Who voted to remove Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy?
Kevin McCarthy was removed as Speaker for keeping the US government running with help from Democratic votes. Eight GOP members did the same to oust him.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy had the gavel taken from him on Tuesday after a historic motion to vacate the speakership was filed by fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. Eleven Republicans, along with all of the Democrats, voted against tabling the motion setting up for only the second time in US history that such a resolution was considered on the House floor.
The final tally was 216 members of the House voting to remove McCarthy to 210 for keeping him at the helm. In the end, only eight Republicans were able to bring down the Speaker with aid of all Democrats present. Ironic because McCarthy was ousted for the crime of extending funding with the help of Democrats to avert a government shutdown. His six-week extension passed both the House and Senate with strong bipartisan support but it came just three hours before funding for the government would have expired.
Lawmakers will now have to choose a new Speaker of the House at the same time they work to pass 12 appropriation bills to fund the government by 17 November to avoid a shutdown. Until the gavel is put into new hands, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina will be the Speaker pro tempore.
Who voted to remove Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy?
While eleven House Republicans voted to let the motion to vacate go to the floor for a vote, only eight ended up saying ‘yea’ to removing him as Speaker of the House. Most of them have declared themselves part of the Freedom Caucus or have been identified as belonging to the bloc, which is considered the most conservative and farthest to the right of the GOP.
Those who voted to take the gavel from McCarthy include Eli Crane (R-AZ), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ken Buck (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Bob Good (R-VA), Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Matt Rosendale, (R-MT).
They were joined by all 208 Democrats who were present for the vote. The leader of the caucus, Hakeen Jeffries, released a statement prior to the motion to vacate the speakership coming before the House listing the reasons why his members would not save McCarthy.
Among those was the dysfunction that has been present under the former Speaker’s leadership from the beginning and which manifested itself yet again in McCarthy’s removal. Also his going back on a budgeting agreement that he had made with President Joe Biden to avert a first-ever default on the national debt as well as allowing the strongly bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to be turned into “a right-wing wish list full of highly partisan poison pills.”