The dysfunction playing out on the floor of the US House has quickly spilled outside the chamber as one-half of Capitol Hill has suddenly become a free-for-all.
(Bloomberg) — The dysfunction playing out on the floor of the US House has quickly spilled outside the chamber as one-half of Capitol Hill has suddenly become a free-for-all.
Without a speaker, there are no rules governing the day-to-day operations of the 434 House lawmakers and their staffs, not to mention the journalists and other personnel who populate the sprawling Capitol complex.
New and returning representatives, who haven’t yet been sworn in, aren’t getting paid. Committee chairs can’t hire staff because the panels haven’t officially been authorized. And aides for brand-new members are having trouble logging into computer systems.
The ongoing state of paralysis in the House will persist until Republicans, with their newly minted majority, agree on the next speaker. Only then can the chamber swear in members and adopt the hundreds of pages of administrative rules that will govern the House for the next two years.
Without a functioning House, Congress can’t respond or approve emergency funding in the event of a worst-case scenario like a terrorist attack or natural disaster. It also gives adversaries an opening to attack or spread propaganda.
“Russians in particular really love when we are at each other’s throats,” Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former intelligence official, said. “Hopefully this won’t go on long enough to be used by people who want to do us physical harm.”
Lawmakers, who are technically still members-elect, won’t get paid until they’re sworn-in and the session formally starts, Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee said. It’s not clear, she added, whether new-to-Congress members are able to hire and pay staff, but there is precedent to keep paying staff of returning members even though their boss’s seat is technically vacant.
For aides who work for committees, rather than individual members, confusion abounds. The House Administration Committee has warned that if a rules package isn’t adopted by Jan. 13, payroll can’t be processed for committee staff because those panels won’t officially exist.
The House hasn’t found itself in this position for a century — 1923 was the last time it took more than one ballot to elect a speaker. That was before the invention of computer systems and modern payroll processing software that require advance planning to set up.
With six ballots and counting, the battle between Representative Kevin McCarthy and his 20 conservative detractors, could drag on for a while. McCarthy has the support of most Republicans, but not enough backing to win a majority in the face of united Democratic opposition.
Part of the standoff is over the rules themselves and how much power they yield to conservative Republican members. It could take days or weeks for McCarthy to cut a deal with the holdouts or for him to drop out and force Republicans to find an alternative candidate.
Americans may also find themselves without the support of their member of Congress. Since they haven’t taken the oath, members are limited in how they can interact with federal agencies and provide other services to constituents.
There’s also some lighter consequences to House without rules. The normal rules governing where photographers and videographers can go aren’t in effect.
C-SPAN, which operates video cameras inside the chamber, is using more angles to show juicy floor footage of lawmakers haggling and bickering between the failed votes.
At one point, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, one of McCarthy’s most vocal detractors, was animatedly holding court with a group of conservatives. Other Republicans across the chamber, including key McCarthy supporters, eventually joined them for a very public tête-à-tête, the likes of which can usually only be witnessed by the few journalists and members of the public in the viewing gallery overhead.
When the House is actually in session, the majority controls the cameras and those kinds of member-wrangling conversations rarely happen where they can be caught on camera.
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