Kevin McCarthy faces rocky first day as House speaker – live
California Republican takes reins of Congress’s lower chamber after 15 rounds of voting last week
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The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland has more on the potential battle brewing in the House over this afternoon’s rules package vote:
After five days of chaos and 15 rounds of floor votes, newly elected Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is set to face an instant challenge on Monday as the House votes on a new rules package.
The new House Republican majority is proposing to make institutional changes of its own as part of a rules package Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with hard-right rebels in exchange for their support for his job. The handful of Republicans who are forcing the changes, which are scheduled to be considered on Monday, pointed to the rushed approval in December of a roughly $1.7 trillion spending bill to fund the entire government as an example of back-room legislating at its worst.
“What this rules package is designed to do is to stop what we saw happen literally 15 days ago, where the Democrats passed a $1.7 trillion monstrosity of a bill that spent the American taxpayers’ money in all kinds of crazy ways,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said Sunday on Fox News. He said Republicans would require 72 hours to allow lawmakers to pore over any bill.
