Bipartisan Majority Will Pass Clean Debt Limit Increase In The House
Moderate Republicans are ready to flex. Can they oust McCarthy too?
Note: This site can also be accessed by entering FeathersOfHope.net in your browser window.
For new readers, here are links to a few previous posts that will bring you up to date on what the Feathers of Hope network has been doing :
Wait, Exactly How Will We Do This? — (January 28)
Replacing McCarthy - A Progress Report — (February 16)
Moderate Republicans? Really? — (March 2)
Spread The Word, Write or Call Today — (April 6)
Feathers of Hope is a network of ordinary citizens committed to advocating for the removal and replacement of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, thereby diminishing the power and influence of MAGA extremists in the chamber.
We are urging moderate Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives to form a temporary bipartisan majority voting bloc for the purpose of passing a motion to “vacate the chair” and elect a new Republican Speaker who owes nothing to the minority MAGA group.
This is it, folks. For five months we’ve been preparing for this moment.
We need to do what we are here to do.
Call or write to someone on our lists today. Do it again tomorrow.
Nothing will help our democratic republic more right now than removing and replacing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
House Members’ contact information, along with thumbnail bios can be found here: Now's The Time
Suggested guidelines and media contact info can be found here: Spread The Word and here: Spring Break is Over
There’s only one person ultimately responsible for the economic threat facing our country today. That person is Kevin McCarthy.
Last January, in his ego-driven quest to become Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy promised the most extreme MAGA House Members that he would initiate the debt-ceiling “crisis” in exchange for their votes. There was no pressure from any other caucus of Republicans in the House or the Senate to do this.
Capitulating to MAGA demands, he alone chose to use the power of his Speakership to hold hostage our country’s economic health, threatening an American debt default to force the repeal of legislation duly enacted during the previous Congress. This is not how our system is designed to function.
We can indeed blame others for their complicity. That’s been a Republican theme for a while. Traditions of party loyalty, peer pressure, personal friendships and the like are powerful motivators. But it’s fair to hold moderates to account for their failure to foresee and prevent the consequences of Kevin McCarthy’s concessions to MAGA members during the 15 ballots it took for him to become Speaker.
While moderate Republicans in fact hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives, being moderate generally means being cautious, not inclined toward bold moves. By nature, moderates tend to support the status quo, follow the leader. And that’s what they’ve been doing since January.
There was some low-key resentment as plum committee assignments which should have been given to more senior Members were traded by Mr. McCarthy to MAGA holdouts in exchange for their votes. When security camera footage from January 6 was released to Fox News for Tucker Carlson to use in a deceptive TV presentation, there was some mild grumbling. And when MAGA extremists embarrassed the party and its leadership with their disruptive behavior during the President’s State of the Union address, there was only muted criticism.
But this time, it’s different. Being raucous and disrespectful is one thing, but putting the country’s economy at risk is something else. We’ve now reached a point where formerly complicit moderate Republicans are questioning whether the time has come to change direction.
The most recent affront occurred 2 weeks ago when once again moderates were called upon to make all the concessions, as Mr. McCarthy was desperate to pass a spending-cut/debt limit bill. Again and again, their concerns and objections were given low priority so that the extremists’ agenda could be promoted. They were literally told to ignore the substance of the bill, and to vote for it as a symbol.
The remedy for complicity is persuasion.
That is our task. We are engaged in an effort to persuade complicit moderates that it’s in their own self-interest, as well as the interest of the country, to turn away from Kevin McCarthy. Fortunately, facts are on our side.
If they take the step of confronting the MAGA extremists now, removing and replacing their puppet Speaker, a new dynamic will be in place. There will be no more submitting to the antics of the least productive forces in the House.
The prospect of a disastrous government shutdown in the Fall will be greatly diminished. Rather than being dominated by a radical MAGA minority, there will be an atmosphere of serious effort to focus on solving the nation’s problems rather than exacerbating them.
We can help bring this about. Keep in mind our two-part strategy:
Encourage Members of the House to remove and replace Speaker McCarthy
Encourage members of the media to discuss this as a plausible solution to MAGA madness
What’s the status of the debt limit talks right now?
When the four Congressional leaders met with President Biden on Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was hopelessly out-numbered. Senate Majority Leader Schumer, House Minority Leader Jeffries and the President were united in their opposition to his spending-cut proposal. Senate Minority Leader McConnell abstained. 3-1-1, not even close.
Some observers have suggested that Mr. McConnell was 100% supportive of McCarthy’s position. But that’s not really the case. This is a little bit in the weeds here. But it’s worth following to understand exactly what’s happening.
Mitch McConnell is savvy and experienced. He’s also crafty and manipulative. If there’s a way to win, he’ll grab it and take the credit. If he thought there was any chance for McCarthy to come out of Tuesday’s meeting with concessions from the Democrats, he’d have been vigorously and publicly advocating for the spending cuts in the House bill. But he knows better.
He knows that moderates in the House had serious objections to those spending cuts because the subsidies and tax incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – the very same ones MAGA extremists want to repeal -- are already benefitting their districts. They were persuaded to vote for McCarthy’s bill only because he assured them the bill would never become law.
In other words, Speaker McCarthy can not deliver the votes for any compromise he might negotiate with the President. If he removes cuts that moderates won’t support, he loses the MAGA votes. There is no win for him to be had here.
So Senator McConnell going into the meeting humbly described himself as being powerless to do anything other than support the Republican leader of the House. Or as he was probably saying quietly to himself, “Kevin’s holding a losing hand. I’m staying out of this, don’t want to be any part of it. Kevin’s on his own.” When asked, that becomes “Oh yeah, whatever he says.”
Coming out of the meeting, Senator McConnell said only this: “The United States is not going to default. It never has and it never will. What we have here is we’re running out of time.” That’s most all of it, just a bare statement of facts with no criticism of the President or Democratic leadership.
Yeah, sorry Kevin. That’s 3-1-1 at best, trending toward 4-1.
So What Happens Next?
Well, we learned last week that Democratic leadership saw all this coming in January. So one of the first things they did in the new session was to quietly introduce a bill called “The Preventing Gridlock Act”. The bill was written with broad provisions so that it would be sent to as many committees as possible. This insured that when the time was ripe, one version or another could be filed as a debt ceiling measure to be brought up on the discharge calendar.
The discharge petition process is a way of bringing a bill to the floor for a vote without the approval of the Speaker. But it’s extremely cumbersome – requires being in committee for at least 30 days, can only be introduced on certain Tuesdays, etc. It’s not something that can be done on short notice. Advance planning is required and happily, the planning was there. Thank you, Minority Leader Jeffries.
The Preventing Gridlock Act will be the vehicle by which a bill to raise the debt limit without restrictions can be brought to the floor as soon as there is a bipartisan will to do so. That can be as soon as next Tuesday, May 16, if there are a sufficient number of moderate Republicans and Democrats to form a bipartisan majority of 218 votes.
Judging by this Tuesday’s meeting, which again exposed the impotence of Kevin McCarthy’s “leadership”, it appears likely the debt ceiling will be raised sooner rather than later. And at that time, with the shadow of defeat hovering over the Speaker, and a bipartisan majority alliance already in place, we’ll be making our strongest case for his removal and replacement.