McCarthy Elected as Speaker of the House

If the voting process for the Speaker of The House of Representatives wasn't decided by January 13th, the House of Representatives House committee was at a risk of facing no pay, leaving them unable to process student loan repayments. Also including swearing in new lawmakers and setting out the rules for House procedures - can’t take place until the speaker is chosen. Luckily after the 15-ballot election on January 7, Kevin McCarthy had been elected as the Representative for the House speaker. 

In order for the speaker of the house to be elected the candidates had to gain a majority of the votes cast. With 435 seats in the chamber, the speaker must get 218 votes to win. If no candidate reaches that threshold, the House will continue voting until someone does. As a matter of fact, this 15-ballot election was one of the longest voting processes since 1856 - when it took nearly two months and 133 votes to choose their speaker/leader. 

In order for McCarthy to become House speaker, McCarthy had to make concessions to a group of hard-liners who refused to support him until he yielded to their demands. For instance, agreeing to cap discretionary spending at the levels they were at the beginning of the Biden Administration for both defense and domestic spending, as part of a commitment to balance the federal budget within 10 years. Several House Republicans, however, criticized the measure, which could reduce national defense spending by $75 billion, with Rep. Mike Waltz, reportedly arguing it could back the government ‘into sequestration.’ Additionally, while in an interview with Ian Allen he stated, “I don’t necessarily think that this could cause the government to shut down. Though, it also shows the state of politics in general, I mean especially the republican party because it’s clear that they divide between the ideas and policies and the extreme right politics versus just moderate right politics, so not having the ability to pick a speaker of the house, which is like the thing they need for anything to be passed is kind of scary especially since the republicans do have control of the house because with indecision like that nothing is gonna be passed which means there's not going to be much progress.’ Ian had a lot to say on this matter, and all his statements do make sense, meaning as it is scary that it did take 15 ballots to finally pick the speaker of the house.