Kevin McCarthy made his first trip overseas as Speaker of the House, leading a 17-member congressional delegation to Israel to meet with its leaders. He addressed the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. He spoke the words that U.S. leaders typically speak in Israel, saying things like, “America cherishes our unbreakable bond with Israel, whom we are grateful to call a close friend and ally.”
The California Republican even made headlines by doing a 180 and pledging to support Ukraine in its struggle against the Russian invaders. When a Russian reporter asked him about his support for Ukraine, he said, “I support aid for Ukraine” and went further, adding, “I think you should pull out. And I don’t think it’s right. And we will continue to support [Ukraine] because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.”
Admittedly, he also tried to stir the pot a little in the U.S. relationship with Israel. While President Joe Biden has pointedly not invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit him in Washington as a way of expressing displeasure with Netanyahu’s anti-democratic policy stands and his cabinet full of extremists, McCarthy sought to present himself as closer to the Israeli leader by suggesting, “The Prime Minister should come and meet with members of Congress.” But even that move could be seen as just another Republican demonstrating their party’s now-core commitment to authoritarianism.
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In fact, if we are being honest about it, McCarthy more or less behaved as U.S. leaders do when overseas—and certainly we must be grateful he finally said the right thing about Ukraine. Let’s give him credit for that. (OK, not a lot of credit. After all, he was late on this, his prior statements did damage, and he never had the votes to block U.S. aid to Ukraine in the first place.)
But, for a moment there, he seemed to actually care about U.S. national security.
And then, McCarthy came back to the U.S. and once again established himself as the single biggest immediate threat that exists anywhere in the world to America’s national well-being—a threat that now looms just days away, perhaps by June 1 according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
If he follows through on his initiative to force the U.S. to default on its debts unless he gets his way on the budget, he will trigger a catastrophe that will imperil the U.S. and our allies as no overseas foe could ever dream of doing.
But for all his posing like a statesman on his recent trip to Israel, and in his meetings with the Taiwanese president at the beginning of April, McCarthy’s demands that the ability to pay America’s already incurred debts be held hostage to a radical agenda of cuts—that will harm Americans including many of our most vulnerable—must have the likes of Vladimir Putin salivating.
That’s because the first default in U.S. history would, in an instant, irreparably and irreversibly damage America’s standing in the world, our ability to borrow funds in the future, the position of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, our economy, the economy of our allies, and our ability to pay for vital national security needs… such as the support of Ukraine. (In February, former defense secretaries Hagel and Panetta warned that “Debt-ceiling brinksmanship weakens U.S. national security.”
Were his threats carried to their dangerous extreme, McCarthy would strike a greater blow against American leadership than any foreign enemy has ever been able to achieve. He would, in direct violation of his constitutional obligations, obliterate the full faith and credit of the United States.
Admittedly, McCarthy has probably not thought this through. He is, in the best of times, an intellectual feather in the wind who is used to changing directions to suit the prevailing winds in the Republican Party. His strategic thinking extends as far as the next political poll or social media post from his party’s leader, Donald Trump. Further, he knows that without the nutcase wing of his party, he would not be in office, so he is predisposed to follow their advice even when it is grotesquely ill-considered and offensive to fundamental American values as it often is.
Perhaps he sees this as a negotiating strategy. Some in the press have characterized it as just another “partisan showdown.” They’re not helping matters by validating the extremist GOP argument that this is political fair play, Washington being Washington.
That is wrong, of course. The GOP backed three increases in the debt limit under Trump without so much as a peep. But this is not just hypocritical. To call it a standoff is to suggest that somehow a terrorist who takes hostages and his victims are in a standoff.
President Biden is rightly arguing that these kinds of games of chicken are irresponsible and that he will not negotiate concerning that which the Constitution obligates him to do. Biden is fully prepared to have a reasonable negotiation about the budget afterwards and that is exactly what we can expect him to underscore in his scheduled meeting with McCarthy and other GOP leaders on May 9.
Hopefully, Weathervane McCarthy will begin to point in a different direction when he sees that the preponderance of domestic and global opinion is against him. That is, after all, what he seemed to do in acknowledging America’s need to support Ukraine. and in resisting making inflammatory statements in his meetings with Taiwanese President Tsai.
But until he does, McCarthy and his strategy pose a grave threat, one that will shortly begin to reverberate through the markets, destroying the savings of Americans, and rattling the confidence of the world.
It should be added that the cuts he is demanding would also have a devastating impact—including cutting 81,000 jobs in the Veterans Administration, and dramatically reducing our ability to care for former members of our armed services when they need help the most.
Of course, what also hangs in the balance is how history will view McCarthy. Will he be viewed as one of the least effective Speakers of the modern era (what many view as the best-case scenario)…or something much more dangerous and destructive?
His words can mislead, as recent erratic behavior demonstrates. So, our only metric can and must be his actions in the critical weeks ahead.
