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As of midday Thursday, nobody knows for sure who the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives will be. The situation is fluid and uncertain, and seemingly could change at a moment’s notice — potentially before this editorial finds its way into print. That in itself is a big problem.
No, the issue isn’t about newspaper deadlines. The problem is that Congress faces a string of major deadlines and crises, and having one of its chambers at a standstill can only make things worse.
This haphazard leadership game of musical chairs on display over the past week is no way for the U.S. House of Representatives to operate, at any point in time. It is especially precarious at this moment, however.
Over the weekend, Hamas brutally attacked Israeli civilians, once again igniting the long-simmering Israel-Palestine conflict. Russia continues its brutal assault in Ukraine, perhaps now with a less-watchful international community as eyes are drawn to the Middle East. Israel and Ukraine need our support, along with thoughtful discussion about how to best achieve peace. That requires a functioning House of Representatives.
And here at home, Congress is already burning through the small bit of time it bought itself to pass appropriations bills and fund the federal government in a long term and predictable way. They just barely avoided a government shutdown at the end of September, and will be right back where they started in mid-November without deliberative and collaborative work in both the House and Senate. The speakership drama has surely drawn attention and time away from those efforts, at least in the House, which already had work to do to catch up to the Senate’s more bipartisan approach to passing individual appropriations bills out of committee.
As of Wednesday, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana has looked like the frontrunner to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Scalise won an internal House GOP conference nomination vote over Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, but failed to secure the needed 217 votes to win a vote on the floor. That official chamber-wide vote was delayed, with Scalise apparently unable to reach the needed threshold, at least for now.
Maybe Scalise will prevail. Maybe he won’t. Either way, this uncertainty has been a terrible way of conducting the country’s business, and it comes at a terrible time.
Should chaos continue to prevail, we hope the consensus-minded pragmatists in the House (yes, they exist) will quickly coalesce around a moderate speaker candidate who could generate support from both Republicans and Democrats. Impasses in Washington are often best resolved through center-driven solutions, so why not this one? The most important consideration right now here must be getting Congress in gear to address the mounting problems, both at home and abroad. If the Republican House majority, particularly its far-right faction, cannot agree on a leader, then the adults in the room who actually want to govern should find a way to do that.
The Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers (including Maine 2nd District Rep. Jared Golden) often in the mix of dealmaking conversations, would seem to be a natural place for these needed conversations to initiate. So let’s revisit something one of the Problem Solvers, Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, said back in November 2022 ahead of McCarthy’s effort to become speaker (an effort Bacon supported).
“If we have total gridlock, I’m going to work with like-minded people across the aisle to find someone agreeable for speaker,” Bacon said last year. “We have to govern. We can’t afford to let our country be stuck in neutral.”
The circumstances are different, and more dire, but the same perspective should win out now. The House of Representatives, and the country in general, cannot be stuck in neutral at this moment. If House Republicans can’t quickly agree on a new leader because of disagreement on the right, the sensible path forward is down the middle.
