The AFR View
How Canberra can ride out the Congress car crash
Australia has to invest in long-term relationships, many of which rely on institutions that remind us of the glory days of American democracy.
American politics clocked up another first this week when members of the lower chamber sacked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. It’s an event that will reverberate way beyond Capitol Hill.
A fractious and dysfunctional Congress adds to the mayhem in the run-up to the US presidential and congressional elections in November next year. It also makes it less likely the world’s greatest democracy will steer some time soon to a safe mooring between an overly hawkish approach hell-bent on antagonising China and an isolationist force that abandons Ukraine.
America’s friends – and Australia likes to think we have an especially warm bilateral relationship – have to cling on to this political rollercoaster as best we can while continuing to invest in links to other US institutions. Australia’s growing military and critical mineral partnerships with Washington, for instance, will serve our interests for years to come. They can’t be taken for granted, as demonstrated by a Congressional paper reported by James Curran and Andrew Tillett this week that shows not all are on board with AUKUS.
At a geopolitical level, Australia needs to be in sync with the US to help maintain the “strategic equilibrium” Foreign Minister Penny Wong seeks in the Indo-Pacific. All of this must go on, even amid what is going down in Washington. As former ambassador Joe Hockey writes, the blood and guts of the sausage-making machine are on display. It’s hard to look away.
The ousting of Mr McCarthy reveals just how polarised Congress has become. It took just eight Republicans to unseat the controversial Speaker after he reached a deal with the Democrats to extend the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown.
None of the 208 House Democrats chose to support Mr McCarthy when it came to the vote, even though he had braved the wrath of his party’s hard right by dropping demands for deep spending cuts to avert the shutdown. So much for reaching across the aisle.
Certainly, someone should be calling out the Biden administration’s profligate spending. As our Washington correspondent, Matthew Cranston, notes, the country’s $US33 trillion ($52 trillion) debt means that by 2053, interest payments will consume close to 40 per cent of government revenue.
The Biden administration has embarked on the biggest spending spree since Franklin Roosevelt. There has been almost $US8 trillion in new spending in the past few years, including the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, the $US370 billion stimulus campaign that is feeding inflationary forces, and the Chips and Science Act, which is largely a subsidy to help US companies better their Chinese counterparts.
Ukraine the loser
But ultimately, the main concession forced on to the Biden government related to US funding for the war in Ukraine. In an ominous sign for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the bill Mr McCarthy died in a ditch for excludes any new aid for Ukraine.
In the months immediately after Russia’s invasion, support for Ukraine had been one of the few points on which Republicans and Democrats agreed. The Republican hard right is no longer part of that consensus. The presidential candidates most Republican Party members support in next year’s race, led by arch isolationist and occasional Putin admirer Donald Trump, are also not in favour of further support.
Since the Russian invasion in February last year, Congress has approved about $US66 billion in aid for Ukraine, including $US43 billion in military assistance. After the events of this week, President Joe Biden’s plans to spend another $US6 billion are on ice. There is little left in the kitty. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan predicted a “sliding scale of disruption” from the start of this month if Congress did not authorise the additional billions. With Matt Gaetz and his followers adamant on the need for more spending cuts, it is unlikely the next Speaker will give the go-ahead to additional aid.
European democracies will be watching nervously. They can ill afford to boost their support for Ukraine, but nor can they stomach a Russian victory in a war that is effectively on their doorstep.
Australia is a long way from the action, but also needs an America that is engaged with the rest of the world. For that reason, Australia’s gaze cannot be absorbed by the Congress car crash. We must continue to invest in long-term relationships, many of which rely on institutions that are a reminder of the glory days of American democracy.
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