The Hill’s Morning Report — As promised, McCarthy got the votes

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 04/27/23 6:20 AM ET

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Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) passed the first major test of his Speakership on Wednesday as the House narrowly approved a sweeping plan to raise the nation’s borrowing authority and cut spending.

The bill called the Limit, Save, Grow Act cleared the chamber 217-215. Republican Reps. Ken Buck (Colo.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Tim Burchett (Tenn.) voted with every voting Democrat in opposition, The Hill’s Aris Folley and Mychael Schnell report. Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) missed the vote. Watson Coleman’s office said she had a family medical emergency. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), who was released from the hospital over the weekend following cancer treatments, made the roll call.

The vote came hours after Republican leaders made a handful of last-minute, late-night changes to the text to ensure support from several lawmakers in their conference whose potential no votes threatened to sink the bill in the chamber’s narrow majority.

“It takes a lot of work when you have that slimmer majority,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), chair of the Republican Study Committee, told The Hill Wednesday. “You have to manage the questions, you have to manage the expectations of members that may have a concern, how that’s gonna impact them back home or what they have an issue with personally.”

The GOP measure, a pry bar to try to compel the president to negotiate with the opposing party, will be blocked by Senate Democrats and has no chance of becoming law. The GOP measure proposes to cut federal spending by nearly 14 percent over a decade and lift the cap on borrowing by $1.5 trillion through March, which envisions the partisan drama rewinding in the midst of the presidential election year (The New York Times). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday called it “an extremist hard-right agenda.”

The Washington Post: Here’s what’s in the House GOP bill to raise debt limit, cut spending.

President Biden has demanded that Republicans increase the nation’s borrowing limit with no conditions and has threatened to veto the House measure if it ever reached his desk.

The nation’s borrowing authority will be exhausted as soon as the summer without action by Congress, threatening default on U.S. obligations lawmakers previously approved and posing dire economic consequences if that results.

Biden told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, “I’m happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable” (Bloomberg News).

The final version of the legislation included several changes made overnight by House GOP leadership as they bowed to Iowa Republicans upset over the elimination of biofuel tax credits, and conservatives who wanted to tie tougher work requirements to public assistance programs. After insisting for days there would be no substantive changes to the 320-page document before it came to the floor, party leaders made 11th-hour concessions to appease members of the often-fractious conference.

Though the Speaker and GOP leadership were able to satisfy their conservative wing Wednesday, the road to passage was rocky, and it’s unclear if House Republicans can maintain even that level of unity through the next stage of the fight — dealmaking with Democrats (Politico). Still, McCarthy — who had predicted for days, despite the odds, that he had enough votes to pass the bill — remained optimistic on Wednesday.

“The president can no longer ignore by not negotiating,” he told reporters following the vote. “Sen. Schumer, if he thinks he’s got a plan, put it on the floor, see if you can pass it, and then we can go to conference. But now, the president can no longer put this economy in jeopardy.”

▪ The Hill: Last to vote on the contentious measure was embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) Just hours before, he’d pledged not to support the bill, but he eventually changed course.

▪ The New York Times: With GOP votes at a premium, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) leveraged hers to get unrelated concessions.

▪ Politico: Why the Senate isn’t jumping at the opportunity to rescue the debt crisis.

▪ The Hill: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says it’s up to Biden and McCarthy to resolve the debt limit impasse.

The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Mike Lillis have rounded up five key takeaways from Wednesday’s vote, as the ball is now firmly in Biden’s court when it comes to debt limit negotiations, and more challenges loom on the horizon.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) prolonged hold on the promotions of Pentagon officials in order to protest the Defense Department’s abortion policy rattles fellow Republicans.

▪ PBS: Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced legislation that would put armed guards in every U.S. school, funded with $80 billion in proposed reprogramming of IRS appropriations.

▪ The Hill: Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced a bill to require the Supreme Court to create a new code of conduct.

▪ The Hill: Here’s how Washington is racing to get a grasp on AI technology. And as Punchbowl News reported, McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) hosted a Wednesday briefing for members led by MIT experts in AI. MIT runs an AI program for military officers, and McCarthy asked them to develop a course to educate lawmakers.

▪ The Hill: Senate votes to overturn Biden truck pollution limit.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ POLITICS

Disney World on Wednesday filed a First Amendment lawsuit in federal court against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and a five-member board that oversees government services at the theme park in Orlando, claiming “a targeted campaign of government retaliation” (The Hill and The New York Times).

In an extraordinary turn of events, one of the largest private companies (as measured by employees in Florida) went on offense in court against a governor who says, while mulling a 2024 presidential race, that his autocratic leadership style in the Sunshine State gets results and could be a model for the nation.

NBC News: DeSantis plans to announce a presidential campaign exploratory committee as soon as mid-May.

The lawsuit spawned business-news headlines and is seen as a test of political wills in a feud that began with what Disney argues was the company’s free speech right to criticize legislation DeSantis backed and the state legislature enacted as the Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The statute initially prohibited classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for students through the third grade and is now expanded through grade 12.

DeSantis and his team have taken steps to punish Disney by seeking to wrest control of its central Florida autonomy, granted by the state under previous agreements, that granted the company special self-governing powers for its 25,000-acre tourist resort and its ongoing development.

Disney’s lawsuit, filed in Tallahassee, accuses the governor of a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint.” The campaign, the complaint added, “now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region and violates its constitutional rights.” The suit was assigned to Chief Judge for the Northern District of Florida Mark Walker, appointed by former President Obama, who has experience with First Amendment cases, the Times reports.

The Hill: Pressure mounts on DeSantis to get tougher against former President Trump, who has officially been running for the White House since November.

At the White House, where the president is a candidate, he acknowledged that voters next year will weigh whether an incumbent who would be 86 at the end of his second term is too old for the job.

Speaking to reporters at a joint press conference with the president of South Korea, Biden said Wednesday that he expects voters to evaluate his age, as he did before launching his campaign on Tuesday. Voters, he said in the Rose Garden, are “going to see a race, and they’re going to judge whether or not I have it or don’t have it.”

“I respect them taking a hard look at it. I took a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run,” he added (The Washington Post).

▪ The Hill: GOP candidates in (or thinking about getting in) the 2024 presidential race have clashed over Ukraine and its U.S.-backed war with Russia.

▪ The Hill: Democratic Senate incumbents who are seeking reelection next year in states Trump won are increasingly willing to buck Biden and fellow Democrats on select policies the president touts as achievements.

More 2024 watch: Five ways Biden’s reelection bid will differ from his 2020 campaign (The Hill). … Biden has a strategy to repair Vice President Harris’ image (Axios). Vice presidents are rarely decisive in reelection efforts. Harris is poised to be an exception (The Associated Press). … Federal special Counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating whether Trump was involved in trying to overturn 2020 election results, has expressed interest in audio tapes recorded by a former Fox News producer who is suing the network, according to her lawyer (CNN). … As part of the Jan. 6 investigation, a federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected Trump’s attempt to block former Vice President Pence from testifying before a federal grand jury. Trump has not said if he’ll appeal to the Supreme Court (NBC News). … GOP megadonor Peter Thiel, who previously backed Trump before breaking with him, will not fund candidates in 2024, he told associates (Reuters). … A PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that public support for abortion rights has increased since June, when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court (PBS). … Trump has a 32-point lead over DeSantis in a hypothetical matchup in a recent Fox News poll (The Hill).

➤ ADMINISTRATION

Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who met Wednesday at the White House during an official state visit, agreed the U.S. will deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in decades — part of a new agreement to defend Seoul against rising nuclear threats from North Korea.

The plan to dock the ballistic missile submarines in South Korea, which hasn’t happened since the 1980s, makes “more visible” the deterrence against Kim Jong Un’s regime, officials said, and gives the U.S. a leading role should there be a nuclear attack by Pyongyang (NBC News).

Ahead of Yoon’s visit, the U.S. asked South Korea to urge its chipmakers not to fill any market gap in China if Beijing bans memory chipmaker Micron Technology from selling chips (Reuters and Financial Times).

Biden and Yoon released a “Washington declaration,” including a commitment from South Korea not to develop its own nuclear weapons (Financial Times).

Speaking in the Rose Garden with Yoon, Biden said the U.S.-South Korea mutual defense treaty is “ironclad.” Biden said any North Korean nuclear attack against the U.S. or its allies would result in “the end” of the regime in Pyongyang.

Yoon welcomed the creation of a new bilateral nuclear consultative group, saying that in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the two countries had agreed “to respond swiftly, overwhelmingly and decisively using the full force of the alliance, including the United States’s nuclear weapons.”

⚖️ The Department of Justice, in a brief filed Wednesday, asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a Texas judge’s abortion pill ruling affecting mifepristone and its approval by the Food and Drug Administration decades ago (The Hill).

Separately, the Justice Department today will urge a judge to keep behind bars Jack Teixeira, 21, a Massachusetts Air National guardsman accused of leaking highly classified military documents, arguing he may still have access to secret national defense information he could expose. “The damage the Defendant has already caused to the U.S. national security is immense. The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary,” the government wrote (The Associated Press).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by phone Wednesday — the first known contact between the two leaders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Xi said he would dispatch an envoy to Kyiv to discuss a possible “political settlement” (CBS News). Zelensky said he “had a long and meaningful phone call” with Xi, while Chinese state news media said the two leaders had discussed “the Ukraine crisis” and their countries’ bilateral relationship (CNN).

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres today will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, The Hill’s Tobias Burns reports. Guterres on Wednesday met with U.S. lawmakers, just a day after he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at U.N. headquarters, touching upon the subjects of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the SWIFT banking system and Russian objectives for the war. The conversations could represent a pivotal moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine — revealing whether the conflict is set to continue or whether there could be a pathway to peace.

▪ The Hill: China tries to act as mediator in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

▪ ABC News: Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has urged for accelerating negotiations leading to Ukraine’s access to the European Union.

▪ Reuters: Russia digs in as Ukraine prepares to attack.

▪ The Associated Press: Pope Francis allows women to vote at upcoming bishops’ meeting.

Russian private military company Wagner Group is looking to insert itself into the ongoing conflict in Sudan as part of its expanding operations across Africa that experts say are helping to fund its bloody role in Ukraine. The founder of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, seeks to wedge Wagner into the fight for control of Sudan, offering weapons to the warring paramilitaries and looking to exploit the connections to the gain of Moscow, writes The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell. The moves have alarmed the United States and its allies, who are watching the situation unfold with trepidation.

“We do have deep concern about the engagement of the Prigozhin group, the Wagner Group, in Sudan,” Blinken told reporters Monday. “It’s in so many different countries in Africa — an element that, when it’s engaged, simply brings more death and destruction with it.”

Several U.N. agencies and international aid groups issued a series of dire warnings this week as the humanitarian situation in Sudan worsened amid 11 days of fighting between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). More than 450 people have been killed and at least 4,072 people have been injured since the conflict broke out. Hospitals have closed and aid agencies have scaled back operations, leading to supply shortages across the country. Thousands have fled Sudan for neighboring countries, while foreign embassies have been evacuated, leaving locals behind. Several attempted cease-fires — the most recent of which, set for 72 hours, was brokered in part by the U.S. — have not held (Axios and the South China Morning Post).

“Sudanese people are staring into the abyss,” Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency (OCHA), told reporters Tuesday.

▪ The Washington Post: Americans and other foreigners struggle to flee Sudan amid fierce fighting.

▪ Politico: U.S. planning to send a consular team to Sudan to assist fleeing Americans.

▪ Reuters: U.S. confirms second American death in Sudan, seeks extended cease-fire.

▪ CNN: How the West enabled Sudan’s warring generals.

OPINION

■ McCarthy’s success comes at a price, by Jonathan Bernstein, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/41LroFG

■ The human cost of McCarthy’s debt ceiling demands would be catastrophic, by Karen Dolan, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3LzwvTy

WHERE AND WHEN

📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will convene at 9 a.m.

The Senate meets at 10 a.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. On the South Lawn at 12:15 p.m., Biden will participate in Take Your Child to Work Day. At 6:45 p.m., he will headline a virtual call with political supporters.

Vice President Harris will preside at 11 a.m. over a joint meeting of Congress during an address by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (The Washington Post). She and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at 1:20 p.m. will co-host a luncheon for Yoon and his wife at the State Department. Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff at 6:45 p.m. will make a virtual call to grassroots supporters tied to the 2024 election.

Blinken, in addition to lunch with Yoon, will meet at 9 a.m. at the State Department with U.N. Secretary-General Guterres.

Economic indicators: The Bureau of Economic Analysis at 8:30 a.m. will release an advance estimate of gross domestic product in the first quarter. Separately, the Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report on claims for unemployment benefits filed in the week ending April 22.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:45 p.m.

ELSEWHERE

➤ BUSINESS

Norfolk Southern revealed its first-quarter earnings Wednesday, where it disclosed it expects February’s Ohio train derailment to cost it $387 million, The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom reports. But the total will likely increase over time and doesn’t reflect how much the railroad’s insurance companies will eventually cover. The $387 million estimate includes the $30.9 million to help residents and the community around East Palestine recover from the derailment. The company spent millions more on the cleanup at the site where it has dug up and removed nearly 39,000 tons of contaminated soil and trucked away another 14.8 million gallons of tainted water.

▪ Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal: The U.K. blocks Microsoft’s $75 billion Activision deal.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Banking problems may be the tip of the debt iceberg.

The cost of household goods and utilities is cutting into Americans budgets and creating further housing strife for many while the average tenant is already rent burdened. As The Hill’s Adam Barnes reports, although inflation cooled annually in March, prices remain stubbornly high. Annual food prices increased by 8.5 percent, but they were down from 10.2 percent in February. Even so, consumer confidence reached a nine-month low this week amid fears of a looming recession, which the Fed says is likely given recent troubles in the banking sector.

▪ The Hill: These are the cheapest states in which to buy a house.

▪ UPI: Surge in new home sales attributed to availability, not consumer confidence.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Midwest cities led WSJ/Realtor.com housing index in first quarter.

▪ CBS News: Should you rent or buy? High home prices, mortgage rates challenge the American dream of homeownership.

THE CLOSER

Take Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by a legendary singer, actor, entertainer and long-time activist who died this week in New York at 96, we’re eager for some smart guesses about Harry Belafonte.

Be sure to email your responses to asimendinger@digital-staging.thehill.com and kkarisch@digital-staging.thehill.com — please add “Quiz” to your subject line. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

Which award did Belafonte NOT receive?

Emmy
Grammy
Kennedy Center Honor
Presidential Medal of Freedom

What was the title of Belafonte’s album that stayed at the top of the Billboard chart for 31 weeks in 1956?

“Sailing”
“Exodus”
“Calypso”
“Love is the Thing”

In what state did a member of the legislature introduce a bill to fine any theater showing the 1957 film “Island in the Sun,” starring Belafonte, because of a chaste romance between his character and a white woman played by Joan Fontaine?

Mississippi
Ohio
South Carolina
Arkansas

A lifelong political organizer and activist for civil rights and other causes, Belafonte never considered running for elective office himself.

True
False

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