House Must Restart Speaker Election Process After Scalise Bows Out — Leaving Federal Budget and Israel Aid Frozen in Place

With Congressman Steve Scalise bowing out of the Speaker’s race following a conservative revolt, the House will remain paralyzed for the foreseeable future as the budget deadline looms and Israel faces an existential threat. The leading candidate for Speaker, Congressman Jim Jordan, already has two dissenters within the conference who say they will never vote for him.Late on Thursday, Mr. Scalise assembled many of his Republican colleagues in the basement of the Capitol Building to tell them he would abandon his candidacy and instead remain in the House majority leader position. “I just shared with my colleagues that I am withdrawing my name as a candidate,” Mr. Scalise told reporters. “If you look at where our conference is, there is still work to be done. Our conference still has to come together and is not there. There are still some people who have their own agendas.”With no Speaker, the House is unable to move any of its key legislative priorities, including the federal budget, which is due on November 17. According to the former Speaker, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, aid to Israel is another issue item that cannot move through the House before a full-time Speaker is elected. Amid mounting frustration in the House GOP caucus, some are pushing for the temporary speaker, Congressman Patrick McHenry, to interpret his role more broadly, enabling the House to act on vital legislation. “There is some thought that in the interest of national security — because we’re in a dangerous time and we have to get a national security aid package to Israel — that we could somehow empower McHenry to have more authorities,” the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Representative Michael McCaul told the AP. Mr. McHenry, however, appears only interested in pushing the fractious House majority toward choosing a new speaker. He “joked with lawmakers that he would lock them in a room and withhold food and water until they united behind a leader,” the AP reported Representative Marc Molinaro saying.Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis emerged from the GOP meeting following Mr. Scalise’s announcement Thursday expressing frustration with her “petty” colleagues’ inability to unify around a Speaker candidate in order to get these bills over the finish line. “I think these people really need to go back and try to understand what teamwork is,” Ms. Malliotakis tells the Sun. “This is much bigger than one person or any single person’s petty feelings. This is about getting someone to lead our conference so we can get back to work and do the people’s business.” Aid to Israel remains the most pressing issue for Congress, according to Mr. McCaul, and Congressman Chuck Fleischmann. “We’ve got to get a Speaker, we have to get our appropriations bills going, we have to get the House functioning back in a world that has — in a very short time — changed,” Mr. Fleischmann, a veteran Republican appropriator, tells the Sun. “The specific situation in the Middle East right now” makes the Speakership election incredibly pressing, he added. He says he and his colleagues have been so stymied by the Speaker’s race that they have been unable to discuss any aid package to Israel. He estimates that, based on classified intelligence he has seen, an aid package must be passed within the next two weeks in order to resupply the Jewish State. The main sticking point for House Republicans now is consideration of a rules package that Congressman Chip Roy introduced in a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday and was rejected by the conference. Mr. Roy told reporters that the rules package is meant to “democratize” the House by allowing more input from rank-and-file members, going through “regular order” by passing the 12 appropriations bills as required by the Budget Control Act, and making leadership decision-making processes more transparent. Congressman Kelly Armstrong tells the Sun that the Republicans’ Friday meeting will likely be spent debating, amending, and passing a rules package that they can later bring to the floor. “I think the smartest way anyone gets to 217 is that we deal with this in-house,” Mr. Armstrong said, adding that the GOP would meet — likely for many hours, or even days — beginning Friday morning to debate new House rules. “We have a math problem” when it comes to electing a Speaker, he said. Mr. Armstrong added that the Speakership may have to be decided by “trial by combat” should Mr. Jordan fail to win the Speaker’s gavel in the coming days. Any possibility of a Jordan Speakership may be dashed before his campaign even begins. As of Thursday night, two members of the GOP conference say they will not support Mr. Jordan. Congresswoman Ann Wagner tells the Sun that Mr. Jordan is a “nonstarter” and Congressman Austin Scott tells Punchbowl News that he will not vote for the Ohio congressman. If he is the GOP nominee, he can only afford to lose four members. When asked by the Sun if the House could end up in the same situation a week from now — leaderless and unable to do its duties — Congressman Mike Garcia said, “Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a week, I don’t know if it’s four days.”

House Must Restart Speaker Election Process After Scalise Bows Out — Leaving Federal Budget and Israel Aid Frozen in Place

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