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PRESENTED BY

BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN
WITH MAX COHEN AND CHRISTIAN HALL

THE TOP

Happy Friday morning. We always knew that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a lot to say. We didn’t know he had this much to say.

The California Republican broke Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s record for the longest House floor speech, clocking in at more than eight-and-a-half hours in opposition to the Democrats’ $1.7 trillion Build Back Better Act. McCarthy stretched the “magic minute” afforded to congressional leaders to its extreme. McCarthy’s staff has been planning this for some time, but kept it secret from everyone.

McCarthy finally yielded the floor at 5:11 a.m. The House will be back in session at 8 a.m., with Pelosi set to speak. There will be a procedural motion to recommit and then a vote on final passage of the BBB.

“I don’t know that this speech is going to make a difference,” McCarthy said just after 3 a.m. Of course it won’t. The BBB looks like it is going to pass at some point this morning. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine is the only Democrat who has publicly declared their opposition at this point.

Yet standing on the floor all night, railing against a major piece of legislation being pushed by President Joe Biden and Pelosi, is a solid way to grab national attention. It’s good “member management” for McCarthy too, who can now say he fought against a bill that he can’t stop. Remember, one of the chief complaints from the right is that their leaders — other than former President Donald Trump — don’t fight hard enough. McCarthy is essentially saying “Here’s the fight.” Will this change the politics around the bill? No, probably not. But alas. 

Remember: Pelosi spoke for eight straight hours in 2018 when she was in the minority, trying futilely to convince Republicans to pass immigration legislation. GOP lawmakers rolled their eyes at the move. Democrats are rolling their eyes now. McCarthy beat Pelosi’s record just before 5 a.m.

Speaking for this long allowed McCarthy to push out a lot of partisan talking points and razz Democrats for hours on end.

“Could she be the speaker in modern history — one of the few to lose the House twice and lose the most seats? I don’t know,” McCarthy said of Pelosi at one point. McCarthy reminded anyone listening that Pelosi went to Europe three times during the last several months even while trying to pass the BBB. 

“This is not Pelosi’s House, this is the people’s House,” McCarthy said at 3:38 a.m. 

These are just some of the digs he got in. The members sitting behind him — including Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who seemed to have a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth, spitting into a GNC bottle — applauded enthusiastically.

So, in sum, McCarthy is no longer speaking. And Democrats will push through the BBB later today. We’ll tell you what it all means below.

Punchbowl News’ five BBB takeaways

OK. Now let’s spend a moment unpacking this. Here are our five takeaways from the pending BBB vote.

1) Pelosi wins: Pelosi faced pretty steep odds here. She has a four-seat majority. She has an emboldened progressive wing and a moderate wing that wasn’t going to back down for once. No one is quite sure what her plans are at the end of this term. Yet Pelosi pulled off an inside straight; she’s on the brink of passing a $1.7 trillion reconciliation package. If you’re a House watcher, this is what we saw during her first run as speaker. Pelosi played the long game, waited out all the gripes from the various factions inside her caucus, and got what she wanted at the end of the day.

2) Biden is on a small roll: House passage of the Build Back Better Act will be a partial win for President Biden. We say partial because there’s still a lot of work to do in the Senate. But this comes following passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which was definitely a big win for Biden. The president used all the tools at his disposal — he personally lobbied undecided members, deployed top staffers to meet with reluctant lawmakers, and relied on a battery of experts from the Treasury Department and other agencies to help buttress his position. 

3) Democrats just voted for something that has no chance of becoming law as is: Pelosi vowed she would never let the House vote on something that the Senate wouldn’t accept. Well, she is about to. What does this mean? Some of her members are going to be taking a tough vote on issues like immigration policy, spending and taxes, only to have those provisions stripped out in the Senate. 

4) This bill has a long way to go: The Senate is going to spend weeks, maybe months, revising this legislation. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has made clear he doesn’t agree with the paid leave provisions in the House package. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) want to rework the state and local tax deduction pushed by blue state House Democrats and link it to income instead. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) also has a problem with including SALT changes in the package. The immigration provisions approved by the House will be knocked out by the Byrd Rule in the Senate. 

5) McCarthy helps himself: The California Republican’s marathon speech delayed the final vote for a day but he can’t stop passage of the bill. And he was mocked on social media by Democrats and pundits. Yet McCarthy won praise from conservative commentators. And most importantly, he won plaudits from his 212 Republican colleagues, including hardliners such as Cawthorn and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Remember: McCarthy has two goals here. 1) He wants to win the majority. Netting 35 seats will give him the largest GOP majority in a century. 2) He wants to become speaker. He needs 218 votes on the House floor in the next Congress to become speaker. This alone won’t get him there. But it will get him props from his GOP colleagues, and that’s the audience he was playing to, not Democrats or the media. McCarthy also loved snatching the longest floor speech record from Pelosi.

NDAA

Senate clashes over defense policy bill

The House wasn’t the only late-night drama yesterday in the Capitol. The Senate stayed in session until 10:15 p.m. trying and failing to reach an agreement on what amendments will be considered as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

A stream of GOP senators rose to object that their amendments wouldn’t be taken up, delaying progress on the yearly defense policy bill. 

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Steve Daines (Mont.), Pat Toomey (Pa.), Jim Risch (Idaho), Ted Cruz (Texas), Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and James Lankford (Okla.) were among those who objected.

So the Senate will come back today for a vote on the motion to proceed to the bill. That will be a voice vote. Then cloture is expected to be filed on both the substitute amendment and the underlying NDAA bill. That substitute amendment will include proposals from dozens of GOP and Democratic senators. That cloture vote won’t take place until Monday, Nov. 29, when the full Senate returns from the Thanksgiving recess.

“Democrats have been working in good faith for several days — actually, for several months really — to pass this defense legislation,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer complained. “The bill before us was produced through a bipartisan committee process and included the input of at least three-fifths of senators from both sides of the aisle. It is unfortunate that we cannot move forward tonight. But, unfortunately, the other side won’t agree. Or some on the other side won’t agree.”

THE DOWNTOWN DOWNLOAD

→ The credit ratings agency Moody’s has registered its own in-house team and another firm to lobby on “issues related to credit rating agencies.” Kathyanne Cohen and Demis Mavrellis are lobbying for the company, according to a federal filing. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s Katelynn Bradley, Travis Norton, LaKeitha Anderson and David Cohen all registered to lobby for the client earlier this month. Rich Feuer Anderson is also on retainer for Moody’s.

→ Barclays US is bringing on some K Street firepower, adding Subject Matter to its lobbying retinue. Elmendorf Ryan’s Jimmy Ryan, Natalie Farr and Cedric Grant are lobbying on tax reform issues. The bank already has Cypress Advocacy and Hogan Lovells on retainer. 

→ Here’s a substantial ad buy we noticed earlier this week: People Over Profits is spending more than $3.2 million on a month-long ad campaign in the D.C., Philadelphia and Salisbury, Md., media markets.

The ad in question slams a Biden administration regulation on surprise medical billing, claiming the policy will hurt hospitals and enrich health insurance companies.

Watch the 30-second clip below, courtesy AdImpact.

FRONTS

MOMENTS

12:50 p.m.: Vice President Kamala Harris will leave for Columbus, Ohio.

1 p.m.: Jen Psaki will brief.

2:50 p.m.: Harris will tour the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 189 with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.

3:15 p.m.: President Joe Biden will pardon the Thanksgiving turkey.

3:20 p.m.: Harris will speak about the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

5:30 p.m.: Harris will leave Columbus for Andrews.

6:20 p.m.: Biden will leave the White House for Wilmington, Del., where he’ll stay for the weekend.

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ “Ahead of Summit, U.S. Deported Chinese Nationals, and China Let an American Leave,” by Raymond Zhong and Katie Rogers

→ David Brooks: “Joe Biden Is Succeeding”

WaPo

→ “Ohio Republicans’ redistricting map dilutes Black voters’ power in Congress, critics say,” by Colby Itkowitz in Cincinnati

WSJ

→ “Ford, GM Step Into Chip Business,” by Mike Colias and Ben Foldy

→ “Political Calculus Confronts Biden on Fed Pick of Powell vs. Brainard,” by Nick Timiraos and Siobhan Hughes

AP

→ “Goal in sight, Democrats confront need to sell agenda,” by Mary Clare Jalonick

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images