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  • Sphere [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Pretty sure the House is totally paralyzed until a majority manages to agree on (e.g. vote for) a Speaker, so there's that too

      • Sphere [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, was just ousted. So now the House can't do literally anything until they manage to choose a new Speaker of the House. Problem is, it's not clear that anyone has enough support to win a majority of House votes--and since Republicans have only a 5-vote margin in the House, and no Democrat is going to vote for a Republican to be Speaker, somebody has to get the votes of almost every single Republican House representative to become Speaker, which is a challenge given the competing interests within the party.

          • Sphere [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            So what to expect now?

            lol who knows? Maybe they'll get their act together and pick a Speaker next week like they say they will, or maybe it'll take weeks to pick one. There are fewer than six weeks remaining before the government shuts down again, though.

            Except that some of the Republicans want the government to shut down, because they couldn't manage to pass anything to cut funding from the myriad programs they want to cut (mainly domestic welfare-style spending; Republicans definitely do not want to cut military funding except to Ukraine specifically, and only some of them oppose the Ukraine funding anyway). And while we're talking about the pro-shutdown Republicans:

            But why was he got deposed?

            He was deposed because he got the bill passed at the last minute to fund the government for another 45 days, and didn't let the government shut down instead. He had already upset the pro-shutdown faction by going along with Dems to raise the debt ceiling recently, and this latest offense was apparently more than the pro-shutdowners were willing to take. Meanwhile Dems decided not to rescue McCarthy's Speakership, given that they haven't gotten any political concessions from McCarthy or Republicans in this latest fight at all, so as a result, a handful of hardline Republican House reps were able to oust McCarthy. And now anyone who wants to be speaker will need votes from that same faction to get in.