Congress.

On spending, for example, Mr. McCarthy bowed to the far right and agreed to set levels lower than the debt limit agreement he reached with Mr. Biden, angering Democrats and Republicans frustrated. The conservative stance made it difficult to move forward on the legislation, and the appropriations process ended in a knot, despite a Republican promise to consider and pass twelve individual spending bills.

Given the impasse, McCarthy plowed ahead and kept the government open with Democratic votes in late September. Mr. Johnson, who quickly found himself in the same situation, also relied on Democrats in November to keep government agencies funded until January, when the question of a shutdown will resurface.

Growing Republican opposition to Ukraine’s financing slowed the Biden administration’s request for about $50 billion in additional security aid, while Republicans in the House of Representatives joined their Senate counterparts in demanding tough border policies in return support that. This led to an impasse that could not be resolved before the House left for the holidays.

Instead of what they see as a crucial foreign policy priority, Senate leaders decided to keep the House in session next week in hopes of reaching an agreement on border policy changes, even as success seemed like a long shot . Even if the Senate could reach an agreement on immigration changes, it was highly uncertain whether they would be enough to prevail in the House of Representatives.

There was no guarantee that 2024 would be better — and it could potentially be worse given the battle for control of the House of Representatives. Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Johnson have both tried to mollify conservatives in the House of Representatives with a focus on ousting Mr. Biden and challenging the administration on other fronts, but the ongoing internal strife seems likely to continue, especially given Mr Johnson’s inexperience.

“There’s no real sign that things will improve,” Mr Womack said. “They could even deteriorate.”

He added: “The rollercoaster has slowed down a bit and has leveled out a bit. But just around the bend here there will be some more twists and turns and a few loops and a few other songs that might have us reaching for the barf bag.

Kayla Guo reporting contributed.