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Even the members of the House Rules Committee couldn’t help but comment darkly about the unusually cramped hearing room and groan about the political performance art unfolding around a last-minute compromise designed to sidestep a seismic economic tremor.
“Hillary Clinton says it takes a village. I say it takes a bigger room,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee that was working on the first procedural step to help Washington dodge a debt default. “I don’t know if we can get more people in this room.”
A short khbrknews later on Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie, a hard-right Republican who had teased he might tank the debt ceiling deal struck between Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democratic President Joe Biden nodded to the self-made drama in the room. “I’m reluctant to disclose how I might vote on this rule because then all the cameras leave,” said Massie, who coyly added that he needed to read the actual rule before he could commit. (Yes, the committee hearing began without a finalized draft, any printed copies of it, or even the actual cost projections.)
Ultimately, the Kentucky Republican voted just before 9 p.m. in support of the deal, sparing McCarthy a defeat on an early procedural vote. Republicans could afford to lose only two votes on the Rules Committee, and Massie stood to have been the third. “With that, the cameras are dismissed,” he said ahead of the roll call vote.
Welcome to yet another crisis week in Washington, a city where responsible governance seldom draws the same level of rewards as chaos and cliffhangers. It’s why you could hear meaningful exhaustion among Republicans and Democrats who have been through such standoffs before,…
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