Courtesy blakemoore.house.gov
WASHINGTON D.C. — To become Speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy made some deals with the opposition.
One of those deals was a rule that would allow a single member of the House of Representatives to make a motion to vacate the speaker chair.
On Tuesday, Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz did just that and a handful of Republicans and more Democrats ousted McCarthy.
U.S. Congressman for Utah – District 1, Blake Moore, appeared on KVNU’s For the People program on Thursday and was asked somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if he would consider being the next speaker.
“If I’ve got your support, I’m being an adult. It’s funny some people often say that to me, and I go ‘look there’s nothing sensational about me, I’m just normal. I’m normal, I want it to be structured, I want it to boring in some cases. I’ve been thinking about this, there are some historic things that have happened. Tuesday was a really sad day, I wasn’t as angry, and I got really frustrated later. A lot of frustration, because it’s totally disingenuous with what just happened, not accurate. He lived up to what he said he was going to commit to,” Moore explained.
And now everything for 400-plus members of congress is stalled at this point. Moore feels that McCarthy was put in a no-win situation.
“Here’s the biggest, most ironic thing about this, is one of the gripes of Matt Gaetz is that Speaker McCarthy didn’t get the appropriations bill done on time. When there was a whole universe of individuals, a small group of people, but they would delay the appropriations process from moving forward. We had these bills marked up, ready to go several months ago but they would delay it and then it pushes to the deadline. And then there’s a group of people who say ‘well if we don’t get them done on time, I’m not going to support extending the timeline to help us get these finalized.’”
A clearly upset Moore said they put McCarthy in an impossible situation, but then they used that as leverage to kick him out. He said it was a personal grudge by Gaetz and others.
“That is so disingenuous, I don’t know a better word to say, manipulative, conniving? And the next part of it is we just lost two more weeks. We had four bills on the docket for last week and this week to get done, and we would have had nine completed out of 12. And all of a sudden, we can’t do any of those anymore because of these theatrics. So, it’s pretty fascinating what they can get away with, with respect to ‘ we really care about this process in getting things done on time’, when they’re going to do all this and continue to delay things.”
Moore said they will probably come together next week to select a new speaker.
He said he has no idea who that might be, he said his phone was ‘ringing off the hook’ all day Thursday as people have started jockeying for the position.
But he said he let everyone go to voice mail, Moore said he wants to talk more about the rules and the structure and less about the person right now.