Avoids taking sides

McCarthy avoids taking sides in split between defense and fiscal hawks

By Austin Wright

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), favored to be the next House speaker, is urging a more muscular U.S. response to Russian aggression and the Islamic State — but is carefully avoiding taking sides in the budget debate that has divided Republican defense and fiscal hawks.

McCarthy gave the keynote address at an event Monday hosted by the John Hay Initiative, a group of conservative defense experts who are pushing for hundreds of billions of dollars in additional defense spending over the next decade. The current House majority leader walked a fine line, endorsing the group’s underlying foreign policy vision but steering clear of any discussion of how much money would be required to pay for it.

McCarthy’s speech, scheduled before Speaker John Boehner announced his plan to resign from Congress at the end of October, comes at a sensitive time for McCarthy.

To become the next House speaker, he’ll have to bridge the divide between two powerful forces in the GOP: the defense hawks who’ve threatened to oppose budgets that shortchange the Pentagon and the tea party-backed fiscal hawks who worked to undermine Boehner in part because they believed he didn’t do enough to rein in federal spending.

McCarthy’s decision to keynote the event also signals that as House speaker he would likely be more engaged in foreign policy and defense matters than Boehner, who largely deferred to other lawmakers on such issues.

In his address, McCarthy called on the Obama administration to start providing lethal aid to Ukraine and said the administration should consider deploying special forces troops to Iraq.

"Stop turning a blind eye to Russian aggression,” he said. “It is time for America to step up — not back down — and that starts with providing Ukrainian fighting forces [with] lethal aid."

He also knocked President Barack Obama for engaging with Russia just hours before Obama is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

“The president’s response to Putin’s aggression should not be to sit down and talk — but to consider serious sanctions that target him, the oligarchs who sustain his reign and their cronies that help them avoid sanctions,” McCarthy said.

In addition, he urged the United States to establish a no-fly zone in Syria.

“We should work with our allies to establish a no-fly zone over northern Syria,” McCarthy said. “This could stem the flow of refugees and allow sanctuary for rebooted Syrian rebels to take on ISIS- and Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and prevent Assad’s attacks on his own people.”