In 1923, the 68th Congress took nine votes over three days to elect a speaker of the House. The 118th officially blew past that historical milestone Thursday, Jan. 5, when members opted to adjourn just after 8 p.m. Swamp time with eleven failed elections in the rearview. The last time it took this long to figure out who should hold the gavel was in 1857 – and that ordeal lasted two months. What is the price of this fierce battle for the speakership settling into a protracted siege, and who must pay it?
Plenty of Politics, Still No Speaker
After considerable deal-making, the House of Representatives reconvened Thursday at noon and got down to the only business members are allowed to get down to until it’s settled: Elect a Speaker of the House. The trading, however, turned out to be for naught, and day three went much the same as days one and two. After five failed votes across about eight hours, neither front-runners Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) nor Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) managed to pull a majority – nor, of course, did the Republican challenger, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.
Jeffries maintained full control of the Democrat vote, coming in at 212 each time, and McCarthy pulled 201 in the first two and dropped to 200 even in the latter three. The only real variety in Thursday’s show was the challenger lineup. Donalds was the primary third pick, of course, but Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) nominated and voted for Donald Trump in five rounds. He was the only one who did. In the second vote of the day – the eighth overall attempt – however, support for Donalds began to wane. Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) was proposed, further splitting the protest vote. He received just two votes in the second election, three in the third, then seven in the fourth and fifth.
While Gaetz’s Trump vote – which most in the House seemed to consider a joke, whether he did or not – and the growing support for Hern did eat into the Donalds vote, the bases behind both Jeffries and McCarthy remained steady. And so the flux is hardly a sign that the standoff is nearing an end, merely that the players feel a need to change up the game a bit.
Déjà Vu 167 Years in the Making
Now that the 118th Congress has made history by blowing past the record for the most attempts to elect a speaker in precisely a century, the next mile marker was 167 years ago. In December of 1855, the 34th Congress took two months and 133 ballots to elect a speaker – and they never did reach an actual majority, voting instead to choose by plurality just to end the standoff.
The division was deep – slavery was the issue of the day, and the Civil War loomed on the horizon. Pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists gunned each other down in the “Bleeding Kansas” territory, and Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner senseless with a cane on the Senate floor after the northern lawmaker denounced all the pro-slavery members.
Political violence has, perhaps, not reached quite a crescendo as of yet – but with Democrats trying to invoke the name and spirit of slavery to describe their pet issues and to vilify those wretched Republicans who stand in their way, violence has been neither unheard of nor really all that surprising.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade, election denial, and refusal to cave to socialist spending sprees or progressive pushes to regulate individual freedom all are spun to paint the conservative Republican as an extremist. And now it is those very “extremists” who hold up the process by demanding such outlandish things as more control for the rank-and-file what members over leadership, a balanced budget with less waste, more freedom, and enough time to read bills before voting on whether to make them law.
Who Profits, and Who Pays the Price?
So what happens if there’s no Speaker of the House? Not much, as far as actual work is concerned. The members of the 118th Congress haven’t even been sworn in yet. No House rules have been formally voted upon. If the problem persists beyond January 13, the House’s chief administrative officer (CAO) explained in a memo obtained by Politico, staffers won’t get paid, and student loan payments won’t be processed for employees in the ten-year student loan forgiveness program. Committees will be led by the most senior Republican member who served during the last Congress until a chair can be appointed, but with committees not fully operational and without their authority officially confirmed, legislation will be difficult, if even possible at all.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Naturally, the elected members of Congress themselves – the ones to blame for this debacle to begin with – will be paid in full and without delay. But then, the elites so rarely are the ones to suffer for their own ineptitude. While many might be glad of a delay in any sort of legislative agenda, it would also derail the GOP’s ability to launch the promised investigations into the Biden family and the DOJ or to carry out the oversight duties, effectively removing a significant check on the power of executive departments and agencies – government bodies that are not rendered powerless by this failure of any candidate to muster a majority.
Some in Congress are even fundraising off the stalled speaker vote. Democrat lead man Hakeem Jeffries and at least two of the 21 anti-McCarthy Republicans – Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Florida’s Matt Gaetz – issued emails to supporters calling for donations. One missive from Gaetz that went out Thursday evening read, in part: “Maybe the right person for the job of Speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of himself for more than a decade to get it …” Perhaps blind to the irony of calling someone a sellout in a fundraising email, he continued: “I need to know if you’ll stand with me on this. Consider this your opportunity to show how the MAGA Base feels about a Cavin’ McCarthy Speakership. If you’re a ‘NO’ vote like I am … Please make that LOUD AND CLEAR by clicking the button below.” That, of course, led to his campaign donation page.
The House meets again today at noon to see if a winner will emerge, settling the issue for the next two years, at least. But with the GOP holdouts still seemingly unsatisfied with the concessions McCarthy has offered, Friday seems just as likely to be a repeat of the previous days.
