GOP Discontent That Helped Sink John Boehner Isn’t Easing Up
Speaker’s exit likely won’t mollify conservative lawmakers or presidential primary voters
(WSJ) – The tug-of-war within the Republican Party that helped end Rep. John Boehner’s career is likely to intensify this year both on Capitol Hill and in the tumultuous GOP presidential race.
The House speaker’s announcement Friday that he would leave Congress on Oct. 30 isn’t expected to mollify either the House’s most conservative faction, which is determined to take an unyielding stance in the face of fiscal deadlines, or dissatisfied GOP primary voters rooting for outsiders who have pledged to uproot Washington politics. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows political novices Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina leading the GOP race.
On Capitol Hill, tension is mounting between Republicans hoping to notch incremental progress in dealing with a Democratic president and hard-liners who say they would be willing to shutter the government. That struggle will play out both in House GOP leadership elections over the next few weeks and as lawmakers tackle several deadline-driven issues this winter, including a longer-term budget deal and the need to raise the federal borrowing limit, known as the debt ceiling.
Mr. Boehner’s resignation will ease the most pressing problem facing Congress: the expiration of the government’s current funding on Sept. 30. Lawmakers are expected this week to pass a stopgap spending bill keeping the government funded through Dec. 11.
He could also help his successor by pushing through other bills that could pass only with the help of Democrats, such as raising the debt ceiling or reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, moves that would be unpopular with some in the House GOP but seen as necessary by others. Mr. Boehner, who leaves office Oct. 30, indicated Sunday he might do so. “I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn,” he said on CBS . “I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there.”
Any issues left hanging after Mr. Boehner’s departure will pose an even greater problem for his successor, likely Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). The new speaker will take the gavel at a time when the most popular Republican presidential candidates are echoing the criticisms of congressional GOP leaders that poisoned Mr. Boehner’s reputation and strategy with many Republican voters.
“John Boehner’s season was coming to an end,” Ms. Fiorina said Sunday on NBC. “Republicans are quite frustrated, having worked very hard, to restore historic majorities to the House and a majority to the Senate, but there haven’t been a lot of results.”
The most militant House Republicans are expected to be emboldened by Mr. Boehner’s departure, and even less likely to agree to a compromise with Democrats in setting spending levels for the rest of fiscal year 2016. Republicans are already divided over whether to raise spending above caps set in a 2011 deficit-reduction deal.
Conservative objections to raising the debt ceiling may also trigger a standoff that could imperil the Treasury Department’s ability to pay its bills on time. Treasury has used emergency measures to avoid breaching the ceiling since the federal borrowing limit’s most recent suspension ended in mid-March. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said those steps would run out some time after late October.
“The whole veil of the theater that’s going on here in Washington, D.C., has been pulled back and people can see what’s going on, and they don’t like it,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), one of the lawmakers who sought to oust Mr. Boehner. The next speaker must not be “somebody who wants to do what John Boehner did, which is to see what the consensus of the lobbyists is and then move the legislation that would please them,” he said.
Those in the caucus who had defended Mr. Boehner believe a strategy of shutdowns and standoffs would only backfire. They argue an ineffective GOP-controlled Congress is less likely to convince voters to install a Republican in the White House in 2016.
“The charlatans who try to tell our Republican base that it’s easy and we can do all these things when we don’t have a [GOP] president and we don’t have a veto-proof majority in the House or Senate…they’re just delusional,” Rep. Steve Stivers (R., Ohio) said Sunday. “It’s just not realistic.”
Still, the rise of presidential candidates like Mr. Trump playing to disaffected GOP voters has left more mainstream Republicans concerned about the party’s strategy in Congress and its fate on the campaign trail.
The party’s soul-searching will be reflected in the competition to fill new House GOP leadership spots, the second such election in as many years. House Republicans said they need to take more time to coalesce around a strategy than last summer, when they elected new leaders nine days after then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost a primary election. Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) is pushing to have an extended special conference meeting so that GOP lawmakers can “avoid the sort of frantic rush to lock down votes” and instead sort out what they wanted to get accomplished.
Several issues remain unresolved. The Export-Import Bank, closed to new business since its charter expired at the end of June, may not be revived if Mr. Boehner doesn’t bring legislation opening the agency to the House floor before he leaves.
A bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers backs reauthorizing the bank, which helps support U.S. exporters, but many conservatives oppose it, saying the agency interferes with the free market. Notably, Mr. McCarthy had supported reauthorizing the bank in 2012 but came out against the bank last year after being elected leader.
Democrats said the pressures that helped push out Mr. Boehner could make Congress more dysfunctional.
“This is a party whose ideology is way out of touch with the American people,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. “Without Boehner, it may get even worse.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-discontent-that-helped-sink-john-boehner-isnt-easing-up-1443399225
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