Republicans fail to appoint a president of Congress

It has been 15 days since 8 radical Republicans and all Democrats joined together to impeach House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in the first successful motion of no confidence in US history. Since then, The incessant internal wars of the Republican Party have plunged the country’s politics into an unprecedented paralysis: one of the two legislative chambers has been closed since then due to the inability of the majority party to agree to vote for one of their own as the new president. And with a historic crisis setting the Middle East on fire and budgets expiring in a month, it is increasingly likely that this paralysis will end up having serious global repercussions.

These sludge come from the dust of January, when McCarthy had to endure the humiliation of losing 14 votes before being elected president for the fifteenth time. The group of radical MPs known as the ‘Freedom Caucus’ repeatedly refused to vote for him unless he offered them key concessions. And he did it: McCarthy agreed to appoint three of them as members of the Rules Committee, the equivalent of the Spanish Congress Board, which decides what is voted on and what is not, giving them the power to veto all legislation. And, if that were not enough, he reformed the House rules to allow any ordinary deputy could present a motion of censure on his own against McCarthy himself, instead of limiting that power to the leaders of the two parliamentary groups, as was done until now.

One of the radicals, Matt Gaetz, eagerly took the ‘loaded gun’ that McCarthy had given them, and used it to fire him in retaliation for having brought the vote to a vote. a 45-day budget extension with numerous concessions to the Democrats, which was approved by more than two-thirds of the deputies, instead of forcing a closure of the Government as soon as the previous Accounts expired. Democrats voted in favor of the motion, angered by McCarthy’s numerous verbal attacks on them and by the fact that he had withdrawn funds to help Ukraine from the ‘bipartisan extension’ of the budget. And they were joined by 8 radical Republicans, happy to have won the biggest trophy of the last decade: their own leader.

Once McCarthy fell, the Republican majority had to elect a new president. But The internal battles that already cost them 15 votes in January have flared up again with even more fury. Last week, the Republican parliamentary group named Steve Scalise, the party’s ‘number two’ until then, as McCarthy’s natural successor, in a close vote that ended 113 to 99. But fifty deputies assured that they would ‘never’ would support in an official election, so Scalise resigned his candidacy.

The representative who had lost against Scalise, Jim Jordan, precisely one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus, ran again, this time against a semi-unknown opponent, Austin Scott, whom journalists and representatives joked that “had been created by a IA this afternoon with the definition ‘generic Republican’.” And Jordan won, but by just 124 votes to 81, a worrying sign given that his rival, in practice, was little more than a sheet of paper with the word “no.” Jordan did dare to go to an official vote this Tuesday, and lost: 20 Republican deputies (mainly the most moderate ones) voted against him, and, for the fifteenth time so far this year, the vote ended without any candidate. obtained the absolute majority.

This Wednesday, Jordan ran again, and obtained even fewer votes: 22 deputies voted against, and several who did support him warned that they were not willing to endure another marathon of 15 votes. At this point, the only option that seems to have any real chance of ending this chaos is a bipartisan agreement to increase the powers of the acting speaker of the House, Republican Patrick McHenry, and that he can present bills for debate instead of being forced to repeat infinite votes in a loop to elect a new president. The other option, as some conservative deputies joked, is “that all Republican deputies be proposed, in alphabetical order” or “that there is a lottery and that whoever loses has to swallow the punishment of being president.”

Crisis at the worst moment

When this whole psychodrama began, it was already known that the budgets that had been approved would only last until November 15, although it was assumed that there would already be someone presiding over Congress by then. But a third of the 45 days of the extension have already passed, and everything remains paralyzed. The worst thing, however, is that in that time the Gaza crisis has shaken world politics and the economy, and what is least needed now is a new budget crisis in the US that adds more fuel to the fire of fear in the markets.

In addition, both parties want to send a large military aid package to Israel, greater than the $5.5 billion it already sends it each year; Joe Biden wants to deliver more than $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza, and Democrats are targeting military aid of $100 billion to Ukraine, to compensate for the stoppage of these weeks. Objectives that would facilitate the approval of a budget ‘grand agreement’ at full speed as soon as Congress reopens. But first, the Republicans need to put aside their internal struggles for a few weeks.