Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested Sunday that an impeachment inquiry against President Biden was becoming more likely, calling it a natural step forward as Congress soon ends its summer break and Republicans in the House of Representatives seek to expand their investigative powers.

McCarthy

(R-Bakersfield), R-California,

has so far avoided committing to an impeachment vote or offering a timeline for possible action. Some Republicans in the House of Representatives are eager to go after Biden over claims of financial misconduct involving his son Hunter, but the Democratic president has not been shown to have done anything wrong.

Meanwhile, McCarthy said passing a short-term spending bill to push the administration past the end of September would allow the investigation into Hunter Biden to continue. The emergency measure would buy time to work out a longer-term budget deal before imposing mandatory cuts in the new year that neither side favors.

Given all the information we’ve been able to gather so far, it’s a natural step forward that you should go to an impeachment inquiry, McCarthy told Fox News.

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Visions of the future on Sunday morning.

An impeachment inquiry, he said, provides Congress with the pinnacle of legal power to get all the information they need.

McCarthy is walking on a tightrope as he faces pressure from members of his party to show support for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign. But the speaker also risks jeopardizing the fragile majority in the House of Representatives.

Even if Biden were impeached in the House of Representatives, it is unlikely that he will be removed from office by the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats.

With the House returning to work in mid-September, October The start of the next fiscal year is fast approaching and a spending deal would be needed to avoid a partial federal shutdown.

When we close

the whole government shuts it down, the whole government shuts it down

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and everything else. It hurts the American public, McCarthy said.

Conservatives, including many on the House Freedom Caucus, are typically reluctant to support short-term financing measures as they push for sharper spending cuts, using the threat of a shutdown as leverage. In June, a small group of conservatives brought the House of Representatives to a halt in protest against McCarthy’s leadership.

All parties had agreed on budget levels during the recent debt ceiling negotiations, when Biden and McCarthy struck a deal that set the highest levels of spending. But McCarthy’s Republican majority rejects these amounts.

An emergency spending bill would improve McCarthy’s bargaining position with the White House and Senate Democrats, the speaker said.

We were in this discussion together, he said. And so we need to have a stronger hand.”