A speakership crisis has erupted in the House of Representatives in another day of partisan warfare on Capital Hill. Speaker Mike Johnson, elected in a month-long brawl after the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, is now feeling pressure from circumstances very similar to those that removed McCarthy. The pressure comes from the simmering discontent of hardline members of the Republican caucus, which has been brewing for months as Johnson has resorted to cutting bills with aid from Democrats. It finally erupted on Friday with Majorie Taylor Greene filing a motion to vacate the chair; whether the motion has the votes to proceed is unclear, but a civil war is undeniably being waged inside the Republican caucus that could engulf another speaker.
“We’ve started the process to elect a new speaker”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene R-GA
Spending Debacles
Keeping the government open, once a formality inside the legislative process, has become a recurrent battleground where divisions in political ideology are being waged. In the confusion of tracing how we got to this point again, there can be no understanding of it without establishing a clear timeline of events.
September 30th, a 45-day funding bill was approved to keep government agencies open until November 17th. McCarthy relied upon Democratic support to pass the package and, in so doing, earned the ire of his far-right colleagues.
October 2nd, Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion to vacate the chair, laying out grievances against McCarthy. McCarthy is defiant and declares, “Bring it on.”
October 3rd, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is removed as Speaker of the House, making him the first Speaker to be removed through a motion to vacate.
October 25th, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected the Speaker of the House after three weeks of chaos and endless rounds of voting.
November 14th, Speaker Mike Johnson’s “stopgap” (short-term funding bill) is passed; this bill establishes two deadlines for a government shutdown: January 19th and February 2nd.
January 18th, Congress raced to pass a shot-term spending bill to keep government open until early March on the eve of a partial shutdown.
March 8th, on the eve of another partial government shutdown, the Senate approved a $460 billion dollar package; the bill passed contains six annual spending bills already approved in the House. It gives Congress until March 22nd to hammer out a long-term funding bill.
March 23rd, after a prolonged, painful negotiation, a $1.2 trillion dollar funding package is passed, ending the saga of funding until October 1st, 2024.
After such a prolonged process of stopgap after stopgap, you’d expect that with a resolution, there’d be peace within the House; this package has merely helped quell one fire while creating another that’ll ensure more gridlock on Capitol Hill.
Motion To Vacate and a Speakership Crisis
Representative Greene’s motion to vacate now takes center stage as members of the Republican caucus mull over it as a vote on the motion will not occur before the legislative recess that’ll last until April 9th. Even so, Republicans are being much more reserved in supporting such a measure with an election year looming over them. Freedom Caucus member Matt Gaetz has stated, “If we vacated this Speaker, we’d end up with a Democrat. When I vacated the last one, I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with the Democrat speaker. And I was right. I couldn’t make that promise again.” Even Democrats have stated their openness to bailing out Speaker Johnson as a bargaining tool to advance aid for Ukraine that until now has been met with stonewalling by the Republican majority.
With another contentious election on the horizon and the fires of partisan passion showing no signs of extinguishing, the American people can expect to lose regardless of who comes out victorious in the coming speakership contest. The business of governance has taken a backseat to politics itself; both sides of the aisle are playing roulette to try and gain an inch of ground that’ll create a marginally better election result. If we trade the spirit of pragmatism for a righteous idealism that ignores simple prudence, our democracy will indeed be lost.
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