The Republicans in the House are about to fulfil the primary reason for their victory: carrying out Donald Trump’s vengeance.
On Thursday, Trump’s aides will formally launch an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, something his followers have been demanding ever since the current president took office in the wake of Trump’s own double impeachment.
There are only three days left to achieve a funding deal that will keep the government open, and the first hearing is scheduled to begin today. Instead of working to find a solution, conservative Republicans in the House are leading the charge towards a shutdown that Trump ordered on Twitter because they believe it will hurt Biden, his possible general election opponent.
The destiny of the Republican House majority, gained by a razor’s edge in last year’s midterm elections, might be decided by the outcomes of these two showdowns and the return to power of Trump’s movement in the House.
The GOP has failed to provide evidence that the president gained any improper benefit from his son Hunter’s business transactions, despite the obvious conflict of interest that would exist in such a situation, undermining the seriousness of the House Oversight Committee beginning an impeachment inquiry.
In addition to proving they are unable to do even the most fundamental of their jobs—such as passing bills and governing—Republican leaders in the House have begun what should be a constitutional last-resort process that might unseat a president.
To the dismay of some Senate Republicans, a small but vocal group of members has refused to accept even a short-term funding package to keep the government open, demanding instead substantial expenditure cuts on top of those agreed to by Speaker Kevin McCarthy in an agreement with Biden earlier this year. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives after an invasion led by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised as a “genius.” However, some of Trump’s supporters want to cut off US help to the country. The 45-day funding extension and $6 billion for Ukraine included in the bipartisan Senate temporary plan has no chance of passing the House.
Disagreement on Capitol Hill is intertwined with a potential general election fight between Biden and Trump, which heated up this week when the two candidates travelled to Michigan to take advantage of a strike by autoworkers in an effort to win over voters in a key swing state. On Wednesday night, Trump gave a speech on the topic outside of Detroit in an effort to deflect attention away from the second Republican presidential debate in California, which he skipped since, according to his campaign, he already has a comfortable lead in the polls.
On Thursday, in the midst of the impeachment proceedings that Democrats see as a textbook example of GOP abuses of power, Vice President Biden will give a significant address on America’s under-pressure democracy in Arizona.
Two separate but related crises
The impeachment process and the current government shutdown standoff are two distinct problems with common roots.
Both stem from the Republican majority in the House blindly supporting Trump and allowing him to exploit the party to further his own agenda. Unless McCarthy and the rebels come to an unlikely agreement, Trump expects a shutdown to begin at midnight on Saturday. He believes Biden, rather than the GOP majority, would take the responsibility. And the impeachment drive, advocated by Trump acolytes nearly from Biden’s first day in office, seems at least partially to be payback for Trump’s impeachments and an attempt to divert from his four looming criminal trials by trying to destroy Biden as his reelection campaign heats up.
Each crisis also exemplifies the precarious balance of power that ultimately gave the Republicans control of the House. Voters sent a message in November by denying the GOP a red wave, showing they are uneasy with Trump’s extreme party regaining control of Congress. But ironically, the small House majority has provided more power to the most conservative Republicans. McCarthy needs only four defections to approve legislation along party lines.
As a result, McCarthy is now an ineffectual leader within his party because of his bad speaking ability. For example, he has been unsuccessful in passing a defence budget measure, which is generally a routine task members are eager to complete, and he has failed to pass even a short-term law to keep the government operating temporarily. McCarthy has made a series of compromises to the far right of his conference because his power base is so precarious. As a result, his ability to make decisions is severely constrained by the persistent threat of an impeachment vote.
As a result, impeachment becomes an option. There was widespread speculation that starting the investigation was McCarthy’s method of appeasing his party’s hardliners and buying more time to resolve the funding impasse that threatens to shut down the government. If that was the goal, it was completely unsuccessful. Some Republicans in the House have said that they will not support a temporary spending extension that is likely to come from the Senate. While some are fine with approving a temporary measure, others are concerned that doing so will hurt their chances of passing a long-term package with huge spending cuts that would nullify McCarthy’s agreement with Biden earlier this year.
McCarthy will have no choice but to face his inevitable doom.
Eventually, McCarthy will be forced by the impeachment drama and the shutdown crunch to take a high-risk tactic he is reluctant to take: he will have to confront the far right in a clash that would put the speakership, a post he has sought for years, in jeopardy.
If direct evidence of Biden’s profiting from his son’s apparent conflict of interest and alleged influence peddling in Ukraine and China is uncovered during the impeachment inquiry, McCarthy may be exonerated. But there isn’t much evidence to build an impeachment case on at this point. McCarthy is in a precarious position, therefore it’s hard to imagine him calling off the impeachment investigation due to a lack of evidence.
When it comes to spending, McCarthy still doesn’t have the support he needs to prevent a shutdown. He may need the drama of such a conclusion, with blame being cast on his majority, to get his conference to rally around a solution. At the last minute, he is trying to divide his party’s hardliners by including cash for border security in a short-term fiscal fix. “I don’t understand somebody would want to stand with President Biden keeping an open border and not keep government open,” the speaker remarked on Wednesday. The Californian has also discussed the negative effects of shutdowns on Republicans in recent days. His most defiant followers, though, don’t appear to be paying attention.
An baseless impeachment might also have long-term consequences for the Republicans. Despite the hardline wing’s influence, the Republican Party was able to win a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections by winning back districts that had previously been won by the Democratic Party. The Republicans risk losing their majority in November 2024 if they fail to win over those votes. Because of this, several moderate Republicans have reportedly considered joining Democrats in calling for their own short-term financing rescue proposal. This helps to clarify why Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), one of the GOP’s moderates and hence a potential target, this week referred to his own party as a “clown show.”
The decision to split with a speaker who is well-liked by the group’s majority is one thing; actually doing so is quite another. It’s highly likely that rebellious Republicans would try to wrest the speakership away from McCarthy if a bipartisan plan to prevent a shutdown was proposed.
Democrats are acting as if a shutdown is inevitable in order to further their narrative that Republicans have abandoned voter priorities in order to placate Trump and are thus unfit to rule.
“We began the 118th Congress in chaos and we are still in chaos,” Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts told AWN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday. While in San Francisco, Biden told reporters that he was still holding out hope that a shutdown could be avoided. However, by warning that crucial science and healthcare activities, including as cancer research, may be jeopardised if government agencies ran out of funds, he effectively set the stage for a blame game. “So the American people need our Republican friends in the House of Representatives to do their job and fund the government,” he stated.
A prolonged shutdown of the government would have more dire consequences. Military personnel may go unpaid, and air traffic controllers, border patrol agents, and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers at security checkpoints may also be forced to work without pay. While the economy has recovered from the sequence of shocks caused by the pandemic, the benefits have not yet been seen by all Americans. A prolonged standoff could harm this recovery.
There is, however, one Republican-favored aspect of government that will continue unabated. On Wednesday, the House Administration Committee stated impeachments would continue uninterrupted because of their “essential” nature.
