Congressional Crack-up

The 118th Congress kicked off with a bang today as for the first time in literally 100 years a Speaker failed to get a majority on the first vote.

Edited because I missed that Matt Fuller is now at the Daily Beast - sorry Matt!!

So today was one of those days where everyone on social media suddenly becomes very interested in the workings of Congress. Now, there are plenty of people with actual expertise out there who you could/should go to in order to understand what’s happening (Steven Dennis of Bloomberg, Matt Fuller of the Daily Beast and Olivia Beavers of Politico are all people you absolutely should read to understand the House, plus Robert Costa of the Washington Post who has been a key source of insights into the House GOP caucus since 2013), but since this is an area where I have some expertise, I’m going to try to break down what happened today and why it was unusual, what may happen next and implications for the next year.

What happened: Today was the first day of the 118th Congress. Normally this is a fairly uneventful day - both the House and the Senate meet with their new members present and they take a variety of votes on decidedly procedural questions. In the House, in particular, the two main procedural votes are first the election of a new Speaker of the House from the majority party and, second, typically with the new Speaker now presiding, an updated package of rules that will govern how the chamber will operate, what committees will exist, who determines membership, etc. The threshold to be elected as Speaker of the House is to win a majority of those voting in the chamber and, for maximum formality, members are called upon alphabetically to render their vote for Speaker. So, in a normal session, with all members present (435), a Speaker will need to get 218 votes. Currently, due to the death of a Democratic Congressman from Virginia, there are 434 members, which still leaves 218 as the majority number. If members are not present (or choose to vote “present” the threshold decreases accordingly (so if five members were to skip out on a vote to grab drinks at Tune Inn, the threshold would drop to 215).

In the past decade, there have been intermittent examples of members in the majority party threatening to vote against their Speaker nominee, but none of these had ever really gained any traction. Again, these are normally things most Americans can safely ignore as being boring and utterly uninteresting to anyone who does not possess a professional requirement to follow the House or, more concerningly, to those like me who find legislative procedure interesting.

Going into today, there was considerable uncertainty about whether the normal, boring inaugural sessions of the recent past would continue. The majority the Republican Party secured in the 2022 elections was exceedingly thin (222 to 213) and Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republican Caucus in the 117th Congress had not secured support from the requisite number of Republicans in order to win the first ballot. There were five clear no votes throughout most of the past couple of months and McCarthy could only afford to lose four. However, he seemed determined to force them to vote him down on the floor (which makes sense since his political career is functionally over should he fail to be elected Speaker again - he was up for consideration in 2015 when rumors of an affair with a female member wrecked his chances) so everyone wanted to see if anyone would blink.

However, it was fairly quickly apparent that no one was going to blink and that McCarthy’s hole was much deeper than five votes. He lost 19 votes in the first round, 19 again in the second round, and an embarrassing 20 in the third round. So today for the first time since 1923 the majority party could not settle on a nominee for Speaker of the House and, after three failed ballots, the House adjourned for the day to return to try again tomorrow. This sets up a whole range of interesting options for what happens next.

Why it’s Unusual: As I mentioned above, there hadn’t been multiple floor ballots for a Speaker election since 1923, so the multiple ballots were certainly unusual. However, it’s worth noting that at the state level, these sorts of incidents are not actually that unusual. Indeed, while everyone was focused on the drama in DC in Pennsylvania a Democratic-turned-independent member won the Speakership in a dark horse election in a session thrown into turmoil due to Democratic deaths. However, since this is so rare at the federal level, it now creates a situation where there is far more uncertainty surrounding what happens next.

What Happens Next: It is almost certain that McCarthy will push for at least one more round of voting, but if negotiations over the night fail to lead to a breakthrough the possibility of a non-McCarthy speaker coming forward will start to rise precipitously. Who that might be remains unclear - there are multiple potential candidates (Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik) but it’s honestly too early to say what would happen if McCarthy really can’t get to 218.

Implications for Next Year: I wrote a fairly long piece on my thoughts for the 118th Congress late last year and the results of today make me even more confident in its conclusions. Brass tacks - almost any Speaker of the House trying to manage this narrow Republican majority will struggle badly to pass into law any deals that they might strike with the White House and the Democratic Senate. Members of the House Freedom Caucus appear to have decidedly unrealistic expectations about what they can accomplish through negotiation with the other chamber and will likely use their leverage to rapidly punish any Speaker who veers out of line. Given that, it is extremely difficult to see how the debt ceiling is raised and the government is funded at the end of FY 2023. I believe a shutdown is almost certain and really believe there is the real potential that Congress will be unable to raise the debt limit this spring.

Indeed, after today I’m probably even more concerned about the ability of a Republican Speaker to pass a debt ceiling increase or a deal on appropriations that is acceptable to a Democratic Senate and White House. The one thing pushing against the pessimism is that, in some ways, it might be better to have a huge fight now so that members who want to demonstrate their credentials to the base can do so on the relatively harmless question of who becomes Speaker. If this can win the far-right members enough where they feel sated it might ease the ability of whoever emerges as Speaker to act on must-pass bills without fear of being removed. We’ll just have to wait and see if that is the case.