McCarthy is coming out of the debt limit battle with wins and some wounds

As the battle over the debt limit began, it was widely believed that chairman Kevin McCarthy, untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, would either lead an economically and politically disastrous government bankruptcy or lose his hard-won post in a right-wing mutiny after conceding to the democrats.

So far he has managed to avoid both outcomes while claiming a number of fiscal and policy victories.

With the House’s approval on Wednesday night of the debt limit package he negotiated personally with President Biden, Mr. McCarthy defied expectations and even earned grudging respect from White House officials, while defusing the debt limit time bomb that he himself had planted by pushing for concessions in return for raising the country’s borrowing limit.

The bar was set low for Mr. McCarthy, who was known more for his politics and fundraising than for his policy-making, after struggling mightily to get his post in the first place when House Republicans took power in January.

But in the end, he delivered an agreement that achieved his goal of cutting spending from current levels. It wasn’t pretty; in fact, it was downright ugly. He managed to do so only with significant help from across the aisle, as the Democrats bailed him out on a key procedural vote and then provided the support needed for passage. Mr. McCarthy surpassed his goal of winning the support of the majority of his members with 149 support, but more Democrats – 165 of them – voted in favor of the bill than members of his own party, a result that will fuel the Republican criticism he faces deleted. a deal that sold out his own people.

That is not the way that powerful speakers of the past have usually achieved their goals.

But Mr McCarthy has proved unusually willing to endure political pain and even humiliation – a trait that was amply displayed during his 15-round battle for the speakership in January – while focusing on getting some major concessions from Mr. Biden that could enable him to claim victory and stave off a default he clearly wanted to avoid, even though many of his members did not.

His allies credited him for taking on the White House and Senate Democrats and coming forward with a positive result when most Democrats counted on him to fail. White House officials and Congressional Democrats privately predicted that Mr. McCarthy would be unable to rally his extraordinarily unruly troops and therefore would have no influence over fiscal talks, allowing them to force a debt ceiling increase by little or no concessions. to Republicans.

“Kevin McCarthy has always been underrated,” said North Carolina Representative Patrick T. McHenry, one of the leading GOP negotiators.

Mr. McCarthy’s achievement may come at a price. Far-right conservative Republicans remain outraged by the deal he made with Mr Biden, saying it fell woefully short of what he promised and what Republicans committed to last year as they pursued the majority.

Some feel personally betrayed and say he went back on his promise to push for spending cuts even further. More than two dozen mainstream Republicans voiced their displeasure with Mr. McCarthy by opposing the procedural measure that took the package to the floor, an aggressive challenge to the leadership that also showed they were unconcerned about payback by the office of the speaker.

Representative Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, said Mr. McCarthy had hurt himself “big, big time” with many House Republicans.

“I think this is going to be a problem for him,” said Mr Buck, who, along with other critics of Mr McCarthy, said legislators would talk among themselves about how and if they would proceed with an effort to get the speaker out .

Mr McCarthy said in an interview on Fox News that firing him was no problem.

“Governing is not easy, but I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” he said, saying critics of the package would regret their opposition. “Each of those members who vote ‘no’ are missing out on the opportunity to vote for the biggest budget cut in American history.”

That’s almost certainly an exaggeration, even though the deal was chock-full of side deals and complex details that allowed the GOP to claim far bigger cuts than they got.

One factor that worked in Mr. McCarthy’s favor in thwarting an attempt to impeach him was that conservatives of stature among House Republicans, such as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, remained in his corner. There is a clear segment of House Republicans eager to move past the fiscal battle and focus more on the investigations and culture war issues that they believe better suit their constituents and are currently being lost.

Mr. McCarthy’s financiers say his critics don’t really understand the limits of their power to control only the House, while the Democrats have the majority in the Senate and Mr. Biden in the White House. They say Mr. McCarthy would never get the kind of deal that the most extreme elements of Republicans in the House could embrace unless he was prepared to force a devastating bankruptcy. He made it clear early on that he wasn’t.

For months, White House officials and Senate Democrats thought they could thwart Mr McCarthy’s demands to start talks with Mr Biden on budget and spending issues by declaring that he first had to show he could get something through the House . They saw that as unlikely, given his four-seat margin for error and the differing ideologies of his membership.

The pivotal moment came in late April when, much to the surprise of the administration and Congressional Democrats, he did just that by pushing through a partisan measure that cut spending and rolled back Biden initiatives. The legislation had no chance of passing in the Senate, but served as a marker and earned him a seat at the negotiating table.

“The White House undoubtedly miscalculated,” said Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, one of the top Republican negotiators. “They misjudged the speaker.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat and Majority Leader, downplayed suggestions that Mr. McCarthy had outsmarted the Democrats.

“Look at the result,” Mr Schumer told reporters. “It’s a long way from where the Republicans started.”

Administration officials admitted they may have taken Mr. McCarthy too lightly. They say privately that during the negotiations he turned out to be a stronger opponent than many of them expected.

He also won some policy concessions that officials did not expect to make. For months, top officials had privately predicted that Mr Biden would agree to modest limits on discretionary spending to accompany a debt limit increase.

But Mr. McCarthy successfully pushed for military spending to be shielded from the cuts, causing domestic programs in areas such as education and environmental protection to bear the brunt of the cuts — a condition Democrats have vehemently opposed in previous budget negotiations. He also negotiated a side deal that would cut $20 billion in new funding for an IRS crackdown on tax evasion, which Republicans had made a prime target for budget cuts.

Such successes were still not enough to satisfy hard-right critics who wanted more. But Mr. McCarthy was willing to take what he could get and declare victory – and absorb the abuse he was already receiving in return.