The NPR Politics Podcast - McCarthy Fails To Unite GOP, Turns To Dems To Keep Government Open

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Speaker McCarthy, unable to marshal his conference, relied on Democrats to fund the federal government for another 45 days. The deal puts his job in jeopardy and kicks the can down the road as House Republicans will still need to reach party consensus on government spending and aid to Ukraine in order to pass comprehensive government funding bills next month.This episode: White House reporter Deepa Shivaram, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, I'm Emily Anderson from St. Paul, Minnesota. I just completed my first marathon. Ooh, congrats. It was a hard road. I sprained the crap out of my ankle and lost a month of training, but with PT and stubbornness, I got back on the horse and got marathon ready, only for them to cancel the race two hours before start time. No.

I put too much into this, so I ran my own path, and I finished in five hours. But enough about me. This podcast was recorded at 1 0 7 PM on Monday, October 2nd, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will now and forever be a marathon finisher. Oh my God. Congratulations. What a journey. That's so stressful. That is why I do not train for marathons. Yeah, no, that's just, we count that out on my agenda, but congrats a journey. That's so stressful. That is why I do not train for marathons. Yeah, no, that's just, we count that out on my agenda.

But congrats to her. That's amazing. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. So, Sue, it's Monday and there is no government shutdown. The government is open and running. That's great news for the millions of people whose paychecks and livelihoods were going to be affected by this. But some turn of events happened over the weekend. Saturday was kind of unexpected, especially based on our podcast chat from Friday. So walk us through what happened

over the weekend. How did we get here? Things changed by the time you heard it. You know, Speaker McCarthy ultimately ended up doing the thing he said he didn't want to do, which was reach across the aisle and rely on Democrats to pass the stopgap spending bill. He even went so far as invoking Winston Churchill after the House had passed the stopgap measures, paraphrasing Churchill saying you can always rely on Americans to do the right thing after every other option has been exhausted. This was after, you know, a week or more of the speaker fighting and fighting and fighting and failing and failing and failing to pass a stopgap measure with Republicans alone, mainly based off of the hard dug in opposition from a block of far right Republicans. But you know, it's it's very short-term victory. The next stopgap

goes through November 17th. The only thing it had on it, I think, was about $16 billion in disaster relief to affect things like the recovery for the Hawaii fires and other disasters. And in about a month and a half, Congress is going to have to do this all again. Right. Rinse, repeat, all of that. And it's important to point out in all of this, because I remember as things were kind of unfolding on Saturday, when that House vote happened, more Democrats than Republicans voted for this CR. And it's just to explain to our listeners here, you know, why did Democrats end up jumping in on this? And how did that kind of unfold too? Well, Democrats from the start were saying they didn't want to shut down the government. They had been asking for just a clean,

as the word, I use clean in quotes, stopgap measure, which is what they call it on the Hill. They were votes to keep the government funding. Democrats didn't want to shut down. They just wanted, they didn't, they couldn't support anything that Republicans had been putting up that were just meant to be Republican bills. But when it became clear that McCarthy's options were be blamed for the shutdown because nobody else was going to be blamed for this, or, you know, fight to see another day. He chose the option. I would note that most stopgap spending bills are passed exactly like this, with bipartisan support, big margins. That wasn't unusual.

What was so unusual is it took so much work to do the normal, typical thing. Right, to just even get to that point in the first place. Sue, I thought that reaching across the aisle, relying on Democratic votes was supposed to be the kiss of death for McCarthy, that if he did that, his days as Speaker would be numbered. And they might still be. There is a very small group of Republicans led by Matt Gaetz of Florida who are still suggesting that they might push forward a resolution to try to force him out of the Speaker's office. And we can talk more about that. And part of the thing they pointed to following the weekend was one thing that the bill did not include, very notably, was additional assistance for Ukraine. This has been obviously

a top priority for President Biden. It's been a top priority for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and most congressional Democrats, and they just couldn't get it through. The president over the weekend publicly said that he believed he had an agreement with the speaker to bring up Ukrainian funding bill soon, didn't put an exact timeline on it. The speaker, you know, you can't always, you can't always bet on him to keep his word in a deal. We don't entirely know what the conversation was between them. But he then did seem to link it to the idea of passing Ukraine aid would be conditional on having some measure of border security legislation that is very popular on the right,

but could be much more complicated to negotiate with Democrats. What have we heard from Kevin McCarthy in terms of his stance on Ukraine aid? Because it does seem from the Biden administration's perspective that there was almost this immediate like, you know, we know that McCarthy is going to put this to a vote soon. And there was this sense of confidence that this would come through. But what have we heard specifically on on Ukraine aid in the past? He's been squishy about it. He hasn't committed really one way or the other. He has voiced skepticism about what Republicans call blank check to Ukraine. At the same time, he has said Ukraine will get what it needs. I think he's trying to thread a

needle here where he doesn't want to create too much opposition within his own party or from their likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump. But he also knows that this is a, you know, a dominant reason behind US foreign policy right now. I think he ultimately wants to bring a bill to the floor. But I think that's why he's throwing out border security. Because I don't think a lot of Republicans look at Ukraine money as a policy win, not a significant amount of them. So if he's going to give the Democrats as they see it's something they want, what can they get in return? And that's where the border element comes into play. Exactly. And the timeline, as we mentioned, still a little unsure there. All right. Time for a quick break and we'll be back in a second.

We are back. Let's talk about the man at the center of all of this drama, Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Unclear at this point whether he remains a speaker. Let's talk about the man at the center of all of this drama, Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Unclear at this point whether he remains Speaker. Here's Congressman Matt Gaetz talking about him. So, let me get this straight. To extend Joe Biden's spending and Joe Biden's policy priorities, the Speaker of the House gave away to Joe Biden the money for Ukraine that Joe Biden wanted. If that kind of tape didn't make it entirely clear, Deepa, Gates is not a Republican who supports Ukrainian funding. Gates has been a thorn in the Speaker's side for a long time.

I think he's someone that listeners might recall from back in January when Kevin McCarthy had to go for 15 rounds to get the votes to become speaker. Matt Gaetz was a leading opponent of that. The two really seem to have not only a professional dislike, but a personal animus between the two of them. They've had confrontations both in public and in private closed-door meetings in recent weeks. And Gaetz is threatening to use something called a motion to vacate, which is a resolution that if it was put on the House floor and passed by a simple majority, it would immediately vacate the speakership, i.e. Kevin McCarthy would no can only stay in his position if Democrats come to his rescue when we assume they'd exact some kind of price for that. How firm do you think his hold on power is right now? Ma'am, I honestly don't know.

There's so many complicating factors to this. Keep in mind that this is a reality that exists because Kevin McCarthy agreed to make it a reality. One of the concessions he had to give to conservatives back in January was to change the rules around the motion to vacate to make it so just one member could bring it to the floor. So it was easier to fire him or easier to try to fire him. Sure. And when Democrats had the majority, they had changed the rules to make it so a majority of one party had to be able to be co-sponsors of the resolution to make it get a vote, a much higher threshold. So now you're right. Like if a small group of Republicans, if all Democrats decided in mass to side with the Matt Gaetz block, they could force Kevin McCarthy out. The million dollar question is what do Democrats do when this is brought to a vote? Matt Gaetz suggested that that vote could happen as early as this week. If he offers it, it has to be voted on within two legislative days. So that's once he goes to the floor and

calls it up, it sort of sets a clock that Kevin McCarthy can do nothing about. Democrats have a decision to make. I've talked to a lot of Democratic staffers and some members about this in recent weeks, and they don't seem to have a party consensus yet. I've talked to a lot of Democratic staffers and some members about this in recent weeks, and they don't seem to have a party consensus yet. I think they were waiting to see when it was brought to the floor. On the one hand, I talked to Democrats who say, look, like the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Who only knows who Republicans would put up for speaker after that?

But then you talk to a lot of Democrats who are like, they have very little regard for Kevin McCarthy. They don't like him personally. They don't like how he conducted himself after the January 6th attack on the Capitol and how he sort of realigned himself with Donald Trump and how he undermined the investigation into the attack. And they don't uphold his end of deal. So if he has to cut a deal with Democrats, one thing I've heard aid say to me is how can we even know we can trust him to uphold the end of a deal if he needs our vote to win? Can we peel it back for a second, though? And we're talking about, you know, McCarthy being divisive. Matt Gaetz, also famously a very divisive member of Congress. How divided is the House? You both have obviously seen, you know, many shutdowns in your time, a lot of this tenuous back and forth. Have either of you seen the House this divided at this point? Yes, I think I've certainly seen the House this divided before. I think what's different now

is there is a level of personal animus between Democrats and Republicans since the January 6th attack that I think they fundamentally question each other's decency and motives. I don't think that same level of animus existed under former Republican Speaker John Boehner or Paul Ryan. It's a little got a little bit of an edge to it with Kevin McCarthy. I also think a dynamic here that's different is Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader don't seem to be on the same page. And they seem to have a big disagreement on major policy issues like Ukraine. So the party seems more fractured. I don't even want to say it's necessarily divided. There's just lots of splits and fractures on different issues and policies. And he hasn't proven a way to really negotiate it to a winning end yet. But he has survived many battles so far. So I don't think you can, it's not a foregone conclusion that he's not going to be Speaker anymore, but looking ahead to the next couple of months, he's got so many more challenges that are going to be way harder

than passing a stopgap spending bill. Right. And even before we get to the next couple of months, the next 45 days, we have to do this all over again. What happens come mid-November? The hard part is going to be how the House and Senate reconcile the 12 annual spending bills. They're miles apart. McCarthy walked away from the deal he cut from Biden. Republicans have also put in a ton of policies into their bills that will never see the light of day in the Senate. I'll give you just one example to show you how partisan and pointed this is going to be. In the agriculture spending bill, they included a new policy that would make it much harder to mail the abortion drug Mifepristone anywhere nationwide. Democrats see it as a backdoor way to try to nationally ban abortion access. Obviously,

that's not going to go anywhere in a Democratic Senate or under a Democratic president. So how they reconcile those bills and those policies, I think it is that to me is that I've never seen the two chambers this far apart on as many spending bills. There's usually a little bit of bipartisan unity, especially around things like the Defense Department or even the Ag Bill. The Agriculture Bill tends to be one of the easier ones. So they're miles apart, they don't like each other, and there's no clear path out of this. That's as well as I can forecast in the middle of November for you. We're doing great, guys. The government is super functioning well.

You're doing great, sweetie. Yeah, I mean, don't forget, this is a Republican conference where the members voted to overturn a free and fair election, to breach the debt ceiling, in other words, to default on the full faith and credit of the United States and to shut down the government. That's a lot. And they're now pursuing an impeachment inquiry of the president in which multiple members of their own conferences said they don't actually think that they have found impeachable offenses yet. Thank you both for helping us explain what is happening at all times, especially over a crazy weekend like this one. We're going to leave it here for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.