Broken Promises Keep Proving the Never-McCarthy Crowd Right
During the fight for Speaker of the House, many members of the House Freedom Caucus opposed Kevin McCarthy unless he agreed to restore the People’s House back to the way our Founding Fathers intended it to operate: decentralized governance. He reluctantly agreed, but only after fifteen rounds of voting. The fact that it took him essentially one business week to agree to common sense reforms, and is now already breaking his promises less than one year into his Speakership, begs the question: Was he ever serious about keeping his word in the first place?
Several of the holdouts were “Never-Kevin” and vehemently opposed his speakership regardless of the concessions he promised to make. Now, we are seeing why.
A failure came in the debt ceiling fight in June when, instead of fighting against the inflationary spending of “Bidenomics,” McCarthy gifted Biden and the Democrats an unlimited debt ceiling until 2025. While it is true that Biden refused to negotiate until the last minute, Biden also said that he would not negotiate with Republicans at all. When Biden finally came to the table, McCarthy could have continued the negotiation and fought for real reforms to spending but Speaker McCarthy caved to the first milquetoast offer he got.
The result was the embarrassingly ill-named “Fiscal Responsibility Act” (FRA) which gives Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” a run for its (non-existent) money. Thanks to McCarthy, Americans are now stuck with the record-high COVID-era spending levels that are crushing Americans with inflation. To add insult to injury, the FRA received more Democrat votes than Republican votes, broke McCarthy’s promise to restore regular order to The House of Representatives, and destroyed the short-lived unity the House GOP formed in the months leading up to the passage of the Limit, Save, Grow Act.
The Never-Kevin crowd may have been on to something. McCarthy has never been a fiscal conservative. He has always voted for massive, omnibus spending packages and is seemingly uninterested in allowing rank-and-file members to have a say in the process – especially true conservatives. With a lifetime score of 70 percent on FreedomWorks’ scorecard, his government spending votes are what consistently pulls his score down.
Now, with unity destroyed, the House is nowhere near passing twelve appropriation bills by the September 30th deadline. This is teeing up taxpayers for yet another end of the year omnibus, which is spurring calls on Capitol Hill for a continuing resolution. With conservatives opposed to this swampy tactic of uniparty, McCarthy must ask himself if he is content on maintaining the failed status quo of kicking the proverbial can down the road.
He must also ask himself if he will go along with the Washington War Party that wants to include more Ukraine aid, which has become unpopular with a majority of Americans. With the House Freedom Caucus pledging not to support funding for Ukraine in any supplemental bill, McCarthy’s promise that a Republican majority would not provide a “blank check” for Ukraine will soon be put to the test. This could also cause problems for McCarthy’s promise to only vote on single issue bills as Biden and the Democrats want to pair Ukraine aid with disaster relief for Hawaii.
The American People voted Republicans into the majority to shrink Washington and grow America. But now, with conservatives controlling the Power of the Purse, Speaker McCarthy is working with Democrats instead of fighting Biden’s agenda. Another December omnibus and a failure to return to pre-COVID spending levels could very well earn himself a motion to vacate from conservatives. If that happens, he will only have himself to blame.
COVID is OVER – act like it! Stop spending money we do not have:
