Kevin McCarthy became the first-ever speaker of the House of Representatives to be ousted, after eight of the most conservative Republicans on Tuesday gave up on the California Republican’s leadership, saying he failed to deliver on promises he made in January, including especially to fight for cutting federal spending back to pre-COVID pandemic levels.
The California Republican’s shocking loss came on a 216–210 tally.
Among the House GOPers voting to oust Mr. McCarthy in addition to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) were Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Cory Mills (R-Fla.), and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.).
Just before the vote to oust, 207 Democrats and 11 Republicans defeated a motion offered by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to table Mr. Gaetz’s motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. The vote on the motion to table was 218–210. Then after a raucous hour of debate, the House voted 216–210 to oust Mr. McCarthy, with all Democrats voting with the Gaetz-led rebels.
Key to understanding why the day’s events came about as they did is found in one word, “trust,” according to multiple Republican House members interviewed by The Epoch Times, most of whom spoke on background.
Mr. Gaetz was joined in voting for his Motion to Vacate (MTV) by seven Republicans who together formed the core of opposition to Mr. McCarthy that began coalescing in April, festered through the August recess, and is now at the center of a leadership crisis that is massively disrupting the legislative process.
Mr. Gaetz offered the MTV on Oct. 2 that put Mr. McCarthy’s position in jeopardy and forced him to resort to support—direct or indirect—from Democrats or to somehow persuade some of his opponents to reverse themselves in the interest of avoiding politically ruinous legislative chaos.
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced a few hours before the Oct. 3 vote that he was telling Democrats to support the MTV to oust Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Jeffries’s move didn’t necessarily help Mr. McCarthy’s opponents, however, as shortly after the minority leader’s announcement, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a staunch critic of the speaker, told The Epoch Times that “bottom line, we CANNOT LET JEFFRIES control who our speaker!! Will vote against the MTV.”
“The reason we got to this point was a failure of Kevin McCarthy. All he had to do to avoid where we are was keep his word, keep his commitment and at least fight for that, but he did not do that in August,” one of the McCarthy opponents told The Epoch Times before the vote.
“He dillied and he dallied and stopped and started and couldn’t decide. He was a feckless leader who didn’t cast a vision to drive us to do that, to get those spending bills through. That’s what he should have done, that’s what he promised to do but he didn’t,” the representative said.
He was referring to Mr. McCarthy’s promises when he was elected speaker in January to cut federal spending back to pre-COVID levels, to avoid at all costs resorting to continuing resolutions (CRs) or omnibus spending bills, and instead return the House to “regular order.”
The regular order of both chambers in Congress is to write a dozen major spending bills in committees during the spring, then debate, amend, and finally pass them in the summer and early fall before the Sept. 30 end of the federal government’s fiscal year.
But Mr. McCarthy abandoned those promises, according to the opponents, in dealing with President Joe Biden in April by agreeing to a debt ceiling increase packet that also assumed federal spending would continue at or very near the hyper-levels that began in 2020 under President Donald Trump in response to the pandemic.
Then after April, House Republicans were slow to move the 12 major appropriations bills, and when the traditional August recess approached, Mr. McCarthy was pressured by many of his most conservative colleagues to keep the House in session to work on the spending measures rather than allowing members to return to their home districts. But Mr. McCarthy declined to cancel the recess.
When the final week before the Sept. 30 deadline arrived, it brought with it the prospect of the federal government having to shut down for lack of a budget for 2024. Mr. McCarthy opted to seek a CR that would give the House enough time to finish passing the spending bills. Four of the twelve were passed, accounting for 74 percent of all discretionary federal spending.
The speaker offered a 30-day CR on Sept. 29 that would have cut federal discretionary spending by 8 percent and mandated stronger measures by the Biden administration to secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico. But Mr. Gaetz and 20 other Republicans voted against it, killing it.
On Sept. 30, the speaker offered a 45-day CR that kept current spending levels and it passed, thanks to Democrats voting with 91 Republicans in favor. Ninety-one GOPers opposed the 45-day CR.
“That was the last straw,” another representative told The Epoch Times, because it all but rendered Mr. McCarthy’s January promises irrelevant, and put the House back on course to being forced by Senate Democrats and the president into agreeing to kick the can down the road yet again.
The last time Congress approved all 12 major spending bills in regular order was 1997.
The House now must find somebody who can command the votes of 218 members. Among the candidates who have been mentioned in recent days—all of whom publicly disavowed any willingness to step up to oppose Mr. McCarthy—include House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Minority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Mr. McCarthy required a record 15 roll call votes to secure the speakership. His successor will be selected by a House Republican Conference that is far more divided and polarized than it was in January.
Before the vote, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a contributor to the publication, told The Epoch Times he believes Mr. Gaetz should be expelled from the House Republican Conference.
