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September 21, 2022
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THE TOP
Happy Wednesday morning.
There are nine days remaining until federal agencies run out of money. With both the House and Senate out for Rosh Hashanah on Monday and Tuesday, there are just five legislative days until the government hits the Sept. 30 deadline. We expect to see the text of Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) permitting reform bill today.
We will repeat this once again – there won’t be a government shutdown. But the political posturing around Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) permitting reform bill has complicated passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government. It will happen next week, but there will be some unwanted drama before it does.
| → | The Federal Open Market Committee will announce an interest rate increase today at 2 p.m. That will be followed by a press conference by Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell to discuss the state of the U.S. economy following the FOMC announcement. |
A rate increase of 75 basis points is widely expected, although there’s an outside chance it will be 100 basis points. The state of the U.S. economy and inflation are two of the key issues driving the midterm elections, so we’ll have lots more on this later today.
News: Support grows for Senate’s election reform bill
News: The Senate election reform group will announce today that they’ve secured the support of Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
The bipartisan Senate group, led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), have been working to reform the Electoral College Act for months. They have 18 co-sponsors, ranging from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the right to Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Maine) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on the left. Here’s the full list of co-sponsors.
The House released its own bill, penned by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). The House will begin considering H.R. 8873, the Presidential Election Reform Act, today.
The Senate group has argued that its bill has broader appeal and is the only one that can actually reach President Joe Biden’s desk. We imagine that the senators will continue to make the case – through additional co-sponsors and other methods – that their bill is the one that should take precedence in the eventual negotiations with the House. As we noted Tuesday, we find it difficult to believe that any Republican would be eager to give Cheney a win.
– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
PUNCHBOWL NEWS X TEXAS TRIBUNE
We’re headed to the Lone Star State for the Texas Tribune Festival!
We’ll be at The Texas Tribune Festival this weekend, Sept. 22-24, in Austin, Texas. On Saturday, Sept. 24, you can join us in the Punchbowl News tent on Open Congress for policymaker conversations, breakfast burritos, sno-cones and five different raffles—no festival ticket required!
| → | One-on-One with Adam Schiff (D-Calif.): 9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. (All Central Time) |
The California lawmaker starts us off by discussing the Jan. 6 investigation, the war in Ukraine and combating misinformation.
| → | The Red Team: 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. |
Conversation with Texas Republican congressional candidates Wesley Hunt, Monica De La Cruz and Morgan Luttrell.
| → | The Blue Team: 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. |
Conversation with Texas Democratic congressional candidates Greg Casar and Jasmine Crockett.
| → | Taking the Heat: 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. |
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg will talk climate.
| → | The Book on Trump: Part Two: 4:15 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. |
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser close the day with a convo about their book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.”
PLUS: Food, five different raffles, and more! Let us know you’re interested in joining here.
PRESSURE COOKER
The right tries to squeeze McCarthy
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is no stranger to pressure from the right. In 2015, the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, led by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), launched a crusade to ensure the California Republican didn’t succeed John Boehner as speaker. The Freedom Caucus, of course, had been the ones who helped drive Boehner from office.
McCarthy stepped aside, paving the way for Paul Ryan to become speaker. In the intervening seven years, McCarthy has privately vowed that, should he run for speaker again, he won’t succumb to this kind of pressure. And most importantly, McCarthy and his team have all privately said he won’t allow lawmakers to make such demands on him in exchange for their vote to become speaker. That doesn’t mean McCarthy won’t listen to their ideas, but he has vowed to run for the chamber’s top job without making promises along the way.
But with Election Day nearing and a GOP majority in the House very likely, conservatives are beginning to ratchet up their demands. We discussed this in the PM edition Tuesday.
Our friend Juliegrace Brufke of the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that Rep. Mike Cloud (R-Texas) motioned in a closed party meeting to have Republicans vote on the party’s internal rules package before the conference votes on the leadership for the next Congress. Party leaders stalled by requiring the resolution to undergo further review by a GOP Conference committee.
The right wing of the conference wants a number of changes from McCarthy, including some that would impact House rules. They want to formally enshrine in the rules the principle that McCarthy can’t put a bill on the floor that doesn’t have the support of the “majority of the majority.” They also want to change the rule outlining the “motion to vacate the chair” – the process by which the House removes a speaker. Currently, only party leaders can trigger such a vote. The Freedom Caucus wants to revert back to the old rule, the one which helped topple Boehner. That version would allow any single member to request a vote on the speaker of the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats changed this when they took over in 2019.
Voting on these proposed changes before electing House GOP leaders would give the membership a chance to try to enact changes in return for their vote for McCarthy. The threat behind this is clear. If conservatives don’t like this outcome, they can withhold support for McCarthy during the speaker vote on the floor on Jan. 3. That’s when he will need unified Republican support.
“We’d like to know what the enterprise is before we vote on the leadership. Seems reasonable,” Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told us in an interview Tuesday.
Let’s break down what this means.
| → | There is nearly always an effort by the right flank of the House GOP to delay the leadership elections in some way. So this request is par for the course. Quick elections benefit those already in power. |
| → | McCarthy has a very good relationship with conservatives, unlike Boehner and Ryan. Those two top Republicans had trouble dealing with the Freedom Caucus types. McCarthy has shifted to the right in recent years. He’s rewarded Jordan – once his nemesis – with prized committee assignments. Now Jordan is a McCarthy booster, a dramatic change from 2015. |
| → | Some of the right’s demands are contradictory. They want to cement the “majority of the majority,” yet they want to also change the motion to vacate, which would allow the removal of a GOP speaker without support from the majority of the House Republican Conference. |
McCarthy has to play this carefully – and he’s prepared for seven years for this moment, should Republicans take the majority. His message Tuesday in a closed party meeting was to focus for the next seven week on winning the majority, and deal with the rules later.
– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
PUNCHBOWL NEWS EVENTS
What John Thune told us
Missed our conversation with Senate Minority Whip John Thune yesterday? Catch up on the interview here.
PRESENTED BY CHEVRON
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PUNCHBOWL.NEWS
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THE CAMPAIGN
| → | Priorities USA, a progressive advocacy group, has some fascinating new data on online spending in battleground states. |
From Sept. 10 to Sept. 16, the Senate Leadership Fund drastically outspent all other groups on Google, Meta and Snap in 14 battleground states, according to Priorities USA.
SLF, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell-aligned super PAC, has spent $943,000 in the week-long time period, almost double the next group — conservative organization Americans for Prosperity. All three of the biggest spenders here are GOP groups.
| → | Democrats, however, point to individual state spending where they say they’re outspending Republicans. |
Democrats are outpacing Republicans in online advertising in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. The GOP has the lead in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia.
Another wrinkle: Republicans are spending massively on issues of crime and policing, an issue which constitutes nearly half of their online messaging during this week-long period.
The battleground states reflected in the data are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
| → | Marist has a new poll in Ohio that has Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in a dead heat with Republican J.D. Vance. Vance is up 46%-45%. GOP Gov. Mike DeWine is beating Nan Whaley, 55%-37%. |
— Max Cohen
THE MONEY GAME
| → | The NRCC outraised the DCCC by roughly $138,000 last month. The NRCC raised $15.6 million, while the DCCC took in $15.4 million. The NRCC has $113 million on hand and the DCCC has $110 million. |
| → | House Majority PAC, the House Democratic super PAC, raised $12.8 million in August. Big checks came from: Bain Capital’s Jonathan Lavine ($1 million); Netflix’s Reed Hastings and his wife, director Patty Quillin ($963,500 each); Haim and Cheryl Saban ($250,000); and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s campaign account sent the PAC $250,000. |
| → | Senate Majority PAC, the Senate Democratic super PAC, raised $16.2 million and has $65.7 million on hand. Big checks: hedge fund titan James Simons ($2.5 million); Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $1 million each; and former Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) ($125,000). |
| → | Opportunity Matters Fund, which advertises itself as being aligned with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), raised $3.6 million. Billionaire South Carolinian Benjamin Navarro donated $2.5 million. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman chipped in $100,000. |
– Jake Sherman
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