Democrats seek unlikely debt ceiling savior: Mitch McConnell

Published

11 months ago

May 25, 2023

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With time running short and the danger of a national default growing, Democrats are hoping an unlikely savior will come to the rescue: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

Democratic lawmakers say McConnell and other Senate Republicans are fooling themselves if they think Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is in a position to reach a debt ceiling deal with President Biden.

They believe McCarthy is under tremendous pressure not to agree to any deal Democrats would accept because the House rules allow for one disappointed conservative to offer a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair.

“Senate Republicans are putting their heads in the sand if they think that the extremists in their party will have a change of heart,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, to reporters earlier this month.

“If Kevin McCarthy is forced to choose between holding power in his Speakership or taking us closer to default, we know he’s going to choose default. The American people know that as well. House Republicans are on a path toward default. The question before us is will Senate Republicans take the wheel?” he said. Close Thank you for signing up!

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Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a leader of House progressives, has joined the growing chorus of Democrats pleading for McConnell to get involved.

“I think time is starting to run out,” Jayapal warned. “I think Wall Street should be weighing in.”

She told reporters that “reasonable Republicans” and McConnell need “to get involved and get people to understand that default on America would be terrible,” according to Punchbowl News.

Philip Wallach, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said McConnell has remained in the background in deference to the new GOP Speaker. But that could change, he added, if an agreement remains elusive and the threat of default creeps closer.

“I think he’s trying to give McCarthy room to operate. And that’s professional courtesy and good partisan strategy,” Wallach said. “I don’t think that it necessarily means that he won’t be a big part of the final solution.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) this week demonstrated why Democrats are nervous, saying his conservative colleagues “don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage,” and that “the one-person motion to vacate has given us the best version of Speaker McCarthy.”

But McConnell’s allies say Aguilar and Jayapal are misguided if they think the Senate GOP leader will override McCarthy.

“I don’t think Mitch is going to get in the way of the Speaker because he knows if he does, that will undermine the Speaker’s ability to retain the Speakership. So until the president and the Speaker reach an agreement, I don’t see McConnell getting into the room,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who once served on McConnell’s Senate leadership team.

Gregg argued that if McConnell cuts a deal with Biden instead of McCarthy, the deal would have a harder time passing the GOP-controlled House.

“It would mean that the Speaker would have an even harder time selling whatever was agreed to to his caucus,” he said.

Gregg said Democrats are calling for McConnell’s help in an effort to portray McCarthy as an unreasonable negotiator.

“It’s politics,” he said. “They want to blame this on the Speaker.”

Jayapal’s comments caught the attention of some Senate Republican aides because the outspoken liberal leader is more likely to be quoted criticizing McConnell than beseeching his help.

But McConnell has his own right flank to worry about after Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) challenged his leadership position in November. McConnell won the race 36-10, but Senate conservatives sent a message that they weren’t happy with the direction of the GOP conference.

Conservative senators were caught off guard when McConnell proposed in fall 2021 that Democrats could move legislation to raise the debt limit without having to face a GOP filibuster.

McConnell said at the time he made the offer so Democrats would fully own the decision to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt.

“Democrats are simply voicing their expectations for something that already happened in the past to happen again,” one Senate Republican aide said of the calls by Aguilar and Jayapal to get involved in the debt limit talks.

The GOP aide noted McConnell initially took a hard line against raising the debt limit while Biden was in office, sending a letter to the president warning, “I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement,” and that Democratic leaders “cannot invent another crisis and ask for my help.”

“I get that McConnell doesn’t want to be the main guy in this fight,” the aide said. “But Jayapal wouldn’t be calling on somebody to get involved unless she thought that person would push for a clean debt ceiling hike, because that’s her position.”

McConnell has warned repeatedly this year that he will stay out of the debt limit negotiations entirely.

He told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last week he agreed in January that McCarthy would be the Republican point person in the negotiations.

“The two of us agreed from the beginning that it was important for him to take the lead,” he said.

Yet, Senate Democrats are also rooting for McConnell to step in to prevent a default, which appears more possible with each passing day as Biden and McCarthy remain far apart on a potential deal.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters earlier this month he felt “slightly better” about avoiding a fiscal catastrophe after McConnell declared “the United States is not going to default, it never has and it never will.”

McConnell made those comments outside the White House after a meeting with Biden and McCarthy.

The Senate GOP leader tried to reassure the media and the financial markets again Tuesday and emphasized it would be up to the president and Speaker, not himself, to work out a deal.

“I think everybody needs to relax,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky.

“Regardless of what may be said about the talks … the president and the Speaker will reach an agreement. It will ultimately pass on a bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate,” he said. “The country will not default.”

McConnell himself has argued any debt limit deal reached in the Senate wouldn’t have a chance of passing the GOP-controlled House. Bipartisan senators call for probe into reports of price gouging by defense contractors Connecticut has issued 521 X gender marker driver’s licenses since 2020

Yet, Democrats are betting that McConnell will be forced to intervene at the last moment once the nation is on the brink of default, threatening chaos in the financial markets and a recession — just as he did most famously in summer 2011 when then-President Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) were at loggerheads over raising the debt limit.

“I understand the convenience of passing the buck in this building, but in the end, Sen. McConnell always has his own opinion,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told The Hill earlier this month. “He doesn’t outsource his opinions and votes to Speaker McCarthy.”

Mike Lillis contributed.

Politics

Tories warned Mark Menzies misuse of funds claims ‘constituted fraud’ but whistleblower told there was no ‘duty’ to report it

Published

2 hours ago

April 20, 2024

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Tories warned Mark Menzies misuse of funds claims 'constituted fraud' but whistleblower told there was no 'duty' to report it

The Conservatives were warned ex-Tory MP Mark Menzies’s alleged misuse of party funds may have constituted fraud but the whistleblower was told there was no duty to report it

Mr Menzies, the MP for Fylde in Lancashire, gave up the Tory whip in the wake of reports in The Times that he misused party funds. He disputes the allegations.

The allegations came about after Mr Menzies former campaign manager, Katie Fieldhouse, spoke to the newspaper.

In a new interview with The Times this evening, Ms Fieldhouse, 78, claims she was told the Conservative Party was aware the allegations were potentially criminal.

She says the Conservative Party’s chief of staff “told me that when they first took over the investigation [from the Whips’ Office] they had consulted solicitors”.

She added: “He told me on the phone, ‘the solicitor said it is fraud but you are not duty-bound to report it because it’s not Conservative Party money’.”

The whistleblower said she was told the decision not to inform the police was made because it was donors’ money and not the party’s.

A Conservative spokesperson said: “The party is conducting an investigation into the claims made and has been doing so for several months.

“We will of course share any information with the police if they believe it would be helpful to any investigation they decide to undertake.

“Suggestions the party has not been seriously examining this matter are demonstrably false.”

Lancashire Police said today it was “reviewing” information about Mr Menzies after Labour asked for an investigation to take place.

In a statement, the force said: “We can confirm that we have now received a letter detailing concerns around this matter and we are in the process of reviewing the available information in more detail.”

The party’s chief whip, Simon Hart, is said to have been made aware of the claims in January, when the former campaign manager reported what had happened.

Sky News understands there has been an investigation ongoing by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) since the allegations were first raised, but further information came to light this week and Mr Hart acted immediately.

Speaking tonight, Labour’s chair Anneliese Dodds said: “The Conservative chairman and chief whip must urgently come out of hiding and explain what they knew and what advice they received.

“If, as reported, they or Conservative officials were warned about potentially fraudulent activity and chose not to go to the police, this would be indefensible.”

Mr Menzies, who has served as an MP since May 2010, is reported to have phoned his 78-year-old former campaign manager at 3.15am last December, saying he was locked in a flat by “bad people” and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.

The sum, which rose to £6,500, was eventually paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from funds raised from donors in an account named Fylde Westminster Group, the newspaper says.

Speaking to Sky News, Ms Fieldhouse said: “I am feeling dreadful because I am a devout Tory and as I have said to everybody else, I reported his actions to the chief whip… it is now the middle of April.

“Come to your own conclusions [about] what is happening.”

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Asked if she was disappointed with the way the complaint was being handled, she said: “Yes.”

Mr Menzies said on Thursday: “I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further.”

Politics

Mark Menzies: Tory activist who reported MP over alleged misuse of funds disappointed by party response

Published

2 hours ago

April 20, 2024

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Mark Menzies: Tory activist who reported MP over alleged misuse of funds disappointed by party response

A Tory activist who reported an MP over claims he misused party funds has told Sky News she is disappointed by the way her complaint has been handled.

Mark Menzies voluntarily quit the Conservative parliamentary party this week after a report in The Times claimed he called his ex-campaign manager Katie Fieldhouse, 78, early one day to say he was locked in a flat by “bad people” and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”.

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But despite the incident taking place in December – and Ms Fieldhouse submitting her complaint in January – the Fylde MP had remained part of the parliamentary party and as a trade envoy for the government until the press reports surfaced.

He has now lost the Conservative whip and was suspended as one of Rishi Sunak’s envoys.

Mr Menzies strongly disputes the claims, which also include accusations he used campaign funds to pay his personal medical bills.

Speaking to Sky News’ Frazer Maude, Ms Fieldhouse said: “I am feeling dreadful because I am a devout Tory and as I have said to everybody else, I reported his actions to the chief whip… it is now the middle of April.

“Come to your own conclusions [about] what is happening.”

Asked if she was disappointed with the way the complaint was being handled, she said: “Yes.”

And asked if Mr Menzies should step down, she added: “It is for his conscience and the party to deal with. I have put my faith in the party, it is for them to deal with it.”

Mr Sunak was also asked by reporters on Friday whether his former colleague should quit the Commons, and why it had taken until now for the party to act, but he said he would not comment while an investigation was being carried out.

Instead, the prime minister said: “It’s right that Mark Menzies has resigned the Conservative whip. He’s been suspended from his position as a trade envoy whilst the investigations into those allegations continue.

“For our part, I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation while it’s happening and he’s no longer a Conservative MP.”

Meanwhile, the Labour Party has written to Lancashire Police to demand an investigation into allegations of fraud and misconduct in public office.

Leader Sir Keir Starmer told broadcasters that the Conservatives “seem to have sat on their hands” over the allegations.

He added: “If they thought they could sweep this under the carpet somehow they were obviously very mistaken and that is why I think there are very serious questions now that need to be answered – not just by the individual but also by the government on this.”

And the Liberal Democrats have called for the ministerial ethics adviser to investigate chief whip Simon Hart’s handling of the complaint.

Sports

Rocky flight: FAA probes MLB coach’s video post

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2024

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Rocky flight: FAA probes MLB coach's video post

ESPN News Services

Apr 19, 2024, 01:48 PM ET

The Federal Aviation Administration and United Airlines are investigating an incident involving the Colorado Rockies during a chartered flight from Denver to Toronto.

In a since-deleted video posted to social media, Rockies hitting coach Hensley Meulens is seen sitting in a pilot’s seat in the cockpit while the plane is in flight.

“Had some fun in the cockpit on our flight from Denver to Toronto. Thanks to the captain and the first officer of our United charter that allowed me this great experience,” Meulens wrote in a caption for the social media post.

A United spokesperson said the airline was conducting its own investigation of the April 10 flight. The airline said the cockpit visit was “a clear violation of our safety and operational policies” and was reported to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We’re deeply disturbed by what we see in that video, which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged,” United spokesperson Russell Carlton said.

The pilots on the flight have been withheld from service while the airline investigates, Carlton said.

A spokesman for the FAA said it does not “comment on the details of open investigations” but noted that “federal regulations restrict flight deck access to specific individuals.”

Rockies manager Bud Black said Friday that Meulens apologized to the organization and United Airlines.

“I can’t comment really any further because of the investigation of the matter,” Black said, according to The Denver Post. He also said the incident won’t impact Meulens’ employment.

Meulens is in his second year as the team’s hitting coach. He has previously served as a coach and manager for the Dutch national team.

Colorado (4-15) has lost five straight, including its final two games against the Blue Jays.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.