Last Call For The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

Infernal Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy has made a contract from below to keep his current job as House Speaker, but how long that remains the case we don't know, as his GOP clowns voted for a rules package that apparently includes secret provisions that nobody wants revealed.

What we know about the concessions McCarthy made is that they apparently contain some of the more controversial points — especially as compared with the rules package itself, which contained relatively few and passed with little fuss. Among them, as The Washington Post’s Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell report:

Those concessions place limits on new spending, including defense spending, which has frustrated some defense hawks. Leadership also agreed to prioritize for a vote an aggressive border security bill that would build a wall along the southern border, according to multiple aides and members of Congress familiar with the agreement who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. The House would also vote on legislation to establish term limits for members to serve six terms or 12 years, a proposal that would require a constitutional amendment.

The deal also apparently included concessions on committees. But there, too, precisely what form those concessions took isn’t clear.

We know that McCarthy has agreed to things like putting a certain number of hard-right Republicans on the influential Rules Committee, but McCarthy has said he didn’t promise anyone chairmanships. Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), an ally who said he has seen the document, told Axios that it included “no names, just representation.”

At the same time, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) claimed over the weekend that he had secured a slot on the House Republican Steering Committee, which decides committee chairmanships and assignments, in exchange for flipping his speaker vote back to McCarthy:

Fox News: Congressman, what did you get in Florida? What did you get? Everybody got something, right? What did you get?

DONALDS: Oh, well, listen, one of the things that’s going to happen is, it’s been put out I’m actually going to be a part of the Republican Steering Committee as Kevin McCarthy’s designate.

This doesn’t necessarily suggest that Donalds’s name appears on whatever document might exist. But his statement highlights how little we know about the extent or the particulars of the committee promises.

As for why, the obvious answer is that it’s just not terribly helpful to put yourself on the record agreeing to these things. Being forced to agree to such extensive concessions reinforces that McCarthy is a diminished speaker at the mercy of a small number of holdouts. It also would have risked alienating the allies that stood by McCarthy’s side. Sharing specifics would mean McCarthy would have to account for them and his ability to live up to the deal publicly. Some — such as cutting defense spending — open the GOP up to discord and criticism (and those are just the terms for which we know the basic outline).

While that would explain keeping this information from the public, though, it doesn’t explain why even House members appear to be in the dark. Those members have declined to truly press the issue, voting for McCarthy and then the rules package when they could have used both for leverage. McCarthy got what he wanted, ultimately winning both votes without being forced to show the hand that he has left himself with.

 

If Nancy Pelosi had ever done this, it would have been a front-page scandal for years.  McCarthy gets away with it, and the Washington damn Post is asking why he's allowed to do it, rather than, you know, actually finding out what's in the secret rules addendum.

Read the damn assignment.