What a bizarre story we have today. The House Rules Committee has 13 members, which means rules can be passed with seven votes. There are nine Republicans and four Democrats on the committee.
All simple enough, except that back when Kevin McCarthy was desperately making deals to win the speakership he made a deal with three Freedom Caucus members to place them on the committee. The idea was that the three firebrands could ensure that the six mushballs didn't give away the store to wily Democrats or Republican pressure to compromise.
But then a funny thing happened: nobody wrote the deal down and everyone promptly forgot the terms. The Washington Post picks up the story from here:
As the committee was about to take up the debt ceiling deal, one of its Freedom Caucus members lodged a remarkable claim about the January agreement: that GOP votes to advance bills on the committee effectively needed to be unanimous.
“A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes — AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) claimed Monday on Twitter.
....As Roy’s claim was being chewed over, McCarthy allies acknowledged that they didn’t really know what McCarthy had given up.
“I have not heard that before,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told CNN. “If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them.”
Rep. Stephanie I. Bice (R-Okla.) added: “I don’t know what Speaker McCarthy agreed to, but that has not been something that any of us were familiar with.”
Another member who was apparently unfamiliar with what Roy was talking about: Massie, the most crucial vote on the Rules Committee when it came to getting to those required GOP seven.
In the end, Rep. Thomas Massie, one of The Three, voted in favor of the debt ceiling rule, giving it seven votes for passage. Roy squawked some more about betrayal on Tuesday morning but said nothing later when the vote was held and the rule passed. Maybe he changed his mind about what his handshake agreement with McCarthy was really about.
In any case, it looks like the House is being at least partly run via secret codicils that few people know about and even fewer agree on. Behold the people's business.
This is why McCarthy won't be thrown out of the Speakership. The far right doesn't have enough brains among them to do anything about this "huge betrayal".
I think you’re only partly right. I think the more important thing is that none of these Republican firebrands really cares about anything substantive. It’s all just doing hits on Fox News or Newsmax.
👍👍
McCarthy may well have agreed to this. The remarkable part is a Republican thinking that Republican leadership would uphold a handshake deal when it no longer served its purpose.
Ever since my late 20's when I got burned at work by agreeing to something verbally that the person who agreed to it reneged on and I didn't have any written proof that we had agreed on it, I've always kept written receipts. Every single email gets archived, every single piece of paper gets scanned and saved, and every single conversation is summarized as soon as possible in an email to the person(s) I had the conversation with... all to prevent that same situation from happening again. It sucks to not trust anybody, but it sucks harder to trust someone and have them betray you.
How these people managed to get to Congress without learning this "trust but verify" rule is beyond me... but you always. Keep. Your. Receipts. Especially if you have any inkling whatsoever that whatever it is you agreed to is likely to be reneged on.
Austin, are you sure you're not James Comey? 🙂🙂
When you are dealing with irrational lying a**holes even written contracts don’t hold up. Just ask any vendor who signed a written contract with Donald Trump.
Similarly, is anybody surprised that Michael Cohen began secretly recording his calls (etc) with Trump?
Exactly! They just don't honor it and tell you to do something about it.
The difference with Coney, Cohen, et. al, is that they were dealing with criminal issues, and they knew it.
I've always been trusting. Recently, I had an agreement (verbal), 2 directors and a higher up agreed to it. It was put in the budget as well, which was published.
I kept the deal to the letter. My direct boss retired, although 2 of the people were still there. The higher up just decided to not honor the deal and she took over the department, eventually, temporarily the organization. They took away the promotion then asked me to take on a larger leadership role in my department. No pay increase. I had already taken on more responsibility, they were asking me to commit seppuku had I agreed to do everything they were asking. And, I apparently came closer to dying than I knew based on recent events.
I had enough receipts to prove it, and refused to do the extra work, but by the time I called it out, the higher up was temporarily running the organization. She lied about what happened. I could prove it but who could I appeal to?
They appointed new leadership who basically told me, "sorry, kid, happens...".
Never, ever, trust management, and be prepared, even if you have receipts, for them to just lie their way out.
As an aside, they pulled the same thing on another guy, when I refused, he just left one day, took a job less pay, lower title and longer commute, but presumably, as he knew his new boss, without the lies.
Did you stay with this organization?
No, gone, but not nearly soon enough!
it looks like the House is being at least partly run via secret codicils
Fits right in to the web of kompromat and softer blackmail that holds their caucus together. We're still one step shy of outright will-to-power in that they're still pretending this is about policy in public. Once they drop that, look out.
Pretty sure I heard that the agreement was that anything the four Democrats agreed on would pass. It wasn't written down but you don't need that when you have a gentleman's agreement among honorable people.
"agreement among honorable people"
That's really the key. Handshake agreements are not bad per se. They're a common part of doing business, and of life in general. I'm sure Dem leaders have made them with their members*, and honored them.
GOPers, with few exceptions, feel free to lie about anything, so leaders lying about commitments they make is hardly a shock. These are not honorable people.
* A verbal agreement between parties is one thing. But if you establish rules governing a body like the House, that of course needs to be written down and approved.
Roy is a bit of a nutcase.
The so called “freedom” caucus could more accurately be called the nut case caucus, or perhaps just the a**hole caucus.
I'm thinking the MAGA crazies might actually be too chicken to oust McCarthy. If this passes the House, it's hard to imagine anything of substance they'll have to work on until the next election. There's the budget reconciliation, but they don't seem to be too good at this. Seems like they just blew their wad and not much to show for it.
Wait, really? Is this... normal?
The House is very, very close to evenly split. Shouldn't it be seven Republicans and six Democrats? Or at the VERY least eight-five? Nine-four seems wrong.
Seems that was the norm even when Democrats were in charge. Surprising.
Here's something I don't understand (actually I do have a guess): Couldn't the Freedom Caucus derail this bill by recalling Speaking McCarthy? If they really think the deal is so bad, why not recall him? How could there be a Speaker vote in time to pass the bill by Monday?
(My guess is that all this is just kayfabe, and even the most extremist Republicans don't want to be blamed for causing a default.)
It's not clear to me how a motion passed by a majority of the committee could somehow be ruled as anything but the decision of the committee. What's the chair supposed to say - "OK we have 12 in favor but Mr Roy is against it, so the motion is defeated according to Kevin's Secret Rules"? Ridiculous. Roy might believe it but it's impossible to believe McCarthy ever agreed.
Moreover the two supposed secret rules are contradictory. If bills require unanimous Republican consent to be reported out, the bit about needing at least seven Republican votes is superfluous.