McCarthy gains strength from debt ceiling fight.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is no longer the underrated quarterback of the House of Representatives.

Despite being drafted in the 15th round and persistently ignored by President Joe Biden, the dogged Californian succeeded in compelling the president to negotiate, standing firm on red-line issues, and moving a debt ceiling bill through Congress despite holding a razor-thin majority.

With the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, McCarthy, 58, emerged as a skilled strategist and consensus builder who can leverage small wins into major legislative achievements.

Just weeks before, he was fighting for his political life.

The Election of a House Speaker

The election of a House speaker is usually a perfunctory matter. When there is no incumbent, the majority conference leader is considered a shoo-in. That wasn’t the case for McCarthy.

His election dragged on over five days and 15 ballots because of a challenge by far-right conservatives within his own party.

In the end, McCarthy won by making concessions to the holdouts, including a rule change that allows any member to call for a vote to vacate the chair.

The First Test

Barely a week after McCarthy ascended the rostrum, the Treasury secretary announced that the country would soon reach its statutory debt ceiling. Without congressional action, a financial crisis was about four months away.

McCarthy immediately said that Congress would not increase the debt without spending cuts, and that he would not agree to raise taxes. The speaker called on the president to negotiate terms for raising the borrowing limit.

After an initial conversation on Feb. 1, Biden, perhaps sensing political weakness, refused to meet with the speaker for 97 days. McCarthy asked for a meeting. He complained in the press. He wrote a letter to Biden. He even offered to meet for lunch and bring “soft food.” Still, Biden refused to meet.

Small Wins

Through late winter and early spring, McCarthy assembled a string of legislative victories. None was groundbreaking in its own right, but the growing list of small wins proved he could both manage his own conference and challenge the president.

• The Parents Bill of Rights, passed by the House on March 24, aimed at strengthening parental rights in education.
• The House nullified a controversial revision of the Washington, D.C., criminal code on April 19, over the threat of a presidential veto. The Senate followed suit, and the president signed the legislation.
• The Secure the Border Act of 2023, passed by the House on May 11, aimed at beefing up border security ahead of the expiration of pandemic-related provisions.

The Game Changer

McCarthy then scored a victory that dramatically changed the dynamics of the debt ceiling fight. By a single vote, House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act on April 26. The bill included a modest increase in the debt ceiling, along with a host of Republican demands for spending cuts, work requirements, permitting reforms, and clawbacks of unspent COVID-19 relief funds.

And with that, McCarthy achieved what few thought possible. He united House Republicans behind a debt limit and spending package, placing pressure on Biden to come to terms.

Five days later, Biden invited McCarthy to discuss spending cuts.

“President Biden didn’t dream in a million years, after the difficult race for speaker that we saw in January, that Speaker McCarthy would be able to unify Republicans in the House of Representatives and actually pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on June 1.

“And I think President Biden was shocked that he was able to get that done … it changed the whole dynamics of this negotiation.”

More impressive was McCarthy’s emergence as a leader beyond the House chamber, according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“I can’t remember the last time that the Senate Republicans agreed as a group that their negotiator would be the speaker of the House,” Gingrich told The Epoch Times. “[Sen. Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.], the Senate Republican leader, was very clear that McCarthy had won the vote in the House and had earned the right to negotiate.”

Those negotiations ended in a compromise, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support.

More Unified

McCarthy still has detractors on his right flank. Some have complained that he gave away hard-won provisions of the Limit, Save, Grow Act too easily to clinch a deal. Some have hinted th