McCarthy does the right thing
When Kevin McCarthy voted to end the shutdown: How much does he really need to lose? What do I want to learn from six years in Congress?
A shallow man would always be the one who waited until the last moment to do the right thing. But in today’s Washington, the Republican Party usually doesn’t do the right thing at all, so the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, deserves some credit for putting his job on the line on Saturday to end the threat of a government shutdown.
Not a lot of credit. The deal he put together on Saturday (which he had opposed for weeks) only lasts for 45 days, after which Congress will still struggle to perform its most fundamental task of paying for a year’s worth of government operations. And there is no excuse for the damage this deal could do to Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, by leaving out the military aid that the Biden administration was planning to send.
The most extreme of the right-wing extremists, Matthew Gaetz of Florida, promised a vote this week on removing Mr. McCarthy as speaker because of the fact that he worked with Democrats. If Mr. McCarthy can survive that vote — and he will probably need the votes of a few Democrats to do so — the wrecking-ball caucus will have to slink into the shadows of defeat. No one would be more pleased with that outcome than the core of House Republicans, who are profoundly weary of being shouted down by the Matt Gaetzes of the world.
I was once in Congress and needed to grow up as well. The 1995 shutdown of the government was a part of the Republican Revolution. I voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998. I lost a U.S. Senate race that year, and there ended my first six years in Congress. I did some small things during those six years. On climate change, for example: Al Gore was for it, so I was against it. A little.
I returned to the practice of law after six years and watched the congress action from the audience’s perspective. I cringed when I realized the same mistakes I had made were made by other members.
