Q&A of the Day – What Happens If There’s No House Speaker Indefinitely?
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Two questions – What's the longest time the House has gone without a Speaker? Also, what happens if they just decide not to vote another one in? Given out of control spending that might be better?
Bottom Line: It’s now been three weeks since eight Republicans teamed with all Democrats to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. This also means it’s been three weeks since any official business, other than failed speaker votes, has taken place in the House of Representatives. That’s a preview of one of the answers to today’s Q&A. Before diving into historical comparisons and what a speakerless House over the long run would look like, here’s where we currently stand in regard to House speaker considerations. Following last week’s failure by Jim Jordan to secure the needed votes to become speaker, the largest number of speaker candidates yet have emerged. Exiting the weekend, a total of 9 candidates are vying for the post. Those nine are: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson, Jack Bergman, Southwest Florida’s Byron Donalds, Kevin Hern, Dan Meuser, Gary Palmer, Austin Scott and Pete Sessions. Last night a candidate forum took place where each of the candidates made their case to the conference to attempt to win support for their bid for speaker. At 9 this morning an internal Republican conference vote will take place to once again determine a front-runner with the purpose of holding a full floor vote for the front-runner once again. That floor vote could happen as soon as today. So, about today’s questions...
The longest speaker vacancy in the history of the House of Representatives was 61 days from December 1855 to February of 1856 as political divides, which were a precursor to the Civil War, boiled over. Back in those days there were more political parties with representation in Congress than the two-party system of today. In a closely divided House, as was the case in that Congress, it became necessary to work across party lines to get a majority of votes for a House speaker. A total of 133 floor votes were necessary before the House finally settled on a speaker to lead the body. The second longest happened just a few years later when a 58-day vacancy occurred between December of 1859 and carried into February of 1860. There were a total of 44 floor votes required to find a consensus speaker nominee that time around. Now at 21 days, the current standoff is already the third longest on record – though obviously it’d have to continue for over another month before we’d be in unprecedented territory. With that said, there would be a notable impact of inaction continuing through November and it ties into the second part of today’s note.
The continuing resolution passed by Congress just over three weeks ago – which led to Kevin McCarthy’s ouster – continues to debt fund the government through November 17th. While not having official House business hasn’t had a visible impact on the day-to-day in this country to date and wouldn’t through November 17th...should there not be resolution to the speaker battle and subsequent funding legislation we’ll enter a partial government shutdown. Now today’s note raises an interesting question. Would not having a speaker potentially be better than having one from a fiscal conservative's perspective?
As we’ve discussed in previous partial government shutdowns, approximately 70% of federal spending is considered essential and isn’t funded through continuing resolutions. That includes programs like Social Security and Medicare. That provides the view of the possible. A partial government shutdown would reduce spending by approximately 30% during that window of time. That is one way to achieve significant spending cuts which most fiscal conservatives would like to see happen. The devil has always been in the details exiting a shutdown. Historically, with all prior partial government shutdowns, they’re ended up costing us more than if they hadn’t happened in the first place. That’s due to spending being restored retroactively to the date the partial shutdown occurred, including backpay for impacted federal government employees. That’s a choice of course, but that is the key as to if there would be actual fiscal conservatism achieved by effectively doing nothing. The political pressure would be enormous, and Republicans would be vilified, if a partial shutdown were to occur and there wasn’t retroactive spending at whatever point it would end. If they have the stomach for it, there’s a case that could be made that it’d be perhaps the one way to successfully achieve needed spending reductions with Democrats in control of the Senate and Presidency. That’s a major if, however. There’s also the matter of not being able to pass any legislation of any sort. That’s in addition to the indefinite moratorium on House investigations, including into DOJ weaponization and the Biden family, including the Impeachment Inquiry – which you’ve probably noticed hasn’t even been discussed over the past three weeks the House has been speakerless. But again, if the focus is sheerly about not spending money this country doesn’t have, yes, in theory not having a House speaker could affect that type of outcome – with some not potentially insignificant collateral damage along the way, including negative impacts to the US economy. There’s no doubt that the best way to reduce spending is through responsibly legislating...but of course it’s been a long time since such a thing happened in this country. I suppose it could be argued that not legislating might be better than how both parties have been legislating for decades from a fiscal perspective.