House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his lieutenants abandoned plans to seek to adjourn the House immediately after convening at noon, moving instead to a fourth vote for the next speaker.
(Bloomberg) — House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his lieutenants abandoned plans to seek to adjourn the House immediately after convening at noon, moving instead to a fourth vote for the next speaker.
The motion to adjourn — until noon Thursday — would have required a simple majority of the House and it’s unclear whether McCarthy would have had the votes. Democratic leaders urged their caucus to vote against it.
“We’re gonna continue to talk. We’ll find an agreement where we all get together and we’ll work through this and we’ll get it done,” McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday.
The move was intended to allow more time for negotiations with McCarthy’s detractors, who on Tuesday blocked his election to speaker in three successive rounds of floor votes. Former President Donald Trump weighed in and urged Republicans to elect McCarthy as speaker.
McCarthy needs a majority vote in the House and can only afford to lose four members of his caucus to reach the 218-vote threshold in the face of united Democratic opposition. On Tuesday, 20 Republicans opposed his speakership in the third round of balloting, leaving him with only 202 votes.
The House is at a standstill until the election of a speaker, which has sharply divided establishment Republicans and a faction of hard-line conservatives who say McCarthy hasn’t done enough to win their votes. No business can be conducted until the speakership is settled.
The spat has turned ugly with both sides taking personal shots. McCarthy, a longtime member of House leadership, and his allies met late Tuesday to try to resolve the impasse, with little success.
The inability to elect a speaker — the first order of business for a new Congress — signaled a challenging two years for Republicans who will have to cooperate to fulfill such fundamental tasks as financing the government or honoring US debts.
McCarthy has said he would keep trying to negotiate and won’t give up his quest for the speakership.
“If we want to get to 218 we have to keep talking,” he said Tuesday night.
Trump has long backed McCarthy, but his reiterated support comes at a crucial time for the 57-year-old California congressman, who was the first speaker candidate not elected in one round of voting in 100 years. The conservative holdouts are also Trump supporters and Wednesday’s voting will be a key test of the former president’s influence after a string of losses for some of the candidates he endorse in the November election and intensifying legal troubles.
Wednesday morning, negotiations between the holdouts and McCarthy’s team remained at a stalemate. One person familiar with the talks predicted that a resolution could continue beyond this week, despite Trump weighing in.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday called the situation “embarrassing.”
–With assistance from Jarrell Dillard.
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