As I write this, Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy has failed several times to get enough votes to become a speaker.
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One really shouldn’t be surprised.
Just remember, it was McCarthy’s job to win the House majority last year. Some pundits expected the GOP to win a substantial majority.
Instead, McCarthy won just 222 seats, barely flipping the house.
McCarthy has been failing for a long time. Does it really matter who is the House speaker? What have Republican leaders in Congress ever done for the Republican base?
Specifically, what has McCarthy ever done?
Kevin McCarthy and the Modern GOP
On the eve of the 2010 midterm elections, Threshold Editions released Young Guns, authored by McCarthy, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan, all of whom would be in the Republican house leadership. This was a manifesto, a shot at the Obama administration and profligate spending. Boasts Young Guns, “Together, the Young Guns are changing the face of the Republican party and giving us a new road map back to the American dream.” The trio promised to cut taxes, reform government spending, and repeal Obamacare.
Let’s take a look at the record. When the GOP took control of the House in 2011, the annual budget deficit was $1.3 trillion, or 8.3% of GDP. In 2021 the annual budget deficit was $2.7 trillion, and had grown to 12.1% of GDP. During that decade the total national debt grew from $14.7 trillion, or 95% of GDP, in 2011, to $29.62 trillion, or 124% of GDP, in 2021.
Please forgive the author for going all George Will on the readership with a barrage of statistics, but it is the best way to illustrate the GOP’s complete fiscal failure this last decade. Oh, and Obamacare was never repealed. Thanks, Senator McCain.
And how have the young guns fared?
In 2014, Eric Cantor lost his primary to upstart economist Dave Brat. In 2015 Ryan took the Speaker’s gavel and joined the list of Republican House speakers to promise and fail to rein in federal spending. Ryan left Congress after losing 41 seats to the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Of the self-celebrated trio, only Kevin McCarthy remains.
Like every Republican speaker from Newt Gingrich to Denny Hastert, all the way down to John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy says he’ll reduce government spending. He also pledges to secure the border. Go ahead and laugh.
Nearly 30 Years of Failure
Republicans have been pledging to cut spending since the days of Newt Gingrich and the 104th congress. Newt had big plans when he became speaker in 1995, including tax cuts and entitlement reform. Clinton outmaneuvered Newt, leading to the government shutdown of 1995, which turned into a political disaster for the GOP. Newt and Senate majority leader Bob Dole caved. The FY 1996 Federal budget, Newt’s first, was $1.45 trillion and 18.2% of GDP. The FY 2021 Federal budget was more than $6.8 trillion and 30.1% of GDP. Once again, I apologize for the relentless recitation of statistics.
To be fair to Newt, in 1996 he got Bill Clinton to sign the Welfare Reform Bill and the 1997 Balanced Budget Act helped reduce spending increases and balance the budget. But note the language. Under Newt, spending increases were reduced. Spending was not cut. That’s a far cry from the 104th Congress’s plans to eliminate entire Cabinet departments. House Budget Committee Chair John Kasich was pictured in Time tearing a copy of the federal budget in half. Kasich declared, “If we pile on debt, are we going to be able to look our kids in the eye and say we failed to tackle it?” In 2016 John Kasich, then the governor of Ohio, looked the Republican base in the eye and asked for its vote. Outside of Ohio, he didn’t get it. And like the rest of the GOP establishment, he lost to Donald Trump.
Mitch McConnell Always Lets Us Down. Or Does He?
At the end of 2022, Republicans added to their long list of spending and budget failures. Congress passed, and Biden signed, a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that funds discretionary and defense spending through 2023. The bill contained $44.9 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell actually said, “Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans.”
Uhhh…no, it isn’t.
In fact, this poll found the border was the most important issue for 45% of Republican voters. Ukraine came in at 14%. Imagine if that $44.9 billion was used to secure America’s border instead of Ukraine’s. Eighteen of Mitch McConnell’s senate Republicans voted for the spending bill. To his credit, Kevin McCarthy rallied the House GOP against the bill and only 9 Republicans voted yes. Still, this effort has the stench of typical Republican failure theatre.
McConnell is usually thought of as a master parliamentarian. Maybe, but given the above-described financial situation and the nation’s accelerated cultural decay, what good are McConnell’s alleged parliamentary skills? McConnell has always bent the knee in spending fights with Democrats, and one wonders if all the negotiation and brinkmanship was performative. That being said, McConnell has held the line one issue important to conservatives, the supreme court. The three justices McConnell got confirmed handed down the Dobbs Decision, overturning Roe vs Wade, in my opinion the most important legal decision since Brown v Board of Education. Perhaps a long-term political victory is greater than a short-term electoral majority.
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William Stroock has been a history teacher and an adjunct professor of history. He wrote Pershing in Command: A Study of the American Expeditionary Force, Israel at War and Her Enemies, and over a dozen novels including the World War 1990: Series and The Austrian Painter: What if Germany Won the Great War? His latest novels are The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and The Aftermath of 1976.
