House minority leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday pledged to do everything in his power to prevent Democrats in Congress from approving President Joe Biden-sponsored multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure and welfare plans.
But now that the House Democrats appear to have settled their differences and voted to move those plans forward, it’s not clear what McCarthy can do.
“It will be over my body because I will do everything in our power to stop it,” said the Republican leader on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” when asked if he expected that by September Trillions of new issues to be passed by Congress.
Urged what that opposition would entail, McCarthy suggested that two conservative Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, could potentially “slow it down”.
He also railed against a group of moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives who had previously raised concerns about the $ 3.5 trillion budget bill but who voted in lockstep with the party on Tuesday evening to move it forward.
“Before that I thought it was possible to stop it,” McCarthy said earlier in an interview.
McCarthy accused the Democrats of fully embracing socialism after the party line voted on Tuesday. The centrists who have “folded”, he said, “will not be re-elected.”
The remarks come just a year after the 2022 midterm elections, as Democrats hope to maintain their slim majority in Congress and Republicans seek to regain control of the House of Representatives.
McCarthy also reiterated his opposition to the Senate-approved infrastructure plan supported by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
When asked if he could derail the $ 1 trillion bipartisan bill, McCarthy said, “I don’t know until the vote takes place.”
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McCarthy spokesmen did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for additional information about its future strategy.
The procedural motion, passed 220-212 on Tuesday evening in a special session convened during the August recess, allows Democrats to draft and approve the massive Republican-free spending bill.
It also includes a no-obligation commitment from the House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California, to vote on the Infrastructure Act by September 27th. This deadline was supposed to appease the nine center Democrats who wanted to vote on infrastructure first and then consider the partisan budget decision.
