McCarthy does the right thing
Why the Congress didn’t go that way: Democrat leaders have no hope of ousting M. McCarthy in the House Speaker’s role
Gaetz refused to reveal when he would try and oust Mr. McCarthy. He stated that Mr. McCarthy’s speakership was tenuous.
“The one thing I agree with my Democrat colleagues on is that for the last eight months this House has been poorly led and we own that and we have to do something about it,” Gaetz said on the floor earlier this week. “And you know what? My Democrat colleagues will have an opportunity to do something about that, too. And we will see if they bail out our failed speaker.”
McCarthy still appears to enjoy the support of the vast majority of the 221 House Republicans. If the Democrats vote en masse to defeat any blocking motions, the GOP conference could no longer fulfill its duty as speaker, even if a majority of them voted in favor of vacating.
The resolution is subject to motions that could ultimately block it from getting a vote. For example, a motion to table or refer the resolution to the committee would be in order. If any of those intermediary steps succeeded, then a vote on the resolution to vacate the speakership would not occur.
After introduction, a lawmaker would have to go to the House floor and request a vote on the resolution, which would be considered privileged and therefore require a vote to occur within two legislative days. Party leadership can determine the timing of the vote, and it could happen as soon as it’s introduced.
If the blocking motions fail, and a vote on the resolution is called, it requires a simple majority of lawmakers present and voting to succeed. The speakership is immediately vacant if it passes.
The Democratic leaders were unwilling to engage in war gaming about the vote. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that they haven’t thought of how to deal with a hypothetical motion to vacate because they are focused on preventing a government shutdown.
Two senior Democratic aides who asked for anonymity to speak candidly about internal party deliberations said that informal conversations are happening among blocs of Democrats about how to handle the vote, but there is no united party consensus.
When Kevin McCarthy walked away from the House: The next order of business in the House of Representatives, or when a Speaker will try to oust him
If McCarthy wanted to avoid a shutdown he had no choice but to try to win over enough Republican votes. He did not know if the bill would pass on the floor.
Additionally, one of the aides said there is so little regard for McCarthy among Democrats — for his fealty to the far right, his authorization of an impeachment inquiry against President Biden and his actions after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on that Capitol — that it was hard to envision saving him.
An aide said that she had been in a number of conversations and she had not heard one Democrat voice any interest in saving Kevin. The speaker walked away from the budget deal he cut with President Biden just days after it was signed in to law and Democrats don’t believe they can trust him to cut deals to win their votes.
The election of a new speaker will be the next order of business when the House convenes in September, according to three parliamentary sources with expertise. It is a matter of national security and constitutional prerogative for the speaker to not serve in the succession to the presidency.
The same things that happened in January at the start of a new Congress would happen here. Lawmakers were sworn in, House rules were approved and committees were formed. Lawmakers could still hold committee hearings and assist constituents, but the business before the House would be to elect a speaker. As the House experienced in January, this can take days and multiple rounds of balloting until a lawmaker receives a majority of the full House.
It’s difficult to tell how long that would take or who would replace McCarthy. Multiple news outlets reported this week that some Republicans have approached Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., should the effort to oust McCarthy succeed. McCarthy received pledge from Emmer to support him.
A House Congressional Stopgap Plan for the Mid-November Extension of the U.S. Government: What Is the American Public?
Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown on Saturday as the House, in a stunning turnabout, approved a stopgap plan to keep the federal government open until mid-November. Shortly before midnight, President Biden signed the bill.
“What I am asking, Republicans and Democrats alike, put your partisanship away, focus on the American public,” McCarthy told reporters before the vote.
The bill would also extend authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration until the end of the year and includes $16 billion in emergency disaster assistance requested by the White House. It does not include any money for Ukraine.
The Senate wants to vote first on their version of the bill, which includesUkraine aid, in order to stall progress on the House bill.
Johnson pointed to the 21 far right Republican members who blocked a GOP bill on Friday as the reason why the speaker moved to this new plan. Those members put us in a better position to vote for something that wasn’t conservative. This is still a pathway to get conservative wins through appropriations, that’s the good news.
The planned district recess in October was canceled and the House passed four of the twelve appropriations bills, suggesting they will keep moving their own spending bills.
Hard-right Republicans refused to support the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, because it essentially maintained funding at levels set when Congress was under Democratic control last year.
The House Appropriate Resolution to end the U.S.-Ukraine War on Foreign Direct Investment: Kevin McCarthy and the House Committee on Ukraine
Asked by reporters if he was worried about his job, the speaker said, “you know what, if somebody wants to remove because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had for weeks brushed off demands to work with Democrats on a spending solution, outlined the proposal for Republicans in a closed-door meeting Saturday morning and then rushed to get it on the floor under a special procedure that meant it could only pass with substantial Democratic help.
Democrats initially complained that Mr. McCarthy had sprung the plan on them and was trying to push through a 71-page measure without sufficient scrutiny. But they also did not want to be accused of putting the U.S. aid to Ukraine ahead of keeping government agencies open and paying two million members of the military and 1.5 million federal employees.
“Are you telling me you would shut down the government if there is not Ukraine funding?” Republicans asked Democrats on the House floor.
He was a part of a group of Republican colleagues who voted to shut down the government. The measure was approved on a vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting in favor and 90 Republicans and one Democrat in opposition.
An extremely shallow man wouldn’t hesitate until the last moment to do the right thing, even if it was obvious. But in today’s Washington, the Republican Party usually doesn’t do the right thing at all, so the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, deserves some credit for putting his job on the line on Saturday to end the threat of a government shutdown.
The House adjourned immediately after the vote, leaving the Senate to either take up the legislation or face blame for a shutdown, since there was no way for the House to consider additional legislation before Monday.
“The American people can breathe a sigh of relief: there will be no government shutdown,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, after the Senate vote closed about three hours before the deadline. MAGA Republicans did not win anything after trying to take our government hostage.
After the Senate voted to approve the bill, Mr. Biden called it good news for the people of America. He said he expected the speaker to keep his commitment to the Ukrainian people and secure support needed to help them.
Members of both parties said they were confident they could win money for Ukraine in the weeks ahead, but the failure to provide any money in the bill was a reflection of diminishing Republican backing for added funding for Kyiv.
The First Day on Capitol Hill: The U.S. Senate Appropriately Formed to End the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Many Republicans had demanded strict immigration restrictions in order to support the measure, but they were left out.
Before the vote, Mr. McCarthy said he was willing to risk a challenge to his job in order to get a bill through that would keep the government open.
Democrats were happy with the outcome. Jeffries, the leader of the House, said on the House floor that the Republicans had lost. The American people have won.
The day on Capitol Hill was full of twists and turns. The Cannon House Office Building had to be evacuated as fire alarms rang out due to the stalling of Mr. McCarthy in the House. It was later determined that Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York had triggered the alarm.
House Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts, a cutoff of aid to Ukraine and immigration restrictions in order to win support for an agreement to end the US’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Senators of both parties argue that Congress should adhere to higher funding levels established in a deal that President Biden negotiated with Mr. McCarthy earlier this year, and they back continued assistance to Ukraine.
Before the sudden turn of events on Saturday, federal agencies were bracing to close if no stopgap were enacted. The armed forces and other so-called essential workers such as air traffic controllers and airport security workers would have remained on the job but without pay until the standoff was resolved. Without medical and food assistance, millions of low income mothers and children would have been out of luck.
The biggest obstacle to a resolution was that the House, where Republicans hold a tiny minority, is in the grip of a right-wing group that has made it clear it would be willing to shut down the government if it couldn’t get its message across that Washington is broken. That bloc refused to back any plan that would avert a federal funding lapse.
