Thus, the ground was clear for an unprecedented race to succeed McCarthy a year before the next elections.
Various analysts predicted a compulsion as arduous as it is accelerateddue to the restricted situation in which the Chamber was left since Congress has until November 17 to approve a new budget and avoid the feared “shutdown”the situation in which the government would be forced to suspend the operation of various organizations and stop paying salaries to thousands of employees.
Also for institutional reasons, because the speaker of the House of Representatives is constitutionally second in line of presidential succession, preceded only by the vice president (in this case, the vice president, Kamala Harris).
Uncertainty after McCarthy’s impeachment
Meanwhile, The presidency of the House will be assumed provisionally by the congressman Patrick McHenry -also a Republican and proposed for the position by McCarthy-, but with the functions of the position and the body itself noticeably diminished.
Until McCarthy’s formal successor is elected, The House of Representatives will not be able to debate legislative matters and McHenry will only be empowered to recognize speaker nominations and declare the body on recess or suspended, according to the Sputnik news agency.
The motion to debate McCarthy’s impeachment was presented yesterday to the House by Republican Matt Gaetz.
The initiative was part of the tension within the Republican Party among the hard wing that responds to the former president Donald Trump, to which Gaetz belongs, and the traditional conservatives.
The motion, which required the support of a simple majority of the lower house to be approved, was to be debated within the next two legislative days, although in principle it emerged that some mechanism would be sought to delay it.
However, With 218 votes in favor and 208 against, the full chamber ruled this afternoon in favor of debating and voting on the motionaccording to the Europa Press agency.
Both for the motion to be debated and for McCarthy to be later removed, the votes of more than 200 Democrats were joined by those of just over a dozen Republicans, who have a simple majority of the House seats.
Tensions in the Republican Party
Gaetz He is a leading figure among the small group of far-right Republican lawmakers who last week brought the government to the brink of a shutdown with their refusal to pass a new budget without deep spending cuts.
That bloc also opposes sending additional aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, arguing that the money would be better spent in the United States in the fight against illegal immigration.
McCarthy unleashed the fury of the ultra-conservative Republican wing when he approved a bipartisan stopgap funding measure backed by the White House on Saturday that averted a government shutdown at the last minute.
Like many congressmen, had questioned Trump after the 2021 Capitol riots and then sensed that the winds were changing, so he quickly backed down, making a trip to Florida to make peace with the former president, thus securing crucial support for his ambitions as speaker of the House of Representatives.
But hardliners exercise a de facto veto over the passage of legislation in the House, given the Republicans’ narrow victory in last November’s midterm elections.
In fact, last January, in order to obtain the presidency of the body, McCarthy He made concessions to the far-right sector of his party, including a regulatory change that allows individual legislators to present a “vacation motion.”
Last May, McCarthy engaged in a tough fight with President Joe BidenDemocrat, about expanding the limit of national debt.
Then he reached a last-minute agreement to avoid a catastrophic default on US debt and, although he considered it a victory for the conservatives, he had to face Republican hardliners who reproached him for having made too many concessions in terms of public spending.
Your limited commitment to the democrats became the target of far-right ire again last week when he used the rival party’s votes to prevent a government shutdown.
The move angered Republicans – including Trump-, that sought to force massive spending cuts and reduce the country’s debt burden, which exceeds $31 trillion.
After the House on Saturday approved a last-minute measure to extend the budget, at current levels and without new aid to Ukraine, Gaetz warned that he would move to remove McCarthy.
“I think we have to tear off the blindfold,” Gaetz said Sunday to CNN, adding that he believed he had enough Republican support to remove the House speaker from office.
Also Biden criticized on Sunday McCarthy for not having fulfilled the agreement forged in May around the debt crisis, which was intended to avoid a fight for closure, and for eliminating support for Ukraine. “Stop playing, end this,” the head of the White House said then.
Source: Ambito
