McCarthy Ousted as Speaker of the House

A small group of ultra-conservative House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as their party leader today. Eight House Freedom Caucus members joined all Democrats in voting in favor of a motion offered by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to remove McCarthy. Historically each party chooses its own leader and while theoretically some Democrats could have voted for McCarthy, none did, so the decision was left to the Republicans themselves. The vote was 216-210 to remove him.

McCarthy is the first Speaker of the House to lose his job this way. Others facing the likelihood of a motion to vacate stepped down instead, most recently Newt Gingrich in 1998 and John Boehner in 2015. The last Speaker to face a motion to vacate was Rep. Joseph Cannon (R-IL) in 1910 and he survived, though historians say it sharply diminished his power.

McCarthy had designated Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) to serve as interim Speaker — Speaker pro tempore — in the event he lost. McHenry quickly adjourned the House to allow each party to caucus and decide next steps.  The Republicans are scheduled to meet at 6:30 pm ET.

The House Freedom Caucus has opposed McCarthy from the beginning and forced 15 votes for him to be elected as Speaker in January. He made a number of concessions to them including agreeing to keep a rule that a single Republican could file a motion to vacate.

Gaetz, his chief antagonist in this intra-party fight, did so following McCarthy’s decision this past weekend to work with Democrats on a bipartisan basis to keep the government open. Gaetz also opposes aid to Ukraine and although McCarthy acceded to his demands to keep it out of the CR, Gaetz asserted that McCarthy had cut a deal with President Biden to get that aid passed through separate legislation in coming days. He and a few other HFC members also vehemently objected to McCarthy negotiating the Fiscal Responsibility Act with Biden that suspended the debt limit and kept FY2024 spending at FY2023 levels — with defense spending growing slightly and nondefense spending like NASA bearing the brunt of the reductions to Biden’s request —  instead of the deeper cuts the HFC wants. McCarthy insists Gaetz’s antagonism against him is personal because he has not stopped a House Ethics Committee investigation of Gaetz for sexual misconduct, drug use and campaign finance allegations begun in the last Congress.

Many Republicans are angry and frustrated with the HFC, especially Gaetz, but with Republicans controlling the House by only a handful of votes (221-212 with two vacancies), that small group has outsized power as they demonstrated today.

The vote today was 216 (208 Democrats and 8 Republicans) in favor of the motion to remove McCarthy and 210 (all Republicans) against. Four Democrats and 3 Republicans did not vote. Bottom line: McCarthy had support of 210 of 221 Republicans, but it wasn’t enough.

This infighting and dysfunction do not bode well for passing the appropriations bills that fund space programs or any other legislation. The government is funded through November 17 in the Continuing Resolution that passed on Saturday, but the likelihood of all 12 regular appropriations bills passing before that CR expires was vanishingly small to begin with and is worse now.

The Senate has not passed any of its bills, but they all have been reported from the Appropriations Committee and conform with the agreement reached in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

The House has passed four (including DOD) on essentially party-line votes because the funding levels are far below the FRA figures and contain social policy provisions that are anathema to Democrats concerning abortion, LGBTQ and diversity rights.

Two of the House bills have yet to be approved by the House Appropriations Committee, including the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA and NOAA. The other is Labor-HHS.

Somewhat ironically, the House is only in session this week because McCarthy was trying to assuage HFC complaints that they should keep working instead of taking a scheduled two-week recess in order to make progress on appropriations. They were supposed to be considering the Energy-Water bill today.

Stay tuned.