Problem Solvers Caucus Is Imploding Over the McCarthy Drama

Problem Solvers Caucus co-chairs Brian Fitzpatrick and Josh Gottheimer in happier days. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

A bit of tragi-comedic fallout from the downfall of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been a freakout by Republican members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus at their Democratic colleagues for failing to vote against the motion to vacate the chair that took away McCarthy’s gavel. As Axios reports, these GOP congressmen are mulling an en masse resignation from the centrist caucus over the alleged partisanship of the Democrats:

GOP members in the group are furious at their Democratic colleagues who voted to remove McCarthy. The Republicans say he was punished for “doing the right thing” after advancing a stopgap funding bill on a bipartisan basis.

Frustrated members said that Democrats in the group, which is aimed at finding bipartisan solutions, sparked chaos for political gain despite many Republicans in the group having faced primaries for crossing the aisle and taking difficult votes.

A draft letter obtained by Axios took aim at Democrats for siding with “Gaetz and a single digit number of chaos agents in the Republican Conference.”

If Kevin McCarthy qualifies as a Bipartisan Problem Solver because he allowed a vote on one stopgap spending bill when he had exhausted absolutely every other avenue for saving his own skin, then this designation is even emptier than I realized.

McCarthy’s Speakership was a testament to the worst sort of partisan posturing. He gave the extremists in his conference everything they asked for (challenging certification of Joe Biden’s election, sabotaging the January 6 committee, then authorizing retaliatory investigations of the Bidens). He even gave them the weapon they used to eject him, the single-member-triggered motion to vacate the chair. The McCarthy-run House mostly busied itself with “messaging bills,” legislation specifically designed to be rejected by Democrats to sharpen a distinct partisan identity. After reaching an agreement with President Biden on spending limits as part of legislation to prevent a national-debt default, McCarthy reneged on it and began accepting right-wing demands for deeper and deeper domestic spending cuts coupled with poison-pill policy riders. He finally agreed to a stopgap spending measure not as an act of noble bipartisanship but to punish Matt Gaetz & Co. after it became clear they were moving against him.

Presumably McCarthy thought, like the GOP Problem Solvers, that this was enough to get Democrats to bail him out. So he contemptuously and publicly rejected any further concessions on the many issues dividing the two parties in the House. He was all but promising a government shutdown when the stopgap measure expires in November. Was this the conduct the Democratic Problem Solvers should have rewarded? I don’t think so.

The Problem Solvers Caucus’s current dilemma partially just reflects the flaws in treating partisanship as a sort of personality disorder that can be easily treated with simple good will. Yes, there are degrees of partisanship (many of them exemplified, as it happens, by Kevin McCarthy as much as by Matt Gaetz) that are pathological, but there are actual differences of opinion on many issues that can’t simply be split with compromises.

It’s already been a tough year for Democratic Problem Solvers, many of whom have been forced to repudiate their No Labels parent organization and its apparent determination to pursue a Trump-enhancing independent presidential ticket funded by secret corporate bankrolls. Embracing Kevin McCarthy as one of their own makes no more sense than sabotaging Joe Biden next year.