But he added, “Everybody picks their own hill to die on.”
Speaking with VF, another Republican lawmaker dismissed the fight over the riders as little more than political theater. “None of this matters,” this person said, requesting anonymity to speak candidly. “We will see the rider process play out and at the end of it, we all know we’re getting a [continuing resolution]. And no one is happy about it.”
Pocan said the House is “ceding much of the authority to the Senate to have some adults at the table.” The controversial riders will certainly be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled upper chamber. But their mere existence does put Republicans—particularly in districts Joe Biden won, and even some Democrats, in a tough position. “You really don’t want to have to take votes on these questions. They’re not helpful. And for what?… These things are not going to be included in the final bill,” former Republican congressman Charlie Dent, who resigned from Congress over frustrations with the increased partisanship, told VF.
Reflecting on the current House dynamics, Dent said, “The hard-liners have leverage. They know it and they’re always willing to use it. The more pragmatic members are much more reluctant to exercise that kind of power, even though they have it. I mean, I’d be setting myself on fire right now if I were still in the House.” Republicans are having “private conversations” about their concerns, Pocan acknowledged. But Democrat DelBene isn’t holding her breath for her Republican colleagues to show some profiles in courage. “I think we’ve all heard some Republicans—and you’ve even seen it in the press—say, ‘Oh, this is terrible.’ But the reality is there aren’t any moderate Republicans,” DelBene, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview. “There’s lots of talk, but I think when it comes down to action, they all vote extreme.”
While the antiabortion and other culture-war riders have garnered a great deal of attention, Rosa DeLauro told me that it is even more concerning that Republicans are negotiating in what she sees as bad faith and not adhering to the spending levels set forth in the budget deal Biden struck with House leadership earlier this summer. “There was this negotiation, which everyone thought was in good faith, that we would come to a top line, and then proceed from there with regard to that framework with appropriations bills. But the ink wasn’t dry on the on the bill before the Republicans walked away from it,” DeLauro, who is the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. The cuts, she said, go well beyond the 2022 spending levels agreed upon. “It is a savage cut across the board.” And the hubbub over the riders, she fears, is distracting from these cuts.
When it comes to McCarthy, no one is under the illusion that the House Freedom Caucus and other members of his party’s fringe won’t continue to cause headaches for the Speaker. “Leadership is going to have to disappoint these folks again—just like they did on the debt ceiling,” Dent said. McCarthy is also feeling the squeeze from outside the Beltway. Specifically, Mar-a-Lago. Trump and McCarthy reportedly discussed the Speaker holding a vote to expunge the former president’s impeachments. There is certainly, and unsurprisingly, support within Trumpworld for expungement. In a text message to VF, Michael Caputo, a Trump ally who also worked in his administration, said it would be “vindicating” and characterized it as “both the easiest and the right thing” for McCarthy to do.
An expungement vote is little more than a novel idea. In an interview with CNN former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said McCarthy is “playing politics” and added, “it’s not even clear if he constitutionally can expunge those things.” And much like the votes on some of these antiabortion and culture-war riders getting tacked onto funding bills, Pelosi noted that by bringing an expungement vote, McCarthy would put members in difficult districts—including the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump—“on the spot” and “that is a decision he has to make.” Sources told CNN that the votes aren’t there. (McCarthy has disputed reporting that he promised the former president an expungement vote and told reporters any expungement would have to “go through committee like anything else.”)
Perhaps as an effort to placate the more ornery members in the right-flank of his caucus, McCarthy did prop up the possibility of impeachment hearings against Biden this week. “How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said Tuesday, in reference to allegations that Biden, when vice president, engaged in a bribery scheme alongside his son Hunter Biden. (President Biden has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.)
As for what the Republican House drama means for Biden, his cheerleaders say it only helps the president. “Republican overreach in 2010 certainly helped [Barack] Obama in 2012. Republican overreach in 1994 helped [Bill] Clinton in 1996. To the extent that the president has and can continue to kind of run on this position of not only being the elder statesman with competent, steady leadership, but also a backstop against extremism—that’s a good place to be,” Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who is CEO of the Biden-supporting PAC Unite the Country, told VF. “Biden says it himself like, ‘Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.’ Right now when you look at the US House—the alternative looks pretty good.”