Uncertainty reigns in the People’s House.
While Congress’ lower chamber is often characterized by more volatility than the Senate, the last few days have seen discord and dysfunction reach historic levels — putting the country on a trajectory that could lead to another shutdown scare in November.
“We have 45 days,” Utah Republican Rep. Blake Moore told the Deseret News Wednesday. “And we’re going to be staring down another shutdown here very soon because we just keep striving for attention-getting measures instead of actually doing our work.”
And this outcome will become all but inevitable, according to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, unless the Senate jump starts its work on annual spending bills — which it so far hasn’t done.
Following Saturday’s passage of a bill to keep government open until Nov. 17, a dozen or so House Republicans came out in open rebellion against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, arguing he had failed to keep his word to reform Congress’ spending habits by relying on Democratic votes.
Empowered by the party’s narrow three-seat majority, this group, led by Florida firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, had tanked McCarthy’s earlier proposals to avoid a shutdown, saying they would never support any kind of “continuing resolution.”
And on Tuesday, the same cast of GOP holdouts, aided by the entire House Democratic conference, succeeded in vacating the speaker’s chair, removing McCarthy, the House’s top-ranking official, for the first time in U.S. history, and throwing an already strained appropriations schedule into chaos.
“There’s a real strong frustration that a few members could do this when we were having such good momentum and then manipulate the narrative such that it seemed like they were doing this for substantive reasons,” Moore said.
How will electing a new speaker impact the appropriations process?
As soon as Gaetz filed his motion to oust McCarthy, Republican plans to pass spending bills over the next two weeks were thrown out the window, according to Moore, who sits on House committees over the budget and taxes.
Upon his removal, McCarthy was replaced by a “speaker pro tempore,” Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., to oversee the election of the next speaker. McHenry promptly sent his conference home, with a speaker vote scheduled for Wednesday.
However, according to reporting on Capitol Hill, it is likely the process will extend well into the second half of next week. The last time the Republican conference attempted to unite its narrow and raucous majority around one leader in January, it took five days and 15 rounds of voting.
And until a new speaker is selected, most congressional scholars, and House members, agree that no legislative business can proceed.
“We were planning to have four bills on the floor and passed in those two weeks. Now we just lost two weeks of a 45 day period. And that’s not anybody’s fault other than Matt Gaetz,” Moore said. “But guess what? He benefits when he can obstruct and then complain that it doesn’t get done on time. And so this shell game is going to continue on over these next 45 days.”
Moore said the first order of business is to “coalesce around a speaker so we can move forward and start getting bills to the floor.” The House must now pass its remaining spending bills, the Senate must draft versions of its own and the two must be reconciled in a bipartisan conference before the recently-passed continuing resolution expires on Nov. 17, Moore said, a prospect that now appears increasingly unlikely.
Every year, both chambers of Congress must pass 12 spending bills by Sept. 30. Otherwise, nonessential discretionary government spending is put on hold. But Congress almost never accomplishes this task on time, preferring to pass short-term funding measures until a massive spending package receives a vote shortly before the Christmas recess.
It is a consensus view among House Republicans, including the party hardliners who cut McCarthy’s speakership short, that Congress must return to “regular order,” where categorized spending bills are debated, amended and passed individually to ensure the careful allocation of taxpayer dollars.
However, Moore said the process to elect a new speaker will significantly reduce their legislative work period and make it more likely another continuing resolution will be needed. This fact, in addition to the significant spending cuts that were taking place under McCarthy, casts a suspicious light on the motivations of those who voted to oust him, Moore said.
“Kevin McCarthy ... has done more for our fiscal outlook in the 118th Congress than we’ve done in a decade or more,” Moore said.
Moore pointed out that many of those who voted to remove McCarthy used their position to engage in extensive fundraising and were part of a Republican majority in 2017 that Moore said did little to address spending.
“So, it’s just that it doesn’t pass the sniff test.”
What about the Senate?
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee has made a name for himself criticizing Congress’ reckless spending since he entered office in 2011. He was a central figure behind the government shutdown of 2013, which Republicans forced in protest of Obamacare.
While Lee has said he does not want to see a shutdown in 2023, he supports his colleagues in the House who are pushing for a return to “regular order.”
Lee participated in a House Freedom Caucus meeting on Monday night where he encouraged the group of fiscal hawks to focus on expediting the spending process and “avoid the end of year rush” even as they battle it out over conservative priorities.
But Lee worries any progress in the House will get caught up in a Senate bottleneck. His chamber is only scheduled to be in session for 10 full days between now and Nov. 17, Lee said on Wednesday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“It’s deliberate,” Lee said in a subsequent post. “They run out the clock in September, then punt it to mid-November, then again to just before Christmas, when Schumer-McConnell will emerge from a dungeon with a massive, 2,000-page spending bill, telling senators that they must pass that bill without reading, debating, or amending it.”
In an interview with the Deseret News on Tuesday, Lee said he will prioritize making sure an amendment process remains open in the Democrat-led Senate so conservative voices like his can influence the final outcome.
“Even though they’ve got that majority it doesn’t mean that we won’t win some battles in that fight, and won’t win some votes along the way to advance priorities that are important to us,” Lee said.
On Wednesday, Lee committed, along with 19 other senators, led by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to delay votes on any legislation not relating directly to government funding.
While the House has passed four of its 12 appropriations bills so far, the Senate has passed none.
The senators said in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., they would do whatever it took to create an “open amendment process” and avoid “a December omnibus spending package.”