House Dems discuss demands in exchange for advancing debt bill

The House is on the cusp of passing legislationWednesday to raise the nation’s debt limit, quashing rumblings of a conservative rebellion to sink the bill.

GOP leadership is confident that the party will be able to supply a majority of the Republican conference's votes needed to clear the bipartisan debt deal through the House — though Democrats say Republicans privately have pledged to hit a higher threshold of 150 votes.

But Democrats are quietly expecting that Republicans will help to move the bill forward in a crucial mid-afternoon hurdle known as a vote on the rule. And Republicans are still holding round-the-clock meetings as they try to drive up the number of GOP votes expected on the debt package later Wednesday. More than 30 GOP lawmakers, including some of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s most vocal critics, have publicly said they intend to vote against the deal, while dozens of others remain undecided.

McCarthy declined to discuss the whip count on Wednesday, or if he’ll need Democratic help to avert the procedural roadblock, but downplayed signs of divisions within his own ranks.

“You know what matters is it’s going to become law. … Everybody has a right to their own opinion. But on history, I'd want to be here with this bill today,” McCarthy said.

Still, Republicans are facing a major hiccup before the bill gets anywhere near final passage and will likely need Democrats to get there given significant GOP opposition and the slim margin. The chamber has to pass the rule in the afternoon in order to set up debate on the debt legislation and ultimately pass it. And typically, the majority party takes care of clearing votes on the rules.

Democrats aren’t formally whipping against the procedural vote but expect many to hold out against it, according to three people familiar with the situation. Instead, they’re waiting to see how short Republicans might come up and want to extract something in exchange if the majority party needs the help, the people said.

“Our position is this is the majority’s responsibility,” said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). “We’ll see what we hear from the speaker.”

Democrats are discussing how they could extract concessions on the floor during the vote on the rule, such as directing more earmark funding to Democratic projects, according to two people familiar with the situation. One member predicted the real-time horse trading could result in “one of the longest five minute votes in Congressional history.”

When asked if the GOP would need Democratic help to pass the rule, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said “Republicans are the ones who are running this place, and Republicans will pass the bills, and that’s what we are doing.”

Asked if he was talking with Republicans who are currently opposed to the bill to try to rally them to vote for the rule anyway, Emmer added that he’s talking to “every member.”

A large number of Democrats are expected to help pass the legislation itself, which raises the debt ceiling through 2024, during a final vote expected around 8:30 p.m. But they might initially hold their members back to see what numbers Republicans are able to put up. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that “it’s our expectation that House Republicans will keep their promise and deliver at least 150 votes.”

The last-minute wrangling caps off a frenzied 24 hours to avoid several pitfalls in the Republican conference. McCarthy and his allies defanged an attempt to kill the debt bill in the Rules Committee on Tuesday, after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who kept Washington in suspense throughout the day, voted to advance the legislation out of the panel.

And McCarthy offered another carrot to potential holdouts on Wednesday morning, telling reporters that he would establish a “bipartisan commission” to look into the nation’s spending and debt that would be “looking long-term to solve this problem once and for all.”

The Californian faced fresh chatter Tuesday from a band of conservatives who floated trying to strip him of the speaker’s gavel over the bipartisan deal he cut with President Joe Biden. Such a move would be all but guaranteed to fail but would reopen wounds between the California Republican and his right flank that had mended since the contentious speaker’s race.

McCarthy and his allies are downplaying the chances that the threat, known as a motion to vacate, could actually result in booting the California Republican from the top office. McCarthy also made a swaggering pitch to his members during a closed-door hours-long conference meeting on Tuesday night, which several GOP lawmakers compared to a pep rally meant to drive up support for the agreement.

“If you think I failed you, I’m sorry,” McCarthy told Republicans. “But if you think I failed, I think you’re wrong.”

That pitch didn’t move his “no” votes into backing the bill. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said afterward that “the cheering doesn’t move me.” And Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), another “no” vote, added “I’m not voting to set the baseline spending at historic highs. I’m still a no.”

But notably, talk of removing McCarthy from the speakership had mostly muted after the closed-door powwow.

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who earlier had called for a vote to strip McCarthy of the gavel, left the meeting and refused to discuss the speaker’s future with reporters. “I’m not getting into that,” Roy, another of the bill’s most vocal opponents, said as he jumped into an elevator.

Other high-profile conservatives and members of the House Freedom Caucus also dismissed the possibility of trying to boot McCarthy from the speakership.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a former Freedom Caucus chair and McCarthy ally, called talk of ousting the speaker a “terrible idea.” And Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who is opposing the debt bill, said “we’re not talking about" trying to boot McCarthy. He also questioned if the immediate reaction to opposing a bill should be “‘uh oh, you didn’t like something. It’s the MTV,'" referring to the motion to vacate.

McCarthy’s team is pushing for an overwhelming Republican vote today for the deal he negotiated, knowing that the more GOP yeas he can put on the board, the more leadership can isolate the small crop of conservatives contemplating mutiny — strengthening McCarthy’s hand as he heads into new governing challenges, not to mention the 2024 elections.

And his allies are warning that they believe some of the bill’s most ardent opponents made a “strategic error” by coming out so strongly before a deal had even been reached. Those tensions and “raw feelings,” GOP negotiators warn, unnecessarily revived conference tensions.

“We have some relationship repair that needs to happen,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), the lead GOP negotiator said. “[Rep. Chip Roy] and I have talked about this a bit. We have discussed we’re going to need to sit down and talk … probably over several bottles of something.”