The speaker of the House of Representatives, who is the “third in power” after the president and vice president in the United States, was suddenly dismissed. It is the first time in the 234 U.S. Congress that a speaker of the House of Representatives has been removed.
The U.S. House of Representatives held a general meeting on the 3rd (local time) and voted on the dismissal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy with 216 votes in favor and 210 against.
Eight hard-line Republican lawmakers who led the “rebel” voted in favor, and all Democratic lawmakers who decided to “yes to dismissal” with their party platform joined.
McCarthy’s dismissal came from the budget process.
Rep. Matt Gates, a Republican hardliner, submitted a motion to dismiss McCarthy in protest of his handling of the interim budget bill. Republican hardliners have continued to insist on a drastic budget cut.
The U.S. Congress has to deal with a federal budget before Oct. 1, when the fiscal year begins, but has remained deadlocked on Republican hardliners’ claims of cuts.
With the shutdown just around the corner, Chairman McCarthy started handling a 45-day temporary budget excluding the Ukraine aid budget on the 30th of last month, avoiding the government shutdown.
However, hard-line lawmakers openly complained about this and pushed for a resolution to dismiss him, eventually leaving McCarthy as the first distrusted speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Democratic Party reportedly concluded that McCarthy was unreliable, citing the House’s recent impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden, and decided on a party platform in favor of dismissal.
Representative Matt Gates (Florida), a member of the Freedom Caucus, a hard-line group within the U.S. Republican Party, speaks to reporters in front of Congress in Washington, D.C., on the 2nd (local time). On the same day, Gates submitted a resolution to dismiss House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republic of California). Yonhap News Agency
As a result, the entire House of Representatives, including the House Majority Republican Party, will be in a state of confusion for some time.
“No one knows what’s going to happen next, including those who voted for the dismissal resolution,” said Republican Tom Cole, chairman of the House of Representatives and close confidant of McCarthy. “They have no alternative, it’s simply a vote for confusion.”
As the House speaker’s position has become vacant, it is urgent to elect a successor, but there is no suitable alternative within the Republican Party. Some predict that Chairman McCarthy will run again.
However, even if McCarthy runs again, it is expected that he will not be elected again unless relations with hard-line lawmakers improve. When McCarthy was elected on January 6, he was barely elected after 15 votes amid a tug-of-war with hard-liners.
Republican hardliners are sticking to their position that they will not support any budget processing unless they reduce government spending in fiscal 2024 to $1.47 trillion, the level of 2022.
This is the third time that the House of Representatives has submitted a resolution to dismiss the speaker of the House of Representatives after Joseph Cannon (1910) and John Boehner (2015).
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