Rush to year-end budget deadline tests tricky new McConnell-McCarthy partnership
From McClatchy DC:
…[T]he breach between the two Republican leaders on their preferred approach to fund the government by next week may be just a preview of the duo’s new complex relationship, with McCarthy’s House caucus about to wield more power than McConnell’s minority caucus next month.
“McConnell’s position is known and stable…He still has power on the floor and so forth. But it’s less than he had before,” said Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a free market Washington policy think tank. “McCarthy, provided he becomes speaker, will be the least powerful speaker of the past 50 years and have a very hard time managing a very, very narrow and likely unruly majority.” In essence, the tug of war over the omnibus bill opened the window into the two men’s willingness to compromise during the second half of President Joe Biden’s first term.
“McCarthy has incentives not to and, with only 49 seats, McConnell must do so,” Lehrer said.
