House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his top allies have reversed course and changed their bill for raising the nation’s borrowing limit – and agreed to make two major changes overnight in a bid to pass the package Wednesday in their standoff with the White House.
It’s not clear if even those changes will yield enough support to pass the bill, as House Speaker McCarthy can only lose four votes in the narrowly divided House. Yet, after days of proclaiming that the bill was final and that no changes would be made, leadership caved realizing that without some of these tweaks, the bill didn’t have a chance of passing.
Republicans agreed to allow proposed work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries to be implemented on a quicker timetable – a move intended to win over GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and others who had warned they would vote against the bill without such changes.
Also, top Republicans agreed to remove a repeal of certain tax breaks for biofuels like ethanol — an issue that prompted furious opposition from the four Iowa Republicans and some other midwestern lawmakers.
Those changes could be enough to win the bill’s passage.
The measure is mainly aimed at boosting McCarthy’s negotiating stance with Democrats, as both the White House has issued a veto threat for the legislation and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday described the bill as dead on arrival. Still, if McCarthy can unite his conference and force a bill through the chamber, it would be a symbolic win for GOP leadership, as the country approaches its default deadline as soon as this summer.
After recessing the House Rules Committee before midnight Tuesday night, leaders scrambled behind the scenes to find a way to convince two different groups of holdouts to back their legislation. When rules came back in the early Wednesday morning hours, they had…
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