Conservative Rebellion Involving Gas-Stove Bill Made Little Sense

Editors at National Review Online pan a decision from some U.S. House Republicans that helped tank a worthwhile bill.

Eleven Republican House members voted against a bill they support because they’re disappointed in the debt-ceiling deal. A procedural vote to advance legislation prohibiting gas-stove bans failed on Tuesday by a vote of 206 to 220 when those eleven Republicans joined most Democrats to stop it. What exactly they proved by doing so is not clear.

We’re not thrilled with the debt-ceiling deal either, and it’s fair to say that Republican leaders oversold it. It fails to address the long-term driver of the national debt, mandatory spending on entitlements. It doesn’t include most of the solid provisions from the initial bill that the united GOP conference passed in April. On balance, Speaker Kevin McCarthy played his weak hand well, getting President Biden to abandon his no-negotiations stance and getting a deal done ahead of schedule to avoid a possible default, but we don’t begrudge any GOP member of Congress who voted against the deal.

And many GOP members of Congress did, in fact, vote against the deal. In the House, 71 Republicans voted against it, and in the Senate, 31 did so. Leadership did not expect the conference to unite behind the deal, which was as much the Democrats’ problem as the Republicans’ problem. Democrats control the White House and the Senate, and they needed to supply votes for the deal their party’s leader negotiated.

If House leadership had whipped the GOP conference hard about voting for the deal, the dissenters on the gas-stove measure would have more of a point. …

… To follow that up by voting against their conscience on the gas-stove measure makes little sense. Republicans control the House of Representatives, only barely. Democrats control the Senate, only barely. And Joe Biden is in the White House. In that environment, where most conservative priorities have little chance of being signed into law, the House should consider its primary job to be inhibiting Joe Biden’s agenda.