WASHINGTON – The House isn’t just speaker-less, it also appears to be rudderless.
Things are so bad in the GOP, House Republicans can’t even agree on who isn’t leading them now that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has twice tried — and failed badly — to win enough votes to earn the speakership.
Raw Story tracked down 20 House members Wednesday, and simply asked: Who’s in charge?
We got about 20 different answers.
“Definitely not me,” Rep. George Santos (R-NY) told Raw Story. “It’s weird. Nobody knows who’s in charge.”
While Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) refused to turn around and acknowledge the question Raw Story asked from just a few feet away, others can’t help but acknowledge the obvious power vacuum.
“No. We have no speaker,” Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) told Raw Story.
As for ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s staff members? Lamborn and other Republicans say nothing’s really changed with their duties, even if they’re technically boss-less at the moment.
“I think, everyone’s still in their places,” Lamborn guessed.
An example of how chaotic matters have become: Last week, there was a rule change for Republican conference meetings, and now the party’s rank-and-file and chairpeople alike are supposed – emphasis on ‘supposed to’ – to surrender their mobile devices before entering the party’s closed-door confabs. Who made the call?
Raw Story reached out to Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
No reply.
Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry?
Nothing.
House Majority Leader – and former speaker-designate – Steve Scalise (R-LA)?
Crickets.
House Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN)?
Same silence.
“Do you know who made that new rule?” Raw Story asked Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
“I mean, the speak…,” Roy stopped himself before storming off, complaining loudly and turning heads in the marble halls of the Capitol. “That's such an unimportant question. Seriously guys.”
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GOP rules may seem insignificant when the party has created a power vacuum in the House, but congressional committees are the brain of Congress – where lawmakers are supposed to study issues before crafting policy for the nation.
Since McCarthy had his gavel stripped from him two weeks ago, there have been next to no hearings in the House. Committee work all but ceased.
Then, all of a sudden, 14 hearings – which was winnowed down to 13 after one was scrapped – sprung up out of nowhere and were placed on the House docket to the surprise of Democrats.
Who was responsible?
“I don't know the answer to that. I'll try and find out. I assumed it was [Oversight Chair James] Comer (R-KY),” Rep. Jamie Raskin – the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee – told Raw Story. “I wasn't aware that anything was going on until we got notice of the hearing.”
Did anyone pressure Republican-controlled committees to restart their idling engines?
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Who knows? Many rank-and-file in the GOP believe McCarthy’s staff is working with McHenry and other leaders to make these calls.
“It's a combination right now,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) replied before he zipped his smiling lips, flashed a peace sign and headed into the Capitol.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) still has his name placard above the speaker’s office, and he is assisting Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-NC) in McHenry’s caretaker role. This team effort is accepted by most Republicans, it seems.
Crane is one of the infamous eight Republicans responsible for derailing McCarthy’s speakership, along with Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) who is sensing someone playing puppet master just out of sight.
“The devil,” Burchett told Raw Story when asked who’s in charge of the House these days.
In July, Burchett helped run the House Oversight Committee’s UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) hearing where explosive allegations were made by UFO whistleblower and former intelligence staffer David Grusch.
Grusch repeatedly testified under oath that he could only answer certain pressing questions in a classified setting, such as a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), but members of the UAP Caucus felt stymied in their efforts. Until this week.
Jordan and his allies have worked every angle they can to amass the 217 votes needed to win the nomination before the full House, which is why it was a tad suspicious that ‘news’ of a classified follow-up to the first UFO hearing was announced this week.
“I think they realized the public pressure to change it,” Burchett said.
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“You don't think that's a promise coming from Jordan as a part of [his speaker bid] stuff?” Raw Story asked.
“Yeah,” Burchett said. “Because Jordan wants to be wide open on that stuff.”
“But so if he doesn’t get it, that promise dies?”
Jim Jordan
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has so far failed to win the U.S. House speakership. Shutterstock
“Well, they already put it out there, so,” Burchett said.
With the party looking like a joke, some Republicans just want to make jokes.
“Joe Biden. He's doing a miserable job,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) quipped to Raw Story.
Harris is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus and seems fine with their do-nothing Congress.
“I guess it goes to prove just how relatively unimportant it is for Congress to be in session every day,” Harris said.
Harris chairs the Appropriations Committee — think spending bills — Subcommittee on Agriculture, making him a so-called all-powerful cardinal on Capitol Hill who other members must kneel before to get funding directed to their preferred pet projects.
The work of Harris’ committee is wrapped up, so the next stop is the House floor — once his party picks a new speaker — but he’s fine with the House being ground to a halt.
“We're not doing anything, so it's not running right now and, honestly, the American people probably look at it and say, ‘Yeah, we don't see much of a change,’” Harris laughed. “No rush whatsoever.”
Others in the GOP seem to have actually read the post-9/11 rules that created the position of speaker pro tempore, which McHenry occupies. The position is designed to fill a gap and ensure continuity of government in the event the actual House speaker is incapacitated or the speakership otherwise becomes vacant.
“We're exactly where you would be, if the speaker were out of town [and] the speaker pro tem were overseeing the floor,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Raw Story. “Now, this particular speaker pro tem has not decided to bring anything to the floor, other than elections, but he has complete authority, as far as I read the statute. It envisioned an election, but it didn't require one.”
Issa says McHenry’s empowered in a new, if unique way.
“If you think about it, after 9/11, if two-thirds of the Congress was wiped out, and let's just say that they were all Republicans, then the speaker pro tem would be in a situation in which it would really be kind of inappropriate to replace him, to have that election, until the elections were held back in the districts,” Issa said. “So it was about survival and continuity. It was not about just having somebody oversee an election, because you could have a non-elected bureaucrat do that.”
As for who’s in charge right now?
Even some of the most powerful gavel-wielding lawmakers at the Capitol are clueless.
“I can’t answer that,” Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) – chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee – told Raw Story after a hearty laugh. “It depends who you ask. Right now, I think Jordan is trying to run it.”
Jordan’s making promises, but are old party leaders also letting him have the keys to the car this week, too?
“I don’t think he’s in charge at all. He’s not in charge,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told Raw Story. “It's clear that nobody on their side is in control at this point, and that's not good for the country … the refusal of the most extreme elements of their party – which Jordan represents – to not want to work in a bipartisan fashion to get the people's work done, is sad.”
Who’s in charge?
“That's a good question,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told Raw Story just before earning more votes than Jordan for the speakership, again, all from his Democratic colleagues. “I don't know. You'd have to talk to them on the other side of the aisle.”
