Kevin McCarthy faces rocky first day as House speaker – live

Congressman Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri who objected to the certification of the results of the 2020 election, has won the chairmanship of the House ways and means committee.

In a statement about his win, Smith pledged as chair to support the Republican plan to slash funding to the IRS or Internal Revenue Service – billions were allocated to the agency last year to go after tax cheats.

“Our first step is defunding the $80bn pay increase Democrats gave the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents to target working families. But we are not stopping there,” Smith said in a statement.

Doing so would reduce revenues by almost $186bn over 10 years and add more than $114bn to the deficit, according to an evaluation from the Congressional Budget Office.

Nancy Mace, one of the moderate Republicans who had voiced hesitation over the rules package, will vote for it, NBC News reports:

In a Sunday interview with CBS News, Mace objected to the way the package had been negotiated:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I like the rules package. It is the most open, fair and fiscally conservative package we’ve had in 30 years. I support it, but what I don’t support is a small number of people trying to get a deal done or deals done for themselves in private, in secret, to get a vote or vote present. I don’t support that … And so I am on the fence right now about the rules package vote tomorrow for that reason.

Another aspect of the deal Kevin McCarthy cut with conservative Republicans that made him House speaker was a pledge to allow a single lawmaker to call for a vote to oust him from office.

Under the previous Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi, a motion to vacate could only be made if a majority of a party agreed to it. While lowering the threshold got McCarthy the votes he needed to win the chamber’s leadership, it also raised fears that any lawmaker who disagrees with his policies and tactics would create a crisis by seeking to remove him.

CNN surveyed two Republican representatives today about how they think the rule will be used. Here’s what they had to say:

The House GOP may eventually win cuts to government spending, but first they’re going to try to pass a bill that will add more than $114bn to the budget deficit.

The Congressional Budget Office has released its evaluation of the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which would strip the Internal Revenue Service of $71bn in funding that was allocated last year in order to crack down on tax cheats.

If the funding were withdrawn, revenues would decrease by almost $186bn in the 10 years from 2023, adding to the deficit by more than $114bn.

The proposal is up for a vote today, assuming the House Republicans pass their proposed rules package.

It took four days and 15 ballots for Republicans to resolve their differences and elect Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House.

But he can’t get much done unless the chamber agrees on its rules, and with some GOP lawmakers pledging to oppose the package up for a vote this afternoon, pressure groups have stepped in to make clear there will be consequences if it turns into a standoff.

Hours before McCarthy formally was elected, Texas’s Tony Gonzales said he would oppose the rules package, reportedly over McCarthy’s willingness to cut spending to the defense department:

That’s prompted conservative group FreedomWorks to make this threat:

As with the speaker vote, the package will need 218 votes to pass, and all 212 Democrats are likely to oppose it. That means the GOP can only lose six votes – and they’re already down one.

The White House has accused Republicans of wanting to “defund the military” as the new House majority makes clear that across-the-board spending cuts will be a major part of their agenda in the upcoming Congress.

Here’s what White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates is telling the media, according to USA Today:

It’s almost certain that Republicans will use the House’s powers of investigation to go after Hunter Biden, in a bid to cast his father’s presidency as corrupt. And while there are indeed unanswered questions Hunter Biden’s foreign business entanglements, the Guardian’s David Smith reports that the strategy is not without risks for the GOP:

When Borat – alias British actor Sacha Baron Cohen – told risque jokes about Donald Trump and antisemitism at last month’s Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, Joe Biden was not the only one laughing in a red velvet-lined balcony.

Sitting behind the US president was Hunter Biden wearing black tie and broad smile that mirrored those of his father.

The image captured the intimacy between the men but also the sometimes awkward status of Hunter as both private citizen and privileged son of a president. It is a dichotomy likely to come under a harsh public glare this year as congressional Republicans set about making Hunter a household name and staple of the news cycle.

Even some Republicans regard the idea of the GOP-controlled House impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the Biden administration’s muddled and increasingly harsh handling of the US-Mexico border as ridiculous.

Outgoing Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (who will be succeeded by one of Donald Trump’s old press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she’s sworn in tomorrow, becoming the first female governor of the state), shot down any suggestion, on Fox Business this morning, that impeaching Mayorkas is a good plan.

As Axios reminds us, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last November threatened to launch an “impeachment inquiry” into Mayorkas over his handling of border policy – if he does not resign.

Mayorkas has dismissed the idea of him quitting, of course.

Hutchinson told Fox that “impeachment proceedings should not be based upon policy…it should be based on wrongdoing.

“And so whenever there’s failed policy, let’s investigate and have hearings on that and try to change that policy. That, to me, should be the approach of the Republican Congress,” he added.

US president Joe Biden visited the border yesterday for the first time as president, spending a few hours in El Paso, Texas, which has been the scene of some misery of late with an increase in irregular crossings of the border and migrants having nowhere to stay, amid freezing temperatures.

Biden did not meet with any asylum seekers during his visit.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain has rung alarm bells via Twitter on what Republicans in the House might try to do as they try to force deep national spending cuts.

Here’s Klain after Florida Republican representative Michael Waltz went on Fox.

Earlier, Waltz told Fox: “We have to get spending under control.”

But amid discussions about defense spending cuts, he added that that was not his primary target and he was not going to press for cuts “on the backs of our troops.”

He added: “We can work on reprioritizing defense spending but that’s nibbling around the margins. If you really want to talk about spending, it’s the entitlements program – that’s 70% of the entire budget … if you want to talk about big reforms, I look forward to hearing that from those folks who are pushing towards a balanced budget.”

Social security is the federal US social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability and survivor benefits, while Medicare is chiefly the government health insurance program for those 65 and older.

The Washington Post warned in a piece at the weekend that: House Republicans are set to steer the country toward a series of fiscal showdowns as they look to force the White House to agree to massive spending cuts, threatening a return to the political brinkmanship that once nearly crippled the economy and almost plunged the US government into default.

In a Guardian interview before he retired, Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth told our Chris Stein last month that the Republican party is now so extreme it could cause the world’s largest economy to default on its debt for the first time ever in its quest to extract concessions from the Biden administration.

It’s a lively day in Washington, even though Joe Biden is on trip to Mexico City, where he’ll meet with the leaders of Mexico and Canada for talks.

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, it’s new House speaker McCarthy’s first day of business with the gavel in his grasp after his epic struggle to get the votes to put him in that position as last Friday turned over into the early minutes of Saturday.

Here’s where things stand:

• US president Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador have issued a joint statement condemning yesterday’s attack on Brazil’s congress and presidential palace by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro.

• The special grand jury in Georgia has concluded its examination of Donald Trump’s alleged election meddling in the state, where he made efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. There are further stages to go through before prosecutor Fani Willis decides whether to indict Trump on criminal charges.

• House Republican leadership apparently does not want a repeat of last week’s dysfunction in the chamber, when it took 15 rounds of voting over four days to elect a speaker. They’re now racing to make sure moderate GOP lawmakers lend their vote on a crucial package of rules for governing the House.

• The House will convene at 5pm eastern time to vote on the rules package, typically a customary but crucial step for operating the chamber, with votes due after that.

Should the rule package pass, the new Republican House majority will be able to get down to business, and their first priority will be undoing part of one of Joe Biden’s biggest legislative achievements.

They’ve scheduled an initial vote later today on the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act, which would rescind almost all of the new funding to the Internal Revenue Service tax authority provided by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRS has been underfunded for years, and the money was intended to help the agency modernize and better crack down on tax cheats.

The GOP opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, and tried to stoke outrage by telling voters the money would be used to hire tens of thousands or armed IRS agents – which mostly turned out not to be true.

Whether or not this passes, expect more legislation of this sort aimed at undoing the legacy of Biden’s two years of united government.

Election meddling has consequences, and for proof of that, look no further than the now-concluded special grand jury investigation into what Donald Trump and his allies were up to in Georgia in the wake of the 2020 election.

It’s unclear if Trump himself could face charges based on what the jurors determine, but they’ve already informed several of his allies they are targets of its investigation. These include Rudy Giuliani, one of his most prominent attorneys, as well as Georgia Republican party chair David Shafer and state senator Brandon Beach.

It’s far from the only investigation into Trump, or his campaign to stop Joe Biden from taking office. The justice department is investigating that as well as the violent insurrection on January 6, and both cases have been handed to special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smith is also expected to decided whether to bring charges against Trump and others over the government secrets discovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

There are reasons to believe the special grand jury investigation in Georgia is the most immediate threat Trump is facing. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Chris McGreal as to why that might be: