Kevin McCarthy won the debt-limit vote. Here’s why Republicans still doubt his speakership

After 15 votes and the string of concessions to hard-right House Republicans that finally delivered the speaker’s gavel to Kevin McCarthy in January, the betting in Washington was that he would be heavily beholden to MAGA conservatives.

But McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, withstood his first major stress test Wednesday, muscling through a bipartisan compromise to lift the federal debt ceiling. The Fiscal Responsibility Act passed 314-117, with 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats in support.

If passed by the Senate, it will head off an unprecedented federal default.

The majority Democratic vote could portend more trouble for McCarthy with his far-right flank, which has been skeptical of his leadership from the beginning. It is fueling sentiment that the deal was too palatable for the opposition.

But for the moment, at least, McCarthy, 58, enjoyed prevailing over the naysayers.

“I didn’t stand far from this room after a couple — three — days of trying to get elected speaker,” he said Wednesday after the vote. “And every question you gave me, ‘What could we survive? What could we even do?’ I told you then it’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.”

The deal, negotiated between the White House and House Republicans, would suspend the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling until January 2025. A key provision for McCarthy’s team was a cap on non-defense spending through the 2024 fiscal year and a 1% increase the following year, effectively a cut depending on the rate of inflation.

“We produced a bill that, in divided government, takes a step towards smaller government, less regulation, more economic growth and more take home pay,” McCarthy said on the House floor ahead of the vote.

Avoiding default

More than two dozen hard-right Republicans pledged to vote “no” and followed through. McCarthy remained firm: He had enough votes. He just needed his Democratic counterpart to supplement his base.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act found its way in the middle.

Some hard-right legislators, including Reps. Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, a Republican maverick on the Rules Committee, spoke in support of McCarthy’s deal late Tuesday after it cleared a key vote by a 7-6 margin. When it became clear a certain number of moderate Democrats needed to support a procedural hurdle in the afternoon, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, guided them.

Jeffries said that he would support the debt-limit deal himself to avoid default and encouraged his caucus to do so.

The deal now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it and send it on to President Joe Biden for a swift signature. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen previously predicted that without an agreement the federal government might not be able to pay its bills after June 5.

Republicans and Democrats disagreed on what the legislation would effectively do. McCarthy, in a plea to conservatives, said there was nothing in the deal for Democrats, and that it would be the largest spending cut Congress has voted on in U.S. history.

Biden and Democrats tell a different story.

“Nobody got everything they wanted,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday. “But this agreement still accomplishes two major goals: It spares the American people from the catastrophe of default and it preserves the most important investments we’ve passed over the past few years, many of them on a bipartisan basis.”

McCarthy’s opposition

What comes next for McCarthy as speaker is less certain. In the run up to the vote, Reps. Dan Bishop and Ken Buck, members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, publicly questioned whether McCarthy could keep the speaker’s gavel.

Bishop, a North Carolina Republican, told CNN at a press gathering Tuesday that his support for McCarthy was “none, zero.”

As part of his deal in January to become speaker, McCarthy agreed to a provision allowing a single lawmaker to call for a snap vote to oust him. A majority of the House — 218 if all members vote — would have to offer their vote of no confidence to remove him.

The House is split with 222 Republicans to 213 Democrats, which could be a problem for McCarthy if enough of the GOP wanted him gone. It would force him, once again, to look for Democrats to shield him.

McCarthy’s Republican predecessors faced similar reckonings during their speakerships — practically and personally.

House Speaker John Boehner resigned amid a 2015 funding battle that would have required him to rely on Democratic support to keep the gavel. Boehner, who became speaker in 2011, had already extended his tenure when he had not wanted to.

“It’s become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution,” Boehner told reporters in September 2015.

Former Speaker Paul Ryan, who held the role from 2015 to 2019 — when McCarthy did not have the votes to succeed Boehner — decided he had enough in April 2018. Surprising many in his caucus, Ryan said he would not seek re-election; he wanted to spend more time with his children. The 2018 midterms during the tenure of former President Donald Trump handed Democrats the House.

How history looks back at the process for the debt-limit vote remains to be determined.

“It’s a challenge for everybody,” said Doug LaMalfa, R-Oroville, before the deal was announced. “But I don’t think we pin the success of anybody to the four corners (of politics), or all of the negotiators on the speed with which it goes or the size with which comes out.”