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House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) on Sunday said “the keys have been handed over to extremists” after the House elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to the Speakership.

“It is exactly the American people and the solutions they need to meet the challenges that were completely left out of the Speaker’s chaos we saw this week. It not only endangered our country’s national security, but it also showed that the keys have been handed over to extremists,” Clark told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

Clark underlined the unity of Democrats in their agenda after the party banded together to vote for Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) in the successive contests with McCarthy.

The Republican won the top House leadership slot early Saturday after flipping a number of holdouts who had stalled any candidate from getting the needed majority of votes, making concessions to hard-liners in negotiations on the rules package.

Pressed Sunday on whether Democrats could find some common ground with the GOP in some of the concessions, like tweaks to the amending process for legislation proposals, Clark said the matter was a “smoke screen.”

“When they talk about process, that is a smoke screen,” Clark said.

“All the talk about process and amendments and germaneness, that is cover for what they’re really trying to do, which is dismantle the equities of our economy. And to make sure that their billionaire buddies continue to thrive at the expense of hard working American families,” the new House minority whip added.

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Original story HERE.

The dramatic fight to secure the U.S. House speakership for California’s Rep. Kevin McCarthy is far from the final conflict that will face the newly sworn in Congress, according to its Democratic minority whip.

“When they talk about process, that is a smoke screen,” U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday. “They’ve already put this out there. This is their written agenda that they had put forward during the midterms: that they are going to use the debt ceiling as leverage to take American seniors hostage. This is their plan.”

The congresswoman was speaking to Tapper about the many concessions McCarthy reportedly made to secure the 218 voters required to replace outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the podium.

Among them, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the so-called far-right Freedom Caucus told Tapper, was a promise to not raise the debt ceiling without first coming up with a way to reduce spending.

According to Roy, his party has no intention of touching “the benefits” going to those on Medicare or Social Security, “but we all have to be honest about sitting at the table and figuring out how we’re going to make those work and how we’re to deal with defense spending and how we’re going to deal with non-defense spending.”

Clark said Republicans have been telling a different story for months: that Medicare and Social Security are very much at risk under the leadership of McCarthy and considering the arrangements he had to make in order to hold the speaker’s gavel.

“They voted to raise the debt ceiling three times under the Trump administration. This is all about forcing us to make cuts to Social Security where the hard earned earnings of Americans reside and Medicare so that they can, you know, enact that in the middle of a crisis,” she said.

“That is taking our seniors hostage, we have to be clear about this,” she continued. “All the talk about process, and amendments and germaneness, that is cover for what they really want to do and which is to dismantle the equities of our economy and to make sure that their billionaire buddies continue to thrive at the expense of hardworking families.”

Concerns over the future of Social Security and Medicare seemed to be in the forefront of President Joe Biden’s mind this week as well. In a Saturday release congratulating McCarthy on his successful election to the speakership, Biden noted that the American people expect the government to actually get some work done and that the economy has been improving.

“It’s imperative that we continue that economic progress, not set it back. It is imperative that we protect Social Security and Medicare, not slash them. It is imperative that we defend our national security, not defund it. These are some of the choices before us,” Biden said.

The debt ceiling must be raised after July 1 if the federal government is going to meet its financial obligations. It will need to fund federal agencies and programs as of October 1.

A similar fight in 2011 resulted in a reduction in the country’s credit rating by Standard & Poor, the first ever such downgrade, despite the fact former President Barack Obama managed to end the stalemate by agreeing to a $2 trillion deficit reduction over 10 years.

Current projections show the debt will rise by at about $1 trillion per year for the next 10 years. The country’s debt currently totals over $31 trillion.

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Original story HERE. 

Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark took several jabs at House Republicans Thursday amid the continued chaos surrounding the party and its discord about whether to elect Representative Kevin McCarthy to the speakership.

Following two days of consecutive losses for the post, due to a group of vocal party dissidents, McCarthy continued to seek the position Thursday. He reportedly made concessions to the hard-right group in the process, in a bid to lock down a deal.

But as the eighth vote for speaker got underway in the afternoon, Clark — not for the first time that day — highlighted the lack of unity among Republicans, reading out on the House floor the number of consistent votes New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries received from Democrats during previous rounds.

The same, she pointed out, could not be said for McCarthy.

“212. 212. 212. 212. 212. 212,” she said. “And today, 212.”

Clark then ticked off a number of proposals that Democrats have supported, from equal pay for women to universal child care. After each item, she noted how Republicans responded to the measures: “They said no.”

Eventually, others in the chamber joined in, repeating the mantra.

“It is our job, and our responsibility, to elect a speaker who stands with [the American people],” she said. “And with great pride, I nominate Hakeem Jeffries.”

During a press conference earlier in the day, Clark highlighted how the party’s disconnect is paralyzing Congress, referring to the third day of votes being cast — a historic deadlock roiling Republicans — as “Groundhog Day.”

While House Democrats are united behind Jeffries as minority leader, and their agenda for the term, “House Republicans are in historic turmoil,” said Clark, who was elected as the new Democratic whip in November.

She cast attention on the rebels — many of them members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who have rallied behind former president Donald Trump — for handing McCarthy a series of humiliating defeats in recent days.

“Unable to organize, unable to govern, unable to lead,” Clark said. “Years of blindly pursuing power, currying the favor of special interests, and bowing to election deniers has left the GOP in shambles.”

On the other hand, Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that the debate on display last week is “what a healthy democracy actually requires” and is a good sign for the new Congress.  

“I understand the American people’s concern with the delay in electing a Speaker. Certainly it’s going to be a challenge to have a conference full of independent thinkers with a thin majority. But not only did the Framers of our Constitution expect us to debate the operations of the House … that’s what a healthy democracy actually requires,” Barr said. 

And Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on “State of the Union” said Congress needs conflict in order to get lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to the debate table.  

McCarthy, who has failed to secure the votes needed to become speaker, essentially blocking the chamber from performing its work, wasn’t spared by Clark. She said the California Republican is “being held hostage to his own ambitions by the dangerous members that he’s enabled.”

“Let’s look at the extremists who have taken over,” Clark said. “[Colorado Representative] Lauren Boebert is whipping votes, MTG [Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene] is their spokesperson, and [Florida Representative] Matt Gaetz is negotiating the rules.”

Boebert, who has repeatedly voted against McCarthy for speaker and rejected Trump’s call to support him for the post, made headlines alongside fellow hardline Republicans in recent days for their vocal opposition.

On the House floor Wednesday, she continued to voice opposition and urged Trump to tell McCarthy to drop out of the race.

“Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us, even having my favorite president call us and tell us ‘We need to knock this off,’” she said. “I think it actually needs to be reversed.”

She continued her argument during television appearances Wednesday night, interviews that frustrated both MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle and Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who said he felt like he was “getting an answer from a liberal” over her tactics.

But, Clark said during the press conference, the mark left by the former president — despite him appearing to lose control of his supporters — remains, as evidenced by the divided vote for speaker.

“Some on the other side of the aisle have campaigned to standing up to the crazy in their party, but their deference at this point to MAGA Republicans — their outreach to try and get power for Kevin McCarthy at any expense — is paving the way for the policies that directly assault American families,” said Clark, who listed a national abortion ban as one example.

She ended her brief speech by touching on the deadly attack on the Capitol two years ago.

“Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. It is a dark day for our country, but the pinnacle of what has become the Republican Party,” Clark said. “Our message to the American people is that House Democrats stand together with you. We will stand together to fight for progress, to put your voice back in the halls of Congress, and for our democracy.”

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Original story HERE.

Representative Katherine Clark will be sworn in as the U.S. House minority whip Tuesday, becoming the second-highest ranking Democrat in the House and the highest-ranking woman.

The Revere Democrat told GBH’s Morning Edition co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel that she is looking forward to being part of a slightly younger and more diverse Democratic leadership.

“From the Democratic side, we are excited for the session ahead,” Clark said. “We have a historically diverse new members coming in. More women, LGBTQ, people of color, than ever before. And we are united in putting people over politics and making sure that we are continuing to fight for families, lowering their costs, creating great jobs, and working for safer communities.”

The former leaders — Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip James Clyburn, were all in their 80s. Incoming Democratic House leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is 52, while Clark is 59 and third-ranking Democrat Rep. Pete Aguilar is 43.

That means they’ve spent their adulthood talking to their children about issues like gun violence and climate change, Clark said, and keenly aware of how unaffordable childcare and a lack of comprehensive parental leave can affect families.

“I think that we are representative of generational change,” she said. “We reflect America. When you have women like myself at the leadership table, the priorities change. When you have members that look like the people of our district, that elevates their voices. And that's the approach we're taking: Let's put the American people front and center.”

Abortion and reproductive rights will also be high on the Democrats’ list of priorities, she said, though she did not offer specifics.

“And we can already see that the GOP continues their chaotic reign, and we don't know what's going to happen with that," Clark said.

As whip, Clark’s job will be making sure her party has the necessary votes to pass bills that are priority for the party’s leadership.

Democrats lost their narrow House majority in November. Republicans are expected to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House Tuesday.

“We're going to do everything we can to find ways to work across the aisle," Clark said of working with Republicans. "But we're going to keep our focus on making sure that we not only look and reflect the American people, but that we are pushing their priorities here in Congress.”

Clark said she will be looking for opportunities to work with Republicans, but said the party’s priorities are not in line with hers.

“When I look at Kevin McCarthy, I see someone who has thrown away any sort of moral compass,” Clark said. “He is trying to get power for power's sake, not to be a good governor of what we need to do here in Congress to find solutions for people back home. And so it is not surprising to me that he also tolerates someone like George Santos, who has lied his way to Congress.”

“We have our work set out for us, but we are going to continue to fight for the American people to put their priorities first, to look for partners in that work,” she continued. “But we are also going to draw a line in the sand against the extremism that we're seeing from the GOP.”

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Original story HERE.

November 1 was, by Representative Katherine Clark’s standards, a perfect day in the life of a legislator. The Massachusetts Democrat began her public appearances that afternoon at a child development lab and day care in suburban Boston, reading to toddlers and admiring their art projects as she made her case for universal childcare and paid family leave. It ended in the same spirit, at a small forum with progressive business owners in Boston—no babies this time, but discussing, once again, the need for an expanded safety net for families and working parents.

The November midterms were a week away, but Clark wasn’t really campaigning. She would wallop her GOP challenger the following Tuesday by almost 48 points. Instead, her mind was fixed on another election: Democrats’ leadership contests, in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies were expected to step aside. “I love to brag that I’m the second-highest–ranking woman to Nancy Pelosi,” Clark told the business owners at the forum that night. She wouldn’t dare say aloud what she expected to be after the November elections: the very highest.

There’s nothing historic about Clark’s ascent to her caucus’s number two slot, minority whip, which she secured in late November. That distinction belongs to Hakeem Jeffries, the Brooklyn-based Democrat who became the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress. But being the first woman to follow in Pelosi’s stilettos carries its own significance—albeit a subtle one, much like Clark herself. Pelosi rose through the ranks in an era of shoulder-padded feminism, when women broke the glass ceiling by playing a man’s game in a man’s world. Clark, meanwhile, has staked her political career on femininity, both by raising up the traditionally women-centric issues of childcare and paid family leave and in how she leads—a quieter, more collaborative approach, a sort of anti-Lean In. (No shade to the prior generation, of course: “Speaker Pelosi is iconic,” Clark told me. “She has opened the door for so many of us to come in, and mold leadership and our own styles and new traditions that we can set for Congress.”)

Pelosi stepped away from the speakership after the November midterms, announcing to her colleagues that “the hour’s come for a new generation to lead.” In contrast to the messy, public fights among their Republican counterparts, Democrats pulled off a bloodless changing of the guard. And thanks to her uncontested campaign to become whip, will Clark, a Pelosi protégé and a master of congressional Kremlinology, really represent much of a new direction? “We know that when women are at the leadership table, in leadership roles, those priorities do change,” Clark told me. “Nancy Pelosi is a master of the legislative process.”

“That leadership style is one that I am going to model and work from as I make my own path.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Being a working mother defined Katherine Clark’s political career. She prosecuted cases on behalf of child victims as a young lawyer and worked for Massachusetts’s Office of Child Care Services after she earned a public policy degree from Harvard. Clark entered politics the way mothers often do: running for school board. That led to a couple of terms in the Massachusetts statehouse. When Ed Markey replaced John Kerry in the Senate, she won his congressional seat in a 2013 special election. Clark joined the House about a year after Jeffries and one year ahead of California’s Pete Aguilar, the last member of Democrats’ new House leadership trifecta.

Clark’s legislative portfolio reflects that career as well as her lived experience, which are often intertwined: universal childcare, paid family leave, and maternal health. She’s a strident advocate for abortion rights because she suffered a miscarriage—and the care she received for it has become harder to access in a post-Roe world. She’s been squashed in the sandwich generation, raising her three teenagers as she took care of a mother with Alzheimer’s and a father who suffered a stroke. Returning home from Washington each week forced a painful choice: relieve her husband from parental duties or check in on her parents—to remind her mother, yet again, why her father could no longer communicate with her? “I remember literally sitting in the driveway—my parents lived next door—and not knowing which house to go into,” she recalled. “When I look at women’s leadership in Congress, those experiences matter.”

Indeed, Clark set herself to cultivating a gang of such leaders when she got to Congress. She and five other House Democratic women call themselves “the Pink Ladies,” a nod to the musical Grease and inspired by the time five of them wore pink outfits to the State of the Union address in 2015. When Clark was vice recruitment chair for the House Democrats’ campaign arm during the 2018 midterm elections, she sought a number of women candidates for battleground seats—nearly all of whom won in a milestone election that delivered the most women ever to Congress. “I hate to use the word ‘nurture’ because a lot of times you don’t use the word ‘nurture’ with men, but she cares about people,” said fellow Pink Lady and former Representative Cheri Bustos.

Clark, a striking 5-foot-11, often eschews power suits for a cosmopolitan business casual, spending that November day around Boston in a knee-length forest green dress with a black leather jacket and black boots. She wears her shoulder-length silver hair down, with the white streaks near her face tucked behind her ears. Clark wrote about “THE POLITICS OF GOING GRAY” in a January 2022 op-ed that wrestled with the sexism that decision elicited. “It was a painful reminder of just how ingrained traditional beauty standards are in our culture and the double standards women face,” Clark wrote. “America has been led almost exclusively by gray-haired men for more than two and [a] half centuries.”

And then there’s her approach on leadership. “The traditional style in Washington is very top-down,” Clark explained. “We are very seniority-driven and we have hierarchies. And my style is different than that—while respecting that.” (When talking with Clark, a complimentary chaser often follows any potential breach of collegiality.) “But I see my style as one that is really based on collaboration, based on listening,” she added. “Some would say, ‘Well, it’s soft power.’ But soft power is power.”

Is Pelosi that way? “Speaker Pelosi broke the mold,” Clark replied. “She is the first woman speaker. She has been iconic and historic. And I have learned so much from her.” I asked the question again. “Well, I think she certainly came up through that system that has been very traditional male and very traditional top-down,” she responded diplomatically. “But there’s more than one way to lead, and that’s what she has shown.”

“Pelosi is intense when she’s trying to get something over the finish line,” said Representative Jim McGovern, a close Clark ally. “Katherine’s every bit as determined, but, you know, a little bit less intense.” When I posed the question to Bustos, she said didn’t see Clark and Pelosi as too similar. “Guys typically aren’t compared that way, right? They’re two very different people.”

You’d be forgiven if this is the first time you’ve heard of Katherine Clark. Or maybe you have, and you’ve forgotten—she has a common name, after all. The Massachusetts congressional delegation is already chock-full of marquee progressive women, such as liberal stalwart Elizabeth Warren and Squad darling Ayanna Pressley. Clark shies away from making any showy marks with her rhetoric, which hews toward a mad lib of inoffensive political platitudes.

Don’t let the game face fool you. Clark has been called “the most powerful woman in the Capitol you’ve probably never heard of” in the press and the “silent assassin” by her colleagues. When her fellow House Democrats are out doing MSNBC hits, Clark is “a little bit of an enigma because she just quietly does the work,” said Erin O’Brien, a professor of political science at UMass Boston who has closely followed Clark’s career. From the initial days of her time in Congress, Clark focused on building relationships, raising campaign funds, and helping her colleagues pick opportunistic spots on policy—an approach not dissimilar to that of Pelosi, who identified Clark early on as part of the generation of leadership to succeed her. She and the speaker were often the only two women in the room, bound together as they advocated on behalf of legislation for women and families. Pelosi doesn’t pick sides in contested leadership fights, but embraced Clark when she ascended to House Democrats’ fourth-highest slot after the 2020 elections and again to the whip post in 2022.

Clark spent the interim two years practicing what ends up being the core of House Democratic leadership: how to keep the often-disarrayed Democrats together, a frequent headache during the party’s fight over Biden’s economic agenda. The task before her now is to keep her party unified as it battles to preserve democracy. “I think that’s my job,” Clark said. “To tell you the truth, even though my reputation is like, ‘She’s really nice’—I am really nice. But also, we don’t have time for it.” She paused. “We do not have time for it,” she repeated emphatically.

There was a time when Clark, like the woman who preceded her, would have prided herself on bipartisanship. Her arrival in Congress in a special election put her at the bottom of seniority, and she found her earliest legislative success working on opioid-related bills with GOP lawmakers; one of the first to become law was sponsored by Mitch McConnell, then the Senate majority leader. She built relationships with her Republican colleagues on elevator rides, the way parents do with teenage children on long drives: Boredom and lack of eye contact elicit confessions. “There were definitely a lot of Republicans who told me they weren’t on board with a lot of what Donald Trump was doing,” she recalled. “But they were gonna vote for him because they feared for a primary, they feared for angering the base.” (If it wasn’t obvious yet, it is not Clarkian to name names.) But after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the tenor of those conversations changed. “It has made it very difficult to continue some of those relationships,” she said.

Clark and her fellow next generation of House Democratic leaders are, on average, a full three decades younger than the outgoing Big Three. There are times that is glaringly obvious, such as when Jeffries quoted the Notorious B.I.G. in his remarks as a manager of Trump’s first impeachment. But for the most part, they sound a lot like the octogenarians they’re replacing. Jeffries, for example, got his reps in quashing intraparty rebellions this cycle through a PAC that fended off left-flank challengers.

But Clark and her colleagues have risen through the political ranks in an era of polarization and political violence unseen since some of the country’s darkest days. In past eras, interparty tensions among mostly male, mostly white lawmakers might be resolved over a beer or a Scotch at the end of day. But that’s not the world in which Clark and her colleagues operate, especially within a Congress with more women and lawmakers of color than ever. The historically diverse Democratic caucus in a historically chaotic moment might just call for what Clark is offering: a predictable consensus builder with a twenty-first–century set of tactics—and the blessing of the predecessor.

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Original story HERE.

When Nancy Pelosi steps down as speaker of the House in early January, Democratic Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts will succeed her as the highest ranking woman in her party’s House leadership. Newly chosen as minority whip, Clark will be the number-two House Democratic leader.

Between the two women lies a generation gap — Pelosi is 82, Clark, 59 — that spans seismic changes for women in politics since Pelosi came to town in 1987. The most obvious signs of progress: Pelosi became the first woman speaker, and the number of women in Congress has grown nearly sixfold, from 25 in 1987 to 147 now.

But the two also personify an important shift in how women gain and use political power: Pelosi first took elective office at age 47, running for Congress as a Democrat from California only after her five children were grown. Clark sought office for the first time at 38, running for Melrose school board while her children were still school age.

Amid a decades-long battle for gender equity in employment and parenting roles, women today are less likely than in Pelosi’s generation to postpone their political careers for child rearing — a shift Pelosi tried to foster by encouraging young women to run.

That is true in many professions, but it has particularly far-reaching consequences in Congress. There, power is largely allocated by seniority, so the sooner politicians get started on their careers and the longer they serve, the more power they accumulate. Men have a leg up because they enter politics at a younger age than women, largely because women bear the greater child care burden.

Pelosi was 47 when she arrived in the House and 66 when she became speaker. Her predecessor, Republican Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, was 28 when first elected, 45 when he became speaker. Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of California is in line to become speaker in the new Congress at age 57; he was 37 when he got started in the California Legislature.

In the 116th Congress (2019-21), the average age for all members was 47; the average age for women was 64, according to Represent Women, a group that works to increase women’s presence in politics. But there are signs the age gap is dwindling: Looking just at the freshman women in the 116th Congress, the average age was 46, down from 50.2 in the 113th Congress (2013-15).

Woman candidates now benefit from a panoply of women’s political groups. EMILY’s List is the behemoth, established in 1985 to support prochoice woman Democrats.

Pelosi had none of that help getting started, at a time when ambitious women fought to rise through male-dominated party organizations. Pelosi was hand picked to succeed the late Representative Sala Burton — widow of the storied California powerbroker Phillip Burton — after her death.

Consider the different path followed by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. A bartender and former volunteer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, she blindsided and beat a 10-term Democratic incumbent in a 2018 primary. That kind of insurgency outside the “old boys network” is now easier due to the proliferation of social media and non-party activist groups like MoveOn and Our Revolution.

But conventional power structures still matter, and Clark’s rise in Massachusetts politics methodically followed a textbook path through the state hierarchy. Elected to her school board in 2001, Clark later served in the state House of Representatives and state Senate. She won a special election to the US House in 2013.

Her three sons were all under 18 at the time; she was also caring for her ailing parents living next door. That experience fueled her interest in issues like child care, family leave, and pay equity for women.

“When Congress was in session, I would return at the end of the week from Washington, D.C., not sure where I was needed more: help my husband with the pressures of our busy family or care for my aging parents,” she wrote in a 2021 Globe op-ed. “Often, I ended the week in tears.”

Obviously, Congress today is far from devoid of sexism. Still, Pelosi — having made her mark on Democrats’ agenda, fundraising, and strategy for longer than Clark has been in Congress — is leaving American politics a more welcoming place for the next generation of women to rise.

Correction: An earlier version of this column named the wrong city where Katherine Clark ran for school board. It was Melrose.

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Original story HERE.