What are California lawmakers doing while Republicans fail to elect a speaker?
Rules cannot be decided. Committees are not assigned. Staff cannot be hired.
There is no U.S. House of Representatives until there is a Speaker, and members-elect don’t appear close to picking one.
House members failed to push Kevin McCarthy, a Republican representative from Bakersfield, over the majority threshold for the 11th time Thursday night — the most ballots used to elect a speaker since the Civil War.
Because a speaker must swear in members, no one in the 118th Congress’ House has yet to be sworn in. That means there are no House members. They can still meet, but the presiding officer is not the speaker, but the clerk of the House.
For now, they have to “just keep going” on their speaker ballots, Modesto’s John Duarte said.
As long as members are not officially members, they cannot get paid, though paychecks are not issued until later in the month anyway. Then, “the pressure goes up — for some, quite a bit,” said Duarte, a newly-elected Republican who will represent part of the San Joaquin Valley.
Members who served in the previous Congress do not retain membership in this one unless they were newly elected and sworn in.
Technically, that means the members-elect should not get priority in dealing with federal agencies when they seek help for constituents.
Lawmakers said that they’re proceeding anyway.
“We’re helping out as we always do,” said Jim Costa, a Democratic representative from Fresno.
Asked if she could proceed with her normal operations, Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic representative from San Jose, said without hesitation, “I am.”
National security concerns
There was more concern over how to handle national security issues.
“Because we don’t have a speaker and we can’t get sworn in and we can’t organize committees, we can’t do the important national security work we ought to be doing,” said Sara Jacobs, a Democrat from San Diego.
Without members, committees don’t exist. Jacobs was a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Right now we are not eligible to take classified briefings,” she explained. “If something were to happen around the world we wouldn’t be able to be briefed on it. There are real national security consequences.”
The likely chairs of those committees, along with the anticipated head of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed concern in a statement that “the Biden administration is going unchecked and there is no oversight of the White House, State Department, Department of Defense, or the intelligence community.”
Some tasks on hold
Duarte is waiting to put together all of his Washington D.C. staff until he has committee assignments, ideally on ones related to agriculture and natural resources. But to get those, “we’ve got to have a speaker.”
He is still setting up his district staff, taking calls from and assisting constituents, and moving forward on bipartisan discussions.
Robert Garcia, a newly-elected Democrat who will represent the area around Long Beach, said that everyone he selected for his staff was doing fine right now.
“But pretty soon,” he said, “this will start impeding on everyone’s ability to actually get work done — staffs’ ability to serve our constituents appropriately — and so we’re just standing by until Republicans figure out what they’re going to do.”
There are further consequences of McCarthy’s quest to become speaker, Garcia said.
McCarthy’s bid to ascend to the speakership is being held up by a group of 20 self-described Republican rebels who have staunchly refused to vote for him, some because they are pushing for substantive rule changes they believe will make the House more democratic (and weaken the role of speaker) and some described as “never Kevins.” Even as McCarthy agreed to more concessions, the GOP rebels held out.
“We’ll see how long and how this goes today,” he said. “But every concession that he keeps giving to the far-right and extreme-right is dangerous for the country.”
Even with the “Groundhog Day” nature of votes, Democrats are holding a positive attitude.
Costa was hoping to get back to California for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s inauguration on Jan. 6. He’s not sure he’ll make it.
This story was originally published January 5, 2023 at 2:39 PM with the headline "What are California lawmakers doing while Republicans fail to elect a speaker?."
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