“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” Gaetz said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Hard-right obstructionists in the House GOP have made clear for weeks that McCarthy would be removed if he relied on Democrats to pass any funding legislation. The introduction of the measure, called a motion to vacate, requires only one person to force the House to consider removing the speaker, a move that has never succeeded before.
Gaetz accused McCarthy of lying during the negotiations over the stopgap government funding talks, as well as lying to the Republican conference during the lengthy speakership fight that saw him going through 15 rounds of House votes before being elected speaker.
“Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz said. “He lied to Biden, he lied to House conservatives. He had appropriators marking to a different number altogether.”
McCarthy, Gaetz said, broke a promise made to hard-right conservatives during the speakership fight that the chamber would move to single spending bills. Gaetz also said McCarthy promised the conference 72 hours to read the bill, and that the budget would return to pre-covid spending levels. Neither of those things happened.
“There is almost no promise he hasn’t violated,” Gaetz told ABC News’s “This Week.”
After the House passed a bipartisan plan to avert a shutdown Saturday, McCarthy was defiant when asked about the potential effort to remove him from his seat.
“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room. I am going to govern with what is best for this country,” McCarthy said, without mentioning Gaetz. “I’m going to be a conservative who gets things done for the American public. Whatever that holds, so be it because I believe on not giving up on America. I’m not going to be beholden to somebody who portrays and does something different.”
Gaetz was one of six Republicans who never supported McCarthy in his fight to take the speaker’s gavel in January, at the beginning of the new congressional term. Those six members eventually voted “present” in the 15th round of voting, lowering the threshold needed for McCarthy’s victory.
But those Republicans, as well as many others, have served as arbiters to a majority of House Republicans who have tried to govern under the constitutional constraints of having to pass bills with a Democratic majority Senate and Democratic president.
On Sunday morning, Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the most vulnerable moderate Republicans in the conference, told “This Week” that Gaetz’s decision is a “diatribe of delusional thinking.” Lawler noted that while Gaetz is complaining about how slowly the House has moved to advance appropriations bills, the Florida Republican himself is one of the reasons the process has been so slow.
“By putting this motion to vacate on the floor, you know what Matt Gaetz is going to do? He’s going to delay the ability to complete that work over the next 45 days,” Lawler said. “And just like he and some of my colleagues did during the past three weeks, they delayed the process by voting down the rules, violating our conference rules. They delayed the process by refusing to come to an agreement within the conference on a conservative [continuing resolution].”
A majority of the GOP conference still staunchly support McCarthy and would vote to keep him as their speaker. But with such a narrow majority, if more than five hard-liners vote in favor of deposing McCarthy, Republicans will need Democrats to help overcome that margin. But their help, if it is ever given, would come at a significant price.
House Democrats are beginning to discuss how they would handle a potential challenge to McCarthy’s speakership, as their participation — or lack thereof — will determine whether he remains as speaker of the House.
Multiple people familiar with the private conversations have said that no plan is final and that McCarthy’s own last-minute scramble to force consideration of a clean short-term spending bill that averted a government shutdown has angered many Democrats.
While Gaetz is criticizing McCarthy over his decision to work with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution, he would need Democratic support to oust McCarthy. Speaking to “This Week,” however, Gaetz said he expects Democrats — who famously oppose McCarthy — to protect him.
“If at this time next week, Kevin McCarthy is still speaker of the House, it will because be because the Democrats bailed them out and he can be their speaker, not mine,” Gaetz said.
Some Democrats on Sunday welcomed the idea of removing McCarthy. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she would “absolutely” vote to end his speakership.
“I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak speaker,” she told CNN. “He clearly has lost control of his caucus … It’s not up to Democrats to save Republicans from themselves.”
Separately, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — McCarthy’s predecessor as House speaker — said Gaetz’s move against McCarthy “is just not about the budget, it’s about a values debate.”
“You’re wasting your time on that guy because he has no sway in the House of Representatives except to get on TV and to raise money on the internet,” Pelosi said Sunday.
McCarthy’s ultimate decision to move past trying to appease hard-liners and listen to a pragmatic set of Republicans who suggested forgoing their colleagues’ votes to instead rely on Democrats to fund the government was seen by some Republicans and Democrats as one way that the House could function moving forward.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-S.D.) warned his fellow Republicans not to lose sight of what they’ve been working toward. He said that if McCarthy is ousted, that would eat up valuable time trying to fund the government for the entire year.
“We can either start Monday to pass single subject appropriations bill and secure the border, or we can start the circus,” Armstrong said.