Oh my, Kevin

From: POLITICO West Wing Playbook - Tuesday Jan 03,2023 10:21 pm
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Staff throughout the West Wing wouldn’t cop to watching live coverage of Rep. KEVIN MCCARTHY failing to get enough votes to become speaker of the House. But, to a person, they were more than aware of the fiasco that was unfolding on the House floor throughout the day, and on the TV sets in practically every office.

At Tuesday’s briefing, the first of the year, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE refused to comment on the speaker’s election, demurely batting away several questions about McCarthy’s humiliation and the new House GOP’s majority appearing to be every bit the chaos caucus many feared.

But make no mistake: this administration is about as distraught over all this as a flock of vultures happening upon a freshly killed gazelle. For whatever headaches a Republican-controlled House will create for President JOE BIDEN through investigations and its ability to control the floor, the disorder and rancor likely to characterize the new GOP majority, administration aides believe, will benefit the president politically.

Administration aides are confident that the president, by focusing on governing and working in a bipartisan manner, is delivering what the public wants — and that Republicans, as long as they’re continually bogged down by intra-party fights, are not.

The administration is wasting no time focusing the country’s attention on this contrast, even if Biden is presenting it implicitly – not by hammering Republicans as extreme but by demonstrating his own ability to deliver on bipartisan legislation.

Biden’s first big event of the year Wednesday, a trip to Kentucky to highlight a long-sought bridge repair alongside Senate GOP Leader MITCH MCCONNELL , will typify his approach over the year ahead: focusing on the increasingly tangible benefits from the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure overhaul and last year’s bills to boost semiconductor manufacturing, lower drug costs and hasten the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. Two border-state governors, Kentucky Democrat ANDY BESHEAR and Ohio Republican MIKE DEWINE, will also attend the event, allowing Biden to underline the bipartisan nature of the law responsible for fixing the Brent Spence Bridge.

And on Friday, the president will mark the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection with a speech at the White House. The occasion will provide another chance to articulate a view about the sanctity of American democracy.

Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say whether this week’s presidential events were orchestrated with an eye on the anticipated messy floor vote in the House, but her emphasis on the bipartisan nature of the work Biden and McConnell planned to highlight was not subtle.

“We can do big profound things for the country when we work together,” she said.

But behind the bromides, there was some bubbling concern about the chaos unfolding on the House floor. Staffers who spoke more candidly, on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that bipartisan legislation will be more difficult with Republicans controlling the House, however narrow and fractious their majority. Debt ceiling fights become even trickier when there is no order at all.

That said, some aides remain cautiously optimistic that some GOP lawmakers from more competitive districts will be incentivized to work across the aisle. Deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES wrote in a post-election bulletin to reporters that the House Republicans who voted for the president’s infrastructure law in 2021 all won reelection in November.

The president and his aides, in ways public and private, will continue to brand the GOP by highlighting the behavior of its more extreme voices – the “MAGA Republicans,” as Biden has labeled them — while still reaching out to Republicans who might work more constructively with Democrats, White House staffers said. Part of that effort, they noted, will include reminding Republicans of the popularity of Biden’s policy achievements.

If House Republicans follow through on promises to roll-back elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and weaken remaining abortion protections, the White House is confident that those efforts will benefit Democrats politically, not to mention be blocked by a Democrat-controlled Senate. Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.), one of the hard-liners refusing to back McCarthy, dismissed such actions as “messaging bills” during a press conference Tuesday. And, in a comment sure to be clipped and saved by the White House press shop, belittled the coming GOP investigations of HUNTER BIDEN and other matters as “theater pretending to be oversight.”

And there is no immediate threat of a government shutdown after last month’s passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, an achievement propelled in large part by Senate Republicans who foresaw the coming chaos of a GOP-controlled House. In fact, as McCarthy struggled to secure the speaker’s gavel Tuesday, some Senate Republicans expressed vindication about having passed the bipartisan legislation last year, spiking the football on House Republicans harder than anyone at the White House did.

“I’ve been told you shouldn’t vote for the $1.7 trillion spending bill because the House is Republican, they’ll make it better,” said Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.). “I don’t think that theory is holding up too well.”

MESSAGE US Are you KEVIN MCCARTHY ? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.

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POTUS PUZZLER

This one is from reader KEVIN WALLING. Which president was the first to have a veto overridden by Congress?

(Answer at the bottom.)

The Oval

TALKING NUKES: South Korean and U.S. officials are in talks about the U.S. nuclear weapons management as tension grows with North Korea after that nation’s leader KIM JONG UN vowed to ramp up its nuclear weapons arsenal, AP’s HYUNG-JIN KIM reports.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by NPR’s CARRIE JOHNSON about the administration’s efforts to appoint diverse federal judges: “In the end, federal courts may be one of Biden's deepest legacies, since judges often get the last word on what the law means and how it plays out in people's lives. White House chief of staff Ron Klain said the judiciary has been a ‘top priority’ for the president, and there's a simple reason why. ‘When he talks about rights and liberties, he knows that in the end those rights and liberties are decided by federal judges, so the makeup of the federal judiciary is connected to everything else we do,’ Klain said.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: Any piece comparing the president to Rep. GEORGE SANTOS, amid the news the freshman lawmaker lied about parts of his background. This WaPo opinion piece by MARC A. THIESSEN dives into specific instances when the president embellished things in the past and present: “Biden’s career has been a constant stream of untruths. Yet no Democratic Party leaders have suggested that Biden is ‘woefully unqualified’ or ‘unfit to serve.’ Maybe Santos should switch parties and run for president — then all would be forgiven.”

ON THE MOVE: As noted earlier, the president will travel to Covington, Ky., on Wednesday, where he’ll deliver remarks about infrastructure and economic policy, according to the White House.

THE BUREAUCRATS

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: LIZ BOURGEOIS has left the Treasury Department, where she was a senior adviser for public affairs, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She was brought in June 2021 to lead communications for Treasury’s implementation of the American Rescue Plan and then became a senior advisor doing strategic communications for Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN and deputy secretary WALLY ADEYEMO. She has been named as chief communications officer for the startup Handshake, a top recruiting platform for college students looking for their first job.

 

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Filling the Ranks

NEW YEAR, SAME NOMINEES: The president is gearing up to renominate several candidates he appointed last year, hoping for a fresh start with the new Congress beginning Tuesday, WSJ’s KEN THOMAS reports.

One of the candidates Biden plans to renominate is former Los Angeles Mayor ERIC GARCETTI, whose nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to India didn’t advance last year. The president is also planning to renominate GIGI SOHN to the Federal Communications Commission. Sohn’s confirmation would establish a tie-breaking Democratic majority at the agency.

WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC… Biden and Democrats are also prioritizing confirming judicial nominees in the new year, with the party now narrowly in control of the Senate, Reuters’ NATE RAYMOND reports.

Agenda Setting

A SLIGHT OVERSIGHT: As the vote for Speaker of the House dragged on, so did the chamber's efforts to enact Pentagon oversight, our CONNOR O’BRIEN reports for Pro s. Rep. ADAM SMITH of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called the delay in action “a problem. The House is not going to be able to function until they get a speaker and it's going to take a while.”

IMMIGRATION FILES: The administration Tuesday proposed to “increase fees for many employment-based visas while keeping prices for people applying to become U.S. citizens relatively static,” LA Times’ HAMED ALEAZIZ reports. “The proposal would push more of the cost of funding the agency that oversees the nation’s immigration system onto companies that employ foreign workers and ensure that asylum seekers continue to pay nothing to apply for protections in the U.S.”

What We're Reading

How Biden Could Appoint More Judges Than Trump (FiveThirtyEight’s Elena Mejia and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux)

In Romania, U.S. Troops Train Close to Russia’s War, in Signal to Moscow (NYT’s Lara Jakes)

2024 contest comes into view with hurdles for both parties (AP’s Steve Peoples)

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

Congress overrode President JOHN TYLER’s veto of an appropriations bill on March 3, 1845, marking the first-ever congressional override.

According to the House of Representatives History, Art and Archives website, “Congress would not override another presidential veto for more than a decade when, during the administration of Franklin Pierce, it overrode five of his nine vetoes. To date, U.S. Presidents have vetoed more than 2,500 bills — with Congress overriding the President less than five percent of the time.”

A CALL OUT — Thanks to Kevin for this trivia question! Do you think you have a harder one? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.

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