Prospective speakers multiply in House as all wait on Ryan
At the moment, he defines one of the toughest jobs of GOP leaders as “setting the record straight” on reports that the Republican Party is in “chaos”.
If the government runs out of cash, it can’t pay obligations like interest payments, Medicare payments, and Social Security checks.
And why should he have asked the conservative rebels, who like everyone else watched as public approval of GOP leaders went down and down? That’s enough to deny the nomination to any candidate who does not meet with their approval.
McCarthy was a favorite to win the speakership, but the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative bloc that has been flexing its muscle, supported another candidate, meaning he most likely would not have the Republican votes to win.
“We are all hopeful that Paul is going to say that he would appreciate the opportunity to serve as speaker”, said Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, adding that she’s been encouraged by colleagues to look at the job.
Fleischmann said that, in talking to constituents in his district this week, he is hearing frustration with the continuing confusion in the House.
“However, I think that we have become, unfortunately, a midterm party that doesn’t lose and a presidential party that’s had a really hard time winning”, Priebus said. He was amused by the situation that both Fleischmann and his fellow Republicans find themselves in.
COLE: I think it does. Last week, Boehner said he was confident it could be resolved within a matter of weeks. The speaker’s done all his thinking for him.
Boehner told Republicans Friday that he was still planning on retiring at the end of the month, but has not announced an election date. Meadows and his caucus again threaten our government with shutdown if they don’t get their way.
Boehner himself has said that he doesn’t want to leave a “dirty barn” for his successor, comments that have been widely interpreted as a promise that he would try to at least clear away the debt limit issue rather than saddle the next speaker with the task.
“There is no way to predict the irreparable damage that default would have on global financial markets and the American people”, Lew said.
Fleischmann argued that a particular need is for Congress to adopt a transportation budget.
“There are many of us in the House Freedom Caucus and elsewhere who want to talk about ways to raise the debt ceiling”, Mulvaney said. But lawmakers have been unable to agree on a source of funding for transportation expenses.
Congressional Democrats are understandably enjoying the GOP’s conundrum.
Congress’s approval rating is just 15 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. And he believes Tennessee, which holds its primary March 1 along with 11 other states (including Georgia and Alabama), will be important in deciding the GOP nominee.
Those sentiments echo what Priebus said in June: That if Republicans can’t take back the White House in 2016, they can no longer be taken seriously as a national party. “If it’s just about bubbling up a few of the extreme right-wing ideas members have who have been holding up progress, well then I think we’d be wasting a lot of time”, Frankel said.
At the outset of the interview, Fleischmann touted his work promoting increased technical education opportunities for local students, a topic he has focused on this year. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t mandate an absolute majority.
“Young people are not viewing jobs in manufacturing as glamorous or worthwhile”, Fleischmann said. They are against workers, the poor, Latinos, women; they are for the rich and the Wall Street executives who should have gone to prison instead of your nephew who got caught smoking pot.