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McCarthy, struggling to govern, throws impeachment chum into the waters

2023-10-06 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-政治原网页

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is quite comfortable talking about the impeachment inquiry that he launched this week. Just don’t ask him about trying to accomplish the basic tasks of governance.

On Wednesday, after a simple question about his process for the impeachment inquiry, McCarthy (R-Calif.) went on for three minutes and 49 seconds about every possible aspect of the financial dealings of President Biden’s son and brother.

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Most of his comments came in the form of questions that were aimed at prodding the media to do more digging. But they also demonstrated that Republicans don’t yet have the answers themselves.

After another four minutes of impeachment talk, McCarthy faced a few questions about basic governance: Will the government shut down on Oct. 1? Can the House pass a bill to fund the Pentagon?

Silence. Almost total silence.

Aside from a brief mention of supporting disaster relief funds, McCarthy did not say a word about whether his far-right flank had again left him unable to govern. Finally he reached an elevator and ducked into it, with more silence.

That split-screen moment Wednesday morning summed up McCarthy’s political standing.

House Republicans, regularly dominated by a group of about 20 far-right conservatives, have turned the most basic legislative tasks into high-wire acts. By early afternoon GOP leaders waved the surrender flag again and delayed consideration of the funding bill for the Defense Department, a traditionally bipartisan project that received an overwhelming majority, 359 votes in the 435-member House, the last time Republicans controlled that chamber.

Now, even with the speaker having an extra week to find votes among the hard-liners, the legislation is a 50-50 proposition, because McCarthy can never quite sufficiently appease his far-right flank.

Under fire from his right in the House and facing a unified Senate that is prepared to steamroll him this fall — on the Pentagon bill as well as a range of other spending measures needed to keep the government running — McCarthy has tried to simply change the subject.

That’s why he happily stopped to take a few impeachment questions at an unplanned news conference Wednesday morning after exiting an hour-plus closed-door GOP huddle that left no path toward avoiding a government shutdown. That closure could happen as soon as Oct. 1 if Congress does not pass a stopgap bill extending the current spending levels.

The problem for McCarthy is that some of the very same conservatives who have caused him so much trouble see his impeachment move for what it is — an attempt to divert attention from his leadership’s failures.

“I think that this is a shiny object. This is — the impeachment inquiry is a distraction. We should stay focused on the spending,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), a conservative critic, told reporters Tuesday.

“He likes talking impeachment because it is a way to divert from the very failure to align to the commitment that was made in January,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whose loathing for the speaker oozes out of every syllable, told reporters on the House steps Wednesday.

Gaetz delivered a floor speech Tuesday outlining his grievances against McCarthy for not living up to the informal agreements from early January that, on the 15th ballot, persuaded enough far-right conservatives to support his ascent to the speakership.

Just before Gaetz issued his critique, including threats to oust McCarthy, the speaker summoned reporters to his office to declare that an impeachment inquiry was underway.

Under the speaker’s plan, three House committees could spend many weeks or even months issuing subpoenas, hearing private testimony, holding hearings — and then, if they choose, moving into the actual drafting of impeachment articles and taking them to the full House for a vote.

Did that mollify his critics on the far right? Nope.

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Gaetz told reporters Wednesday that he and a small band of conservative renegades want to force their House colleagues to go on the record on moving straight to an impeachment vote without any further investigation.

“I think Joe Biden deserves impeachment, no question about that. We may be forcing some votes on it in the coming days and weeks,” said Gaetz, whose drama-seeking needs regularly place him at the center of the chaos.

Those are exactly the sorts of votes that GOP leaders want to avoid putting their swing-district members through, for fear of alienating independent voters exhausted by Washington’s political drama. McCarthy wants a longer inquiry to explore the Biden family finances and, while the allegations remain thin, potentially find some malfeasance showing the president corruptly benefited from his son Hunter’s work.

Or, more likely, if Biden’s advisers decline to turn over documents, Republicans could draft an obstruction charge into an impeachment article and try to persuade their politically endangered incumbents to support the charge.

That the central allegations involve Hunter Biden’s dealings with a Ukrainian energy firm serves as the political cherry on top for McCarthy, who is always trying to stay on the good side of Donald Trump.

The ex-president is still angry that he himself faced impeachment four years ago, when the House was in Democratic hands, for allegedly withholding military aid from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unless Zelensky gave him damaging information about Hunter Biden. Trump has been talking to his far-right allies for months about getting the impeachment proceedings rolling against Biden, whom he hopes to unseat in November 2024.

“Directly or indirectly, this impeachment inquiry was a result of President Trump’s pressure,” Buck said.

Across the Capitol, McCarthy’s nominal allies in the Senate GOP caucus have been openly dismissive of impeachment proceedings.

“I don’t see what the evidence is. I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who served eight years with McCarthy in the House, told reporters Tuesday.

McCarthy deployed Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairs of two committees expected to handle the impeachment inquiry, to join a Senate GOP lunch Wednesday in an effort to tamp down such open criticism of the investigations. They found some success, as previously impeachment-skeptical Republicans voiced acceptance of a bit more investigation into the Bidens.

None of that will help McCarthy keep the government open, as the House and the Senate head in two very different directions on funding federal agencies.

Senate Republicans have linked arms with Democrats: On a procedural vote Tuesday, 37 Republicans joined 48 Democrats to start Senate debate on a bill to fund several major agencies. Those GOP senators are ready to roll over McCarthy in negotiations on a stopgap bill to keep government offices open past the Sept. 30 deadline; the detailed budgets to be considered later in the year; and the Senate’s desire to keep aiding Ukraine.

And if he does get rolled by the Senate, his standing in the House could crumble, regardless of how he handles Biden’s impeachment. His far-right antagonists have refused to let McCarthy live up to the debt deal he clinched with Biden in May, instead forcing him to demand that the House Appropriations Committee draw up draconian cuts for 2024.

Amid conservative policy riders on abortion and other social issues, the committee’s often-bipartisan process collapsed. McCarthy must pass the hot-button spending bills with GOP votes alone, a dynamic that has only prompted conservatives to issue even more demands for complete control over legislation.

“Our main point here is we need to see the total plan, the total package, where the speaker wants to go,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a leader of the radical conservative group, said Wednesday.

In late July, this conservative rebellion forced a delay on funding for the Agriculture Department. The normally noncontroversial bill to fund military projects and the Department of Veterans Affairs barely passed, 219-211 — and that was such a relief to McCarthy that he threw a victory party befitting a major conservative win.

Now, in his first week back after a nearly 50-day summer break, McCarthy called a retreat on the bill funding the Pentagon, delaying its consideration until he is sure he has the votes. There is no sign that the other agency budgets are ready to pass, and the government could shut down on Oct. 1.

“We’re just working through it,” McCarthy told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

So much for impeachment helping to distract from his other problems.

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