| Good morning, Early Birds. Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan turns 97 today. Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried turns 31. Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here. Thanks for waking up with us. In today's edition … Oversight Committee Dems call on GOP to denounce white nationalism … Daines walks Trump, establishment tightrope … What we're watching: Republicans expected to force vote to overturn D.C. crime law on Wednesday … but first … | | |  | On the Hill | | Oversight Committee Dems call on GOP to denounce white nationalism |  Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) during a Feb. 8 hearing on Capitol Hill. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) | | | First in The Early: The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee sent a letter to the panel's chairman Sunday night accusing committee Republicans of using language that echoes the white-nationalist "great replacement theory" during hearings this year and asking them to sign a pledge to denounce white nationalism. In the letter to Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), exclusively obtained by The Early 202, ranking Democrat Jamie B. Raskin (Md.), wrote: "I write to follow up on my request that the Committee's Republican Members join me and Committee Democrats in denouncing white nationalism and white supremacy, and the use of related conspiracy theories, including the 'Great Replacement' theory, during Committee hearings and in all our work together." Raskin, in the letter, includes a draft pledge signed by all Democrats and encourages Republicans to sign. Raskin argues that "dangerous and conspiratorial rhetoric echoing the racist and nativist tropes peddled by white supremacists and right-wing extremists" has been used by some Republicans during committee hearings, particularly ones involving immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. The letter doesn't mention any specific Republican lawmakers, but it references comments calling immigrants coming over the border an "invasion," which were made by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Chip Roy (R-Tex.) and Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.). It also points to a comment by Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), who asked at a Feb. 7 hearing whether Democrats' answer to border issues is "changing our culture." | Meet the McCarthy aide tasked with preventing a debt limit disaster |  Dan Meyer, center, will play a key role in the upcoming showdown over the debt limit as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's chief of staff. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | Dan Meyer isn't a household name. But no one save for his boss, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), "is expected to play a more pivotal role this year in trying to steer House Republicans through a series of potentially explosive conflicts with the White House and each other over the nation's spending and debt, with the fate of the global economy hanging in the balance," Jeff Stein, Leigh Ann and Theo report. | - "They're going to embark on a series of listening sessions here to get the center of gravity for the conference," said Ben Howard, partner at the Duberstein Group and former McCarthy aide who remains a confidant of the speaker. "And then it's gonna be Dan and Kevin inside the room for negotiations."
| | Although McCarthy has promised to "change Washington as we know it today," he chose in Meyer a chief of staff who is a former lobbyist connected to the old Republican guard and who is widely respected by Democrats. | - "And that alone has assured many former colleagues on K Street that Republicans will find a way to raise the federal debt limit later this year without triggering an economic crisis, despite warnings from conservatives about the budget fight ahead."
| | Confidence in Meyer, in large part, stems from the fact he's already been through debt limit fights, budget showdowns and government shutdowns while navigating Democrats and disparate factions in the GOP. Meyer, 68, has spent more than four decades in Washington, working as a top aide to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President George W. Bush, as well as on K Street. A Minnesota native who worked as a school bus driver before entering Republican politics, he has a disarming Midwestern style that is particularly effective in an ego-driven city, his former colleagues told us. | - "He's got this way about him that causes members to sit back and respect him. So he's not what I would call a typical chief of staff," said John A. Boehner, the former Republican House speaker who spoke almost every day to Meyer while Meyer worked for Gingrich. "It'd be more like a mentor, if you will."
- "He's seen debt limits fights before. He's seen government shutdowns. He saw the scariest financial meltdown that we've ever seen in 2008," said Mike Sommers, a former Boehner chief of staff who's now chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute.
| | "Members like to go talk to him. They feel very comfortable just talking to him — don't feel like they have to talk to me at times," McCarthy said. (Meyer declined to be interviewed.) | From Gingrich to McCarthy | | Meyer rose in the ranks of House Republican leadership staffers in 1989 when he and then-Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) ran Gingrich's successful campaign for minority whip, leading Gingrich to hire him away from Weber. When Gingrich became speaker in 1995, Meyer became his chief of staff. | - "Sometimes, Meyer was the lone staffer in meetings with President Bill Clinton, Gingrich recalled in an interview. He fortified relationships with Democrats, as well: Pat Griffin, who was Clinton's legislative affairs director, said he and Meyer had difficult jobs handling complex but high-stakes policy fights while calming their bosses' tempers. They developed a rare trust, alerting each other privately when one of their bosses was about to launch a rhetorical attack."
- "He played this unique role in helping to manage the speaker's office and, frankly, manage Newt," Boehner said.
| | Meyer left the Hill after the 1996 election for the Duberstein Group, a prominent lobbying firm, where he worked for a decade before going to work in the Bush White House. He played an instrumental role in persuading reluctant Republicans to pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program — better known as the bank bailouts — in 2008. Meyer returned to the Duberstein Group and was set to retire in 2019 when McCarthy asked him to come back to the Hill to be his chief of staff and help win back the majority. Meyer agreed to work for McCarthy for two years but remains by his side nearly four years later — even as McCarthy embraced Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, banished Trump critics like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from leadership and embraced far-right figures, including Greene. | 'The situation he's in is horrendous' | | Most of the House Republicans whom Meyer persuaded to vote for the bank bailouts in 2008 are gone, and Republicans' demands for spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt limit will be almost impossible for McCarthy to meet. If McCarthy defies his party's right flank to prevent the government from breaching the debt limit and triggering a potential default, it could fall to Meyer to prevent the restive faction of House Republicans who nearly blocked McCarthy from becoming speaker from moving to oust him. | - "On a recent private phone call with a longtime colleague after McCarthy was elected speaker, Meyer marveled at the seeming absurdity of his position. As Meyer told his friend, McCarthy is in a nearly impossible bind, having vowed to advance a budget proposal that eradicates the deficit in a decade without touching Medicare and Social Security or increasing taxes."
- "He knows it's tough and that it's going to be tough," the colleague said. "The situation he's in is horrendous."
| | But Meyer's past work in difficult legislative situations leaves even some Democrats optimistic. "If the Republicans had to be in control, which was not my druthers, I think the fact that Dan Meyer is there is a positive for the country," said Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who was until recently the No. 2 House Democrat. | Daines walks Trump, establishment tightrope |  Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) speaks at a news conference after a weekly Republican policy luncheon on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post) | | | Our colleague Liz Goodwin has the latest this morning on Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the new chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and how he must find a way to recruit electable candidates without alienating the MAGA base. Here's an excerpt: | - "As he takes the helm of the party's Senate political apparatus, Daines's personal connection to MAGA figures like [Donald Trump Jr.] has lent him credibility with the base," Liz writes. "Meanwhile, more establishment Republicans — still upset over a crop of inexperienced and deeply flawed Trump-backed candidates losing swing-state races in 2022 — are relieved to see him taking an active approach in recruiting and supporting candidates they believe can win a general election."
- "He has this rare ability to navigate all the different nooks and crannies of the Republican Party from Trumpworld to Club for Growth to Leader McConnell and others," Steven Law, the head of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund PAC, told Liz. "He's able to establish trust in all these different directions that helps him when he's recruiting to assess what kinds of candidates he can effectively promote to all those different aspects of the party."
| | |  | What we're watching | | | The Senate will continue to work on nominations, but Republicans are expected to force a vote Wednesday to overturn a D.C. crime law. This issue jolted Democrats after President Biden said last week he supported scrapping the D.C. law. The measure is expected to pass the Democrat-led Senate and could top 70 votes, according to a senior Democratic leadership aide familiar with the vote count. | | At the end of the week, the House will take up a bill to require the director of national intelligence to declassify information regarding the origins of covid. | | Biden is set to unveil his much-anticipated budget on Thursday in Philadelphia. Biden's budget proposal will be the opening salvo in the White House's showdown with Republicans, who are pressuring Biden to enter negotiations to cut spending in exchange for raising the debt limit. (The White House says it will not negotiate on lifting the debt limit but will discuss deficit reduction separately.) | | Tuesday Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell will testify before the Senate Banking Committee. Wednesday The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is taking up a bill by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) to repeal the congressional authorizations for the Gulf War and the war in Iraq. Critics of 2002 AUMF argue it was written so broadly that it can and has been used to justify many military actions. | - The committee is also taking up the nomination of former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti to be Biden's ambassador to India after postponing it for a week.
| | The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will consider a subpoena for interim Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz to testify on corporations' adherence to labor law. The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding a hearing on worldwide threats with the leaders of five intelligence agencies. The House select subcommittee on covid-19 will hold its first hearing and will be focused on the coronavirus' origins. Dr. Robert Redfield, who was director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, will testify. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing about the U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Among the witnesses: Aidan Gunderson, a former Army combat medic who was on the ground in Hamid Karzai International Airport during the chaotic 2021 evacuation. Thursday Alan Shaw, chief executive of Norfolk Southern, the rail company whose train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, will appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The House Intelligence Committee will hold its annual hearing on worldwide threats. | | |  | The Media | | | |  | Viral | | | | AM/PM | | Looking for more analysis in the afternoon? | | | | Weekday newsletter, PM |  | | A lunchtime newsletter featuring political analysis and a global perspective on the stories driving the day. | | | | | | | |
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