The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Your Big Four meeting cheat sheet

Dermer says Israel needs aid package “yesterday”

McCaul threatens to hold Blinken in contempt over Afghanistan files

Wyden calls for GOP clarity on tax bill demands

Punchbowl News launches new internship program

THE TOP

Your Big Four meeting cheat sheet

Happy Tuesday morning.

There are just four days until a partial government shutdown, and there’s still no agreement yet on the FY 2024 spending bills. The House is out of session until Wednesday. The Senate came back to town last night. And President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are meeting with the “Big Four” congressional leaders this morning at the White House.

This group — Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, plus Biden and Harris — represents the key decision-making nucleus of the federal government. It’s on them to avert a full or partial government shutdown that no one wants or needs.

Biden, Schumer, McConnell and even Jeffries have been in this position before. Johnson, of course, hasn’t. It doesn’t matter much that Johnson and Biden don’t have a relationship. At this stage, averting a shutdown will be a matter of political fortitude rather than being steeped in Washington deal-making experience.

Let’s start with the basics. It’s Tuesday and we still haven’t seen any paper outlining the four-bill spending package that needs to pass by Friday at midnight. Any legislation must be released today in order for House Republican leadership to adhere to its three-day rule and still avert a shutdown Friday at midnight without passing a CR. Although a short-term stopgap bill looks more likely with each passing moment.

Hardline House GOP conservatives want to pass a full-year CR and they’re putting a lot of pressure on Johnson. Under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, federal spending is slashed if all 12 appropriations bills aren’t signed into law by the end of April. Furthermore, conservatives feel as if Johnson’s House Republican Conference is whiffing at every opportunity for policy wins. Read this thread from Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) to get a sense of how hardliners feel.

So while there are no major disagreements on policy that would traditionally lead to a shutdown, there’s a nagging feeling in the House GOP that Johnson hasn’t fought hard enough.

Schumer and McConnell. While far apart ideologically, the two Senate leaders are aligned here. They both want to keep the government open, and nearly five months into FY 2024, they want to bring this glacially slow spending fight to a close.

On the Senate floor, McConnell said Hill leaders need to “row in the same direction — toward clean appropriations and away from poison pills.” That’s as close to prodding Johnson as the Senate GOP leader will get in public. Others were more blunt.

“It’s just a misery march,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), an appropriator, lamented. “We ought to do our job and pass our bills… I can’t figure them out over there.”

Johnson. The Louisiana Republican is playing out a horrible hand that’s not entirely of his making. He has a 219-seat majority with a group of roughly 100-110 lawmakers who want to govern in a traditional manner.

Johnson has never been part of a high-stakes negotiation. He’s drawn illogical lines in the sand — no more CRs — and then had to back down. He’s refused to take positions on big issues. Other top House Republicans are growing tired of him and have no faith in his leadership.

But we’re beginning to see Johnson edge closer to reality. He told House Republicans on a conference call Friday that the compromise he’s negotiating with the rest of the Big Four doesn’t include any major policy wins for the GOP. That’s true.

Johnson’s staff is quite perturbed that they’re already getting the blame in advance of a shutdown. They note that Democrats are demanding policy changes and additional money for their programs as well. Yet Johnson has close to zero leverage here. His House Republican Conference cannot pass a single thing without Democratic help.

Johnson is going to have a choice to make soon. He can put the compromise bill or package on the floor and pass it with Democratic votes under suspension of the rules, a move that could cost him his job. He can pass another stopgap bill to avert a shutdown. Or Johnson can allow the government to shut down, which also may cost him his job.

Jeffries. The New York Democrat is in no mood to bail Johnson out. Jeffries understands that he holds a lot of cards right now because the vast majority of his House Democratic Caucus is going to vote for any funding package.

So there’s no reason for Jeffries to give Johnson anything at all. All Jeffries has to do is wait for the negotiated package to surface and voice support for it.

Biden. Sagging in the polls with his political future murky as ever, Biden would be the clear winner of a funding lapse. Biden is trying to make the case that Republicans, with former President Donald Trump as their likely nominee, can’t govern. A shutdown would help that case.

Remember this: The funding deadline this week is the easy one. Thanks to Johnson, the March 8 deadline includes Defense, Homeland Security and Labor-HHS — roughly 75% of federal spending. That’s the real test.

— Jake Sherman, Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan

Mark your calendars! On Tuesday, March 5 at 9 a.m. ET, Punchbowl News founder and CEO Anna Palmer will interview Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.). They’ll dive into news of the day and how private equity supports small business and jobs in Georgia. This conversation is the first event in a two-part series, Investing in Your Community. RSVP here.

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

Dermer says Israel needs aid package “yesterday”

Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer is a well-known figure in Washington. He served as Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2013 through 2021, weathering the split over the Iran nuclear deal and rising to new heights of influence during the Trump era.

Dermer is now back in Jerusalem, serving as a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet. His ministerial portfolio includes managing the relationship with the Biden administration and Congress.

We spoke to Dermer for roughly 30 minutes Monday about Congress’s inability – or unwillingness – to send Israel aid nearly five months into a brutal war with Hamas in Gaza. We touched on everything from Speaker Mike Johnson to why Dermer thinks Israel needs the aid to rising skepticism about Israel on Capitol Hill due to humanitarian concerns over massive Palestinian casualties in Gaza.

We’ll post the entire conversation as a special edition podcast at 9 a.m. Get The Daily Punch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Here are a few bites from our very long conversation with Dermer.

How critical is the need for U.S. aid to Israel:

Dermer said the Israeli government hoped to see an aid package passed by Congress last year.

Aid to Israel has completely stalled. Johnson first put a $14 billion package on the floor that coupled Israel aid with IRS spending cuts. This went nowhere in the Senate.

Then Johnson reversed course and put a clean $10 billion Israel aid bill on the floor knowing it would fail – and it did. The speaker hasn’t attempted to put the legislation on the floor again under a rule, for fear the Rules Committee would shoot it down.

The seemingly smoothest path now for Israel aid is if five House Republicans sign a discharge petition and push a massive Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan bill to the floor.

– Jake Sherman

AFGHANISTAN OVERSIGHT

McCaul threatens to hold Blinken in contempt over Afghanistan files

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing a fresh contempt threat from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) over an Afghanistan withdrawal document dispute.

McCaul is specifically seeking access to interview notes compiled by former Ambassador Dan Smith. Smith spearheaded the State Department’s official after-action review that detailed the chaotic 2021 U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan. The interview notes, which memorialize the withdrawal and were used to form the after-action review, are seen by the Foreign Affairs Committee as “vital” to oversight efforts.

McCaul wrote to Blinken on Monday that if State doesn’t turn over Smith’s interview notes by March 6, the panel would move to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress.

The background: McCaul has been engaged in a year-long back-and-forth with the State Department over access to files shedding light on the Afghanistan withdrawal, which culminated in a deadly August 2021 terrorist attack that killed multiple U.S. service members. The Texas Republican was close to marking up a contempt resolution aimed at Blinken in 2023, but he backed off after securing access to a key dissent cable.

In the months since, McCaul has grown dissatisfied with State’s response to turning over key documents that helped form the after-action review.

According to McCaul, State officials have told committee staff that Smith’s interview notes are “being withheld by the White House and National Security Council.”

“The law does not afford the State Department blanket authority to hide behind ‘Executive Branch confidentiality interests’ to obstruct Congress’s access to the truth,” McCaul wrote.

In August 2023, we reported that State sent a tranche of withdrawal documents to the Hill. This came after Blinken called McCaul and expressed a willingness to cooperate further with document production.

The relationship between Blinken and McCaul is more cordial than the dynamic between most GOP committee chairs who are investigating Biden cabinet officials. But in his latest letter, McCaul accused Blinken of acting in bad faith in the Afghanistan investigation oversight process.

“It is appalling that over two years after the deadly and chaotic withdrawal, the Department continues to choose politics over policy,” McCaul wrote.

This is a bit of whiplash from McCaul, who seems to be all over the map on where he stands with Blinken on any given month.

— Max Cohen

Wyden calls for GOP clarity on tax bill demands

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is taking a tougher stance with Senate Republican holdouts on his bipartisan tax deal, putting the onus on them to produce concrete demands.

Time is ticking away for the Senate to find a path forward on the bill expanding the child tax credit and reviving business tax breaks during this filing season, which is proponents’ goal. Wyden’s new tone comes as supporters are honing in on where Finance panel Republicans will land in the weeks ahead.

Here’s Wyden’s message to GOP colleagues:

Finance’s top Republican, Mike Crapo (Idaho), is opposed to the bill, and some fellow Finance Republicans have been vocal critics. Plenty of GOP senators aren’t saying how they’ll come down on the proposal, and a couple have said publicly they’re supportive.

Crapo has said he won’t support allowing families to use prior-year earnings to qualify for child tax credit benefits. Finance Republicans have also called for a markup of the legislation.

Wyden responded that it’s not clear they’re requests that would get Republicans’ backing. “I’m trying to bring this out of fantasy land, and to bring this down to whether [Republicans] really want to get to yes,” Wyden said.

Meanwhile in credit card reform: A key Republican sponsor of the Credit Card Competition Act said he’s “concerned” about the proposed merger of Capital One and Discover but hasn’t fully made up his mind.

We caught up last night with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who hadn’t weighed in publicly on the $35 billion transaction since it was announced on Feb 19. The Kansas Republican said “I haven’t decided if I’m for or against it yet.”

Here’s more from Marshall:

We asked whether Marshall thought the CCCA could change in structure or scope in response to the Capital One-Discover deal. “Nothing that we would change in our bill,” Marshall replied. “I think it just adds emphasis to what a challenge, what a concern the situation is right now.”

One last thing: The House Financial Services Committee has noticed a markup for Thursday, Feb. 29 that will cover fintech and national security legislation. Should be fun!

– Laura Weiss and Brendan Pedersen

PUNCHBOWL NEWS INTERNSHIP

Punchbowl News launches new internship program

Punchbowl News news: We’re excited to launch our first internship program, starting this fall. We’re looking for ambitious journalism and media students interested in learning the ropes of covering the power, people and politics surrounding Congress.

Our internship will provide a great opportunity for aspiring journalists to gain firsthand Washington reporting experience, sharpen the skills they’ve learned in school and begin to launch their careers in journalism. This paid internship will be in person in Washington from Sept. 9 – Dec. 13, 2024.

Know a great student who might be a good match? Interested candidates can read more about the internship and apply through our LinkedIn jobs portal by April 15, 2024.

– Elvina Nawaguna

THE CAMPAIGN

Moulton’s leadership PAC making moves: Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) is holding an event for his leadership PAC tonight in Boston featuring a host of the group’s endorsed candidates. Moulton, along with his Serve America PAC, will have raised or contributed close to $1 million this cycle to Democratic races in the House and Senate.

Reps. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) and Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) will be at the launch party. Democratic candidates Lanon Baccam, Mike O’Brien and Sarah Klee Hood will also be present, along with Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll.

The event is slated to raise $500,000 for Serve America candidate races.

News: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC is endorsing Emily Randall in Washington’s 6th District. This is the seat that retiring Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) is vacating. The endorsement is the latest foray of BOLD PAC into the Pacific Northwest, following last cycle’s successful backing of Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) and Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.).

— Max Cohen

MOMENTS

CLIPS