The House GOP Is Getting Played by Democrats

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

 

House Republicans appear to need regular reminders that their party’s control of the levers of government in Washington is limited to one legislative chamber. The leverage that tenuous control provides is constrained by political realities that are neither a secret nor particularly inscrutable. Nevertheless, having only recently reconstituted itself amid a three-week internecine squabble over nothing in particular, the House GOP seems inclined once again to attempt to do something broadly unpopular and succeed only in broadcasting its unyielding commitment to its own unpopularity in the process.

 

The Biden White House and the Democrats in control of the Senate knew what they were doing when they proposed a package of aid to two American partners abroad with whom the U.S. is not formally aligned, but whom it nonetheless supports in their efforts to repel invasions by hostile neighboring powers. Democrats called for coupling aid to Israel with aid to Ukraine in one package not because these issues couldn’t be broken up but because it would set Republicans against one another. And the GOP seems eager to play this game on the Democrats’ terms.

 

For his part, newly minted speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t endorsed the hostility toward the Ukrainian cause evinced by a handful of his loudest colleagues. Indeed, he told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity that the U.S. “can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine, because I don’t believe it would stop there.” That sentiment is shared by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “I can guarantee that without our support Putin will be successful,” Austin said before a Senate panel on Tuesday. “And, you know, there’s no question in my mind that sooner or later, he will challenge NATO and we’ll find ourselves in a shooting match.”

 

But Johnson is nonetheless committed to decoupling the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan funding that the White House is seeking to secure in a single package. Johnson has proposed $14.5 billion for Israel to be offset by an effort to pare back funding for the IRS’s proposed expansion. Democratic partisans in the press are fit to be tied over Johnson’s plan. They are pounding the table, insisting that the GOP is trying to shield tax cheats from the consequences of their actions and robbing lower-income Americans of access to new IRS services like a free online income-tax portal.

 

The Democrats’ defense of one of the least liked, most inefficient law-enforcement agencies in the federal government serves only to energize their base voters and strengthen the efficacy of using Johnson’s name in the party’s fundraising solicitations. But Republicans are playing along — unnecessarily so because, assuming it can pass in the House, the Johnson plan is unlikely to get to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Even if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer were somehow convinced to allow a vote on the Republican proposal, Joe Biden has promised to veto standalone funding for Israel. And, because of the downward pressure it would put on the collection of tax revenues, Johnson’s scheme for offsetting the Israel aid wouldn’t even work, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

 

Maybe Republicans have convinced themselves that they could capture the high ground in a debate over funding Israel’s defense, but Democrats don’t seem especially deterred. “The House GOP bill is woefully inadequate and has the hard right’s fingerprints all over it,” Schumer insisted. “It makes aid for Israel, who has just faced the worst terrorist attack in its history, contingent on poison pills that reward rich tax cheats.” And while the GOP’s plan has united the Democrats in opposition, it has fractured the Republican Party — as the Biden White House surely anticipated it would.

 

Critics of the West’s support for Ukraine’s defense against a barbaric Russian invasion consistently highlight voters’ waning enthusiasm for the enterprise as measured in public polls, but the polling also clearly demonstrates that cutting Ukraine off is far less popular than continuing to support it. Voters want to fund Ukraine’s defense. Voters want to fund Israel’s defense. They would probably appreciate an effort to shore up Taiwan’s sovereignty, too. The president’s proposal is a flawed document, replete with smoke screens designed to cover up its liberal priorities. The House GOP is obliged to expose the Biden White House’s efforts to bait and switch the Congress and tailor Biden’s proposal in ways that compel Democrats to abandon their gimmicks. Indeed, that was something Kevin McCarthy was quite good at. In contrast, the Johnson-led House GOP is presently on a trajectory toward a stalemate with the Democrat-led Senate and White House, a stalemate that poses a variety of political risks.

 

The world is an increasingly unstable place. The international threat environment has deteriorated precipitously under Joe Biden. Republicans are obligated to point that out and present themselves as a serious, sober alternative to a government that has presided over the loss of Afghanistan, a hot war on the European continent, the Iran-led conflict in the Middle East, and a border crisis that is set to become a national-security crisis in short order. Instead, the Republican-led House is allowing itself to be played like a fiddle by Democrats, committing itself to doomed stands on indefensible terrain, and providing the press with evidence to further the narrative that the GOP is hopelessly unserious.