The 118th Congress has certainly gotten off to an interesting start this week as the House remains unable to go forward with their business due to the inability to get a majority vote for any Speaker of the House nominee. As of Thursday afternoon, Representative-elect Kevin McCarthy had failed to get enough support after the tenth round of voting. It has been exactly 100 years since the last time a vote for Speaker has gone more than one round. This was a relatively common occurrence prior to the Civil War, but since then, the parties have generally had their nominees lined up prior to the swearing in ceremonies.
Despite being the Minority Leader in the previous Congress, Rep.-elect McCarthy has struggled to shore up support amongst a group of 20 conservative Republicans. This group of twenty has shifted their votes between a mix of Representatives-elect Jim Jordan (OH), Byron Donalds (FL), and a few others. Former President Donald Trump has even received a vote in the 7th and 8th rounds via Florida Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (it is not necessarily required that a Speaker must be a sitting member of Congress).
With several partisan speeches and a few interesting antics both inside and outside the House Chamber, some critics have labeled the process as an unserious one; however, if Rep.-elect McCarthy is able to broker an agreement with the remaining opposition votes, it would likely bring several significant changes. Some of those “no” votes are asking for the amendment process to change during regular House business, which would give Members more flexibility to propose a change on the floor for most bills. The bloc of 20 also routinely cite the $1.7 trillion government funding package (passed just a few weeks ago) as a particular sore spot and want debt-limit extension talks to fundamentally change. Some Freedom Caucus members are also likely to be appointed to key committees of jurisdiction, giving them more influence on the movement of bills.
In any case, failure to come to an agreement has kept the lower chamber deadlocked until a Speaker (or other agreement) is put in place. There have been reports of bipartisan talks aimed at finding a consensus nominee, but there doesn’t appear to be a serious movement for such a ploy at this time. With their “Representative-elect” status, these elected Members are unable to participate in national security meetings. In addition, several offices are reporting that their state and district staff are unable to process casework due to this technicality as well. Whether this adds enough pressure to get a deal done quickly remains to be seen. Because there were not enough “yes” votes to adjourn earlier in the day, voting still continues into the evening.
