How low will Speaker McCarthy go?

Less than a month ago, President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a deal to avert the first-ever default by the U.S. government. The agreement raised the debt ceiling until January 2025. Spending on some programs (but not defense, veterans affairs, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid) was cut and capped for two years.

Biden hailed the agreement for preventing “the worst possible crisis”: a default followed by a recession, massive job losses, and drastic reductions to retirement accounts. “Neither side got everything it wanted,” the president stated. “That’s the responsibility of governing.” McCarthy touted “historic reductions in spending” and no tax increases: “I think we did pretty dang good for the American public.” The bipartisan compromise bill passed through Congress easily and was signed by President Biden on June 3.

It is now in danger of unraveling. Speaker McCarthy is poised to renege on the agreement he negotiated and risk a shutdown of the federal government this fall.

Hard-right Republicans in the House denounced the legislation as a betrayal of McCarthy’s commitment to substantial reductions in the federal budget. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) told reporters he has “zero confidence” in the speaker: “I’m just fed up with the lies. I’m fed up with the lack of courage, the cowardice.” McCarthy “knows what he did,” declared Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

To send a message to the speaker, eleven of the hardliners refused to vote for a procedure setting the rules for debate on legislation (which they support!) to prevent restrictions on gas stoves and other federal regulations, halting business in the House for a week. It was the first time in 21 years that the majority party had failed to pass a procedural vote. “House Leadership couldn’t Hold the Line,” tweeted Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). “Now we Hold the Floor.” McCarthy tried to shrug off the revolt. “Some of the members, they don’t know what to ask for,” he maintained. “There’s a little chaos going on.”

He now knows what they want and realizes his speakership may be at risk. The spending cuts in the debt limit compromise, the hardliners insist, are a ceiling, not a floor. They want the House to pass appropriations bills with much deeper reductions. If, as expected, the Senate refuses to go along, they are prepared to shut down parts of the government. A shutdown, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) maintains, “will save the country, from an economic and fiscal standpoint, for our kids and grandkids.”

Last week, McCarthy set allocations for the 12 appropriations bill to be considered this fall at 2022 levels, about $119 billion less than the amount specified in the debt ceiling agreement. Oblivious, no doubt, to its double meaning, he now claims, “there is no limit on how low you could go.”

The first test is likely to come at the end of the summer, with the reauthorization of the Farm Bill, which includes funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Since most Freedom Caucus members routinely vote against all appropriations bills that add to the national debt, passage will almost certainly depend on support from four or five dozen Democrats. Not surprisingly, then, moderate Republicans representing agricultural districts, or districts carried by Biden in 2020, fear a train wreck. “You can’t just have an agreement and then say we’re gonna change it,” Don Bacon (R-Neb.) stated recently. Convinced that no one can change the opinions of “certain members,” Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), a member of the Freedom Caucus and the House Agriculture Committee, does not “have a lot of confidence of anything passing the House anymore under the current environment.” And Democrats have made clear that legislation with cuts to SNAP or changes to eligibility or work requirements will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

If a government shutdown is averted through continuing resolutions, but all 12 appropriations bills are not approved by December 31, a 1% across the board cut in the federal budget, including the Defense Department, will take effect — a result most Republicans adamantly oppose.

The vast majority of Americans do not “want a small minority of people to dictate where our economy is going to go,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. If Speaker McCarthy, who once praised the debt ceiling agreement as “transformational,” agrees with her, and with Rep. Bacon, it’s time for him to publicly affirm that his word is his bond, stick to the debt ceiling compromise, and stop helping a tiny number of extremists bring the House down.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”