Per new polling done by Suffolk University in cooperation with USA Today, most Americans are clearly not a fan of the approach recently taken by House Republicans to the role of Speaker in the chamber, which has seen that position left unoccupied for what’s now roughly three weeks!
The House GOP has already gone through two official selections to replace the recently ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and this week, they’re on track to pick a third. Clearly failing to garner sufficient support from Republicans, past pick Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) dropped out before even making it to the House floor. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the next pick, was voted down three times in a row on the floor, and the House GOP then rejected him as their Speaker pick on a secret ballot. In the USA Today polling, 67 percent said “Congress needs to elect a Speaker as soon as possible.” The statement with which that group agreed also cited pressing needs like government funding.
Only 24.7 percent agreed with the following statement: “I don’t care if Congress elects a Speaker. Every day that goes by without a Speaker means that Congress can’t waste more of our tax dollars.”
Government funding is set to expire in what’s become just weeks, meaning the time for some Republicans to actually move through the lengthy appropriations process they’ve been demanding and actually get the needed bills fully approved across the House and Senate seemingly just isn’t there, particularly considering the partisan nature of much of what this group is promoting and the bipartisan negotiations that would have to follow.
The House, when McCarthy was Speaker, voted on a temporary funding solution the last time that funding was a problem that would have imposed drastic cuts of some 30 percent across much of the government excluding areas like defense, which would have threatened a rhetorical blowtorch against major programs on which Americans rely! And the plan, though it didn’t even pass the House, got some 200 votes — so that’s where Republicans are.
