On October 5th, 2023, United States history changed. For the first time, the House of Representatives voted to strip the Speaker of the House of their title. The California Republican Kevin McCarthy lasted only 269 days in the position.
Surprisingly, the vote was proposed by a member of McCarthy’s party, Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. Gaetz proposed the vote after McCarthy compromised with Democrats on extending federal funding. McCarthy was faced with the tough decision of giving into the demands of the far-right minority of his party (around a dozen representatives) and risk being voted out of office, or compromising with Democrats (who hold a majority in the Senate and the Presidency) to attempt to avoid a government shutdown. For context, McCarthy promised representatives like Gaetz that he would put his foot down to Democrats and close the door on compromise to receive their support when he was being voted into office. McCarthy ultimately decided to compromise with the Democrats.
In a vote 216-210, Democrats and nine Republicans voted to remove Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy from office. However, the House is not “speakerless”. Representative Patrick McHenry is Speaker Pro Tempore until the House can vote in a new Speaker. The issue besides not having a permanent Speaker of the House is that it took an impressive fifteen rounds of voting over a course of four days to get McCarthy voted into office. The other pressing issue at hand is a government shutdown looming in the back. Congress has just pushed the deadline of the national budget to November 17th, but the House was supposed to pass all of its spending bills on June 30th. So the clock starts now.
Since the Republicans still hold the majority of the House, they get to nominate a candidate for Speaker. They chose Jim Jordan from Ohio. Jordan is a seasoned congressman, having represented Ohio’s fourth congressional district since 2007. He is also currently serving as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and has served as chairman of other committees in the past. With the largest issue for conservatives being the federal spending budget, Jordan is a very appropriate choice. He has historically fought for taxpayers rights to the extent of calling out members of his own party for raising taxes. In 2009, Jordan proposed the only balanced budget (meaning revenue is equal to spending) as an alternative to President Obama’s plan.
Voting for Jim Jordan began on Tuesday October 18th. He came up 17 votes short of the 217 which is needed for him to take office. Of those who did not vote against him on Tuesday, 20 of them were Republicans. Many of them, funny enough, penciled in McCarthy. Then the Democrats are trying to vote in their party leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who received 212 votes on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Jordan managed to lose a vote coming up with 199 and lost two party votes, with 22 Republicans voting against him. Jeffries kept his 212 for a second time. In a surprising turn of events, the House may see a minority party Speaker. If this happens, Jeffries will be the first person of color to hold office. Thursday did not see a vote, but Jordan did meet with the 22 Republicans voting against him.
The more time spent voting on a new Speaker is time lost to finalize the budget, meaning we may see a government shutdown in the next few weeks.
