According to Rep. Josh Gottheimer, the deals Rep. Kevin McCarty (R-CA) is cutting with Republican extremists to be Speaker of the House will hurt chances to get bipartisan legislation approved over the next two years.
One of the main issues worrying Gottheimer is the move to vacate the chair, which allows a single member of the House to bring to the floor a vote of no confidence in the Speaker. As co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, the North Jersey lawmaker was able to reform the rule to make it a higher threshold a few years back.
“I’m concerned that if they cave to the far-right extremists on the Motion to Vacate, and continue to give away the store on committees and rules, Congress could be forced into a gridlock nightmare for the next two years — all at the expense of American families and progress,” he said.
Rollback of Problem Solvers Rules
Gottheimer added, “In 2018, I fought hard alongside members of the Problem Solvers Caucus to increase the threshold for a Motion to Vacate to help avoid empowering extremists and gridlock.”
“We are able to change that rule and others in place to all for more bipartisan rules for governing which I think is critical and saw the fruits of that in the last Congress.”
Government Offline
As voting for a Speaker starts its 12th round Jan. 6, Gottheimer thinks those in Washington are focused on one thing—moving forward so that they can actually get to work for the country.
“Right now, there is a branch of the government that is offline while we are waiting for this to get resolved,” he said. “Republicans continue to try but obviously keep hitting a wall. But given how much we have to do for the country, we want to get to work and actually have a House we can govern in.”
Gottheimer during a television interview the day before said any movement about a coalition candidate must be initiated by Republicans.
Coalition Conversations
“They have made it clear right now that they want to work it out on their side by giving away more and more to the far right,” he said. “Lots of us are having conversations but it’s really in their court to see if they want to work together in that way.”
“We will continue to have those conversations—some of which we are willing to share and others not—but the bottom line is that they have to be willing on their side and right now they are focused on trying cutting a deal with extremists. We would be willing to try a different approach and of course we would be willing to have those conversations.”
Gottheimer said accomplishments of the last House—such as infrastructure, confronting China with The CHIP Act, standing by veterans and law enforcement officials—with similar split in who controls the House would be much harder to obtain in the next two years with the proposed rules changes.
“We just had a Congress that was extraordinarily bipartisan and productive, and we have a ton of work still to do, with real bipartisan opportunities for the country,” he said. “We can’t let a band of extremists get in the way of that and stop us from getting things done.”
Difficulties in Moving Bipartisan Legislation
The North Jersey Democrat worried that once a Speaker is agreed upon, the ability to move forward with bipartisan legislation will be difficult.
“If you got the right environment and willing parties, you can actually get legislation accomplished,” he said. “If you set up a situation where you just hand over the kings of the kingdom to these extremists and they are in control, it is going to be very difficult to govern under that scenario.”
“Right now, whatever rules we agree to—and I worry a lot about that as things are moving to defending the extreme far right here and letting them control how the House is going to run—it is going to be very difficult to govern under a Speaker with these rules.”
In the words of Jonathon Turley, a Democrat and Constitutional scholar, Pelosi was an all-powerful speaker overseeing a series of party line votes with little opportunity for amendments or even to read some bills. I don’t consider this ideal…so we’re going from a 4,150 page Omnibus Bill with 7,200 earmarks including tens of millions for libraries for the papers of two retiring senators, with five senators getting half a billion dollars for their colleges, among other pork, which was provided shortly before voting so no human could actually read and understand it prior to the vote…and Gottheimer is afraid of the ‘right wing extremists’ who wanted at least 72 hours to review legislation before voting on it, to restore amendments on the floor, to restore the Holman Rule which allows members to make targeted cuts impacting federal agency functions and salaries…measures designed to control federal spending (which has gotten us to a $31 trillion national deb)t! We have abandoned fiscal responsibility the last few years, and going from an iron fisted authoritarian speaker to more deliberation and smaller bills with more debate and transparency is considered extreme? Really?
If this is your idea of extremism Rep Gottheimer, then you are the problem:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-in-kevin-mccarthys-deal-with-conservatives-11673188873
Anytime Democrats and progressives are in power and fully in control, any opposition is now termed terroristic or extremist
What is extremist is insisting that men can become women, allowing millions of undocumented illegal people across the border into this country, printing and creating money in credit and thereby destroying the currency. What is extreme is thinking that government can solve every problem. What is extreme and quite frankly completely insane is thinking that “whiteness“ abuse everything with the systemic rascism.
The Democratic Party and progressive movement in general is a nihilistic civilization destroying extremist lunatic cult of death. The only thing that Democrats and progressives care about is power.
When power becomes the primary concern, then reality goes right out the window. And that is what we are witnessing a wholesale denial of reality. There is nothing more extremist than that
yonbiz and Dirk: Don’t be so hard on Joshie. He’s just being a good little DemonRat shill, parroting the talking points that he hears from his controllers ad nauseum. Hopefully, he’s correct, and that gridlock will prevail for the next two years; the less legislation that those lunatics in DC can implement, the less harm it will inflict on the country.
Unfortunately Mr. Gottheimer has apparently never read the Constitution of the United States. he seems to think he was elected to serve the interests of the Speaker of the House as a lap dog voting (why bother?) in lockstep. The small Republican group of “extremists” would be in excellent company, despite their individual flaws, with the founders, also extremists in the eyes of Tories and Good King George. Seems to me that Mr. G is against representative democracy.
Allowing a single crank to force another vote for Speaker is not in service of representative democracy. Especially when that crank is likely to represent fewer people than Josh Gottheimer represents.
Today’s Republicans would be Tories: they think wealth is to be preserved above other people’s liberty, and they really , really want an authoritarian running the country, as long as he’s one of theirs.
Somehow, the budget worries always come up when programs for citizens are considered, but never when programs for military contractors are considered.
(And I thought Republicans wanted smaller government, not government reaching into doctors’ offices and bathrooms. Why do you care if someone wants to change their pronouns?)
Jenn Broekman, FWIW, the rule to allow a single “crank” to call for a vote to Vacate The Chair goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s time. I guess they didn’t have cranks at that time.
As far as spending on “programs for citizens” versus “military contractors” is concerned, both are utterly out of control and rife with fraud. (Although, I will note for the record, that the Constitution REQUIRES spending on defense; not on “programs for citizens”.)
If you still believe in the façade of the Ds versus the Rs, you’re missing the point. The correct view is that it’s THEM (the UniParty) versus US (the people). The UniParty is there to further their personal power and wealth. Period. They maintain the Left versus Right illusion to keep us distracted and fighting with each other, rather than seeing them for the crooks that they are. There are few in the 3 branches of government who actually believe in the Constitution as it was written.
Rep Gottheimer is again phony with this nonsense. His entire Party of Marxists—- which he votes in lock step with essentially 100% of the time are the destructive “extremists”.