the debt limit is much more difficult, in part because many of the concessions he gave up were demanded by conservative hard liners in preparation for a major showdown over the debt limit. for one, the house rules eliminate the kind of end runs that the senate used most recently in 2021, to raise the debt limit, making it somewhat of an easier vote for their members. the conservative lawmakers who forced 14 humiliating defeats for kevin mccarthy on the house floor before finally electing him speaker. our team has spent the last couple of weeks talking to them. they want things like dollar for dollar spending cuts and balance the federal budget in ten years and extremely difficult if not impossible without tax increases or cuts to spending, and medicare and social security and food stamps and many say they should go down that road as part of the debt limit. and many see this as the major leverage point to force the democrat controlled senate and president biden to sign a bill that advan
216. so what that would look like is 216 mccarthy votes, and 212 jeffries votes. three of these six still voting for jordan or whoever else, and then three of them voting present. if you did that, you wouldn t actually need to pick up an affirmative vote from any of these six holdouts and you could win the speakership. could they get two to vote for mccarthy? could they get three to vote present? and the other scenario would be, could you get one to vote for mccarthy, and one to vote present? because if you got one to vote present, the threshold would come to 217. and then that one voting for mccarthy would get you up to 217. so there are a couple of ways at it here, that they could combine getting people to vote for mccarthy, getting present votes, or maybe just getting three present votes. you get three present votes, from these six, and that would be enough to make him speaker.
In a historic move, three Texas Republicans, including Roy, are among a group voting against Kevin McCarthy, their party’s leading choice for U.S. House Speaker