On this episode of Neutral, I want to have a candid discussion about the 118th Congress,

Speaker Kevin McCarthy's agenda, and talk a little bit about what's happening with

all the new members and sort of remarkable Congress, and I want to give you my observations

having taken over the House back in 1995.

Watching Speaker McCarthy and his team, it's a very different situation for a lot of reasons.

We were a tidal wave election picking up 54 seats and coming out of nowhere when no

one expected it to win the first majority in 40 years, Kevin had the challenge of people

expecting a huge victory, including me.

I was as wrong as anybody else.

So there was a certain loss of energy and enthusiasm for a couple days because they won,

but they won by a really narrow margin, and then it occurred to people, oh, that was

exactly the same margin as Nancy Pelosi had last Congress.

It's exactly the same margin that John Boehner had at one point, and it is one vote bigger

than the margin that Danny Hasterd had at one point.

So it wasn't quite as unique a situation.

It began to stabilize a number of members figured out, legitimately, that they had enough

room to really leverage the leadership because the margin was so small the leadership couldn't

afford to lose anybody.

And so you had this remarkable public episode where a group mostly on the right banded together

20 of them in all led by about five people who are really aggressive.

They basically said, look, we're not going to give Kevin the votes on the floor.

Now, they'd gone to the conference during the organizing phase.

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