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Notes -
Following up on my post from yesterday welcome to day 2 of the United States House of Representatives attempt to choose a Speaker. The current favorite is former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) though he has been unable to gather the needed majority (or even plurality) of votes of members of the House needed to secure the Speakership. As of the third ballot yesterday there were some 20 Republican holdouts against McCarthy, of which he needs at least 13 in order to get more votes than Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) the Democratic Party nominee for speaker. The fourth ballot is currently underway and interestingly the Republican protestors seem to have changed their candidate from Jim Jordan (R-OH) to Byron Donalds (R-FL). Overnight it seems Trump has re-endorsed McCarthy for Speaker, we'll see if that moves the needle for the Republican holdouts. As of the time of this writing Donalds has acquired 7 votes, more than enough to keep McCarthy from acquiring the majority and likely guaranteeing a fifth ballot.
Assuming McCarthy eventually becomes Speaker (something I still think is the most likely outcome) how does he effectively run the House? The Republican majority is quite narrow (222-212) meaning the defection of only five Republicans can sink any legislation he wants to bring. Effectively this is a similar problem to the one Democrats faced in the Senate this last term, where the support of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were required for them to effectively utilize their 50+tiebreaker majority.
ETA:
At the end of the fourth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
So Trump's continued endorsement does not seem to have moved any of the holdouts to McCarthy. One member (I missed who) changing their vote from McCarthy to Present has to be concerning for McCarthy. Since election requires a majority of votes cast for a person (Present votes don't count) if more Members follow it decreases the total needed for election. If those Present votes are coming from McCarthy then that moves Jeffries closer to being elected Speaker, as the current plurality vote haver.
I wonder if this is the new strategy from moderate Republicans. Threaten to vote Present and lower the threshold and get the Democrat selected Speaker unless the holdouts get behind McCarthy. Presumably the holdouts would prefer even McCarthy to Jeffries. It would take 12 (I think) members voting Present to put Jeffries over the top, assuming he gets all 212 Democratic Party votes.
ETA2:
At the end of the fifth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
No movement from the prior vote. Trying to understand how one side or the other break the stalemate here. Doesn't seem like anyone has attempted to put forward a compromise candidate. Seems unlikely McCarthy supporters are persuaded to back the HFC candidate in the needed numbers, though they have peeled one off and another is voting Present. Seems unlikely the HFC members come back to McCarthy. In 1855 when the House had failed to choose a Speaker after two months and over 150 votes the majority agreed to elect whoever got a plurality as Speaker to finally end the voting. Maybe that's a possibility here but would be pretty risky since Jeffries has consistently been the plurality winner. All it would take is 6 HFC members staying strong and you'd have a Democrat Speaker of a majority Republican House (who could immediately remove him if they wanted).
ETA 3:
At the end of the sixth ballot the results stand at:
Jeffries - 212
McCarthy - 201
Donalds - 20
Present - 1
Still no movement. No idea how this stalemate gets broken.
ETA 4:
After returning at 8pm ET the House adjourns until noon tomorrow by a vote of 216 to 214.
I guess we could just not have a House of Representatives for a while. If it goes on long enough Democrats might break for McCarthy so that something can get passed.
The seemingly eternal dysfunction of the American government, as ordained by the founding fathers or so I've been told never ceases to amaze me.
Like Belgians, Americans would rather not have a government than let it run unpopular edicts.
The limits of this show in the politicization of escape valves like the courts, but in principle it's an admirable demonstration of the solidity of Liberal engineering of institutions.
That one could run the world hegemon like this and still trounce organized autocracies would be even more admirable, if Congress actually had anything to do with it.
This is something that seems like such a disconnect. People say “what, do you just want there to be no federal government?!?!”
…yes? What does the federal government DO most of the time other than take my money and spend it on shit that is meant to destroy my way of life and make it harder for me to raise my family?
This is a genuine question. What is the federal government doing for me that my state couldn’t do? I’ll give you the military, but what else?
People vary on whether this is actually a good thing, but enforce certain rights, e.g minimum wage, abortion legality, no slavery, etc.
There are benefits to having a national system in certain areas like healthcare, postal services, highway construction, etc. where it'd be very awkward for each state to need to find a way to individually interface with each other, although the US federal government is dysfunctional enough it doesn't always see benefits.
Well I think that minimum wage is pretty obviously a bad thing (as we have unfortunately been forced to see demonstrated in real life as "living wages" have immediately meant "rent increase and dozen eggs is now $7."
Slavery is done. The laws were passed 150 years ago, and we don't need a bunch of busybody congressman in Washington there to make sure nobody tries to bring it back.
Abortion "legality" is an excellent example of the type of vote pandering by societal destruction that I want the government to stop doing.
I'd love to hear these articulated. To go point by point:
Healtchare: What is the federal government doing WRT healthcare that is in any way beneficial to me? They create a system where I have to waste hours of my time and hundreds of dollars to get simple things like antibiotics, and yet mail out safe crack smoking kits to drug addicts to make it easier for them to live in tents in the street and do crack. I would like the federal government to FUCK OFF of my healthcare, please and thank you.
Postal service: the USPS is a great idea. In practice, it is a box in my driveway where a guy delivers trash every day that piles up on my kitchen table and eventually gets moved to another box on the driveway where another guy comes and picks it up. I see absolutely NO downside to replacing the USPS with UPS and FedEx and would LOVE it if mailing me something cost a minimum of $5.
Highway construction - highway funds are used as leverage to get states to implement ridiculous, unpopular federal policies. No I don't agree that this is a good thing. If the federal government wanted to work on absolutely mundane boring things like writing regulations around how wide an interstate highway lane should be, then great. Stealing my money to give it to Pete Buttigieg so that he can use it to pre-campaign for president by flying around the country and "giving" this money to various state infrastructure projects feels comically corrupt and horrific. No.
Nobody has pointed out what I think is the biggest benefit, which is the U.S. Dollar. Backed by the Federal Reserve, it's the most reliable financial instrument that exists, and the citizens of the U.S. as well as the rest of the world have benefited substantially by this arrangement. It has its downsides as well, of course, and is not worth an unlimited amount of tyranny.
Okay the dollars is a good one! In fact I would say: I'm frustrated at the current state of the federal government because they're putting the stability of the dollar at risk.
I have the opposite concern actually, that I increasingly feel that the federal government is pressuring me to accept policies that I don't care for and don't really approve of, because it's financially good for the bank that we call the U.S. Government and its many executives.
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