Israel aid, government shutdown on the plate of next House speaker

WASHINGTON — Serious issues await the U.S. House as the Republican majority struggles to elect a new speaker and resume legislating: A brutal Middle East war, a pending government shutdown and the fate of Rep. George Santos.

Some Republicans have shaken their heads in concern as their party has spent two weeks fighting largely behind closed doors in the auditorium in the basement of the U.S. Capitol as events inside and outside Congress continued to arise.

Dismayed by some Republicans’ intransigence, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said: “The underlying problem is that we have, increasingly, a culture in this town that thinks that if you don't get everything you want, you get to vote no. That's no way to run government.”

The fate of potential speakers has risen and fallen.

On Friday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and leader of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, emerged as his party’s latest nominee for speaker after two closed-door party votes.

Jordan still needs to win the support of 217 House Republicans in a formal vote on the House floor. And if he wins, House Republicans will need to explain why it took so long.

“Here's the thing, in politics, when you're explaining, you're losing,” said Republican campaign strategist Susan Del Percio.

 “But that's what the Republicans will have to do. ‘Well, we couldn't do it because there were these eight guys who were really bad, or because we were distracted by George Santos,’ ” said Del Percio. “Whatever the reason, people don't want excuses, they want services.”

Here are key issues waiting to be addressed.

Support for Israel

The Israel-Hamas war adds urgency to the election of a new speaker — without one, Congress cannot act on White House funding requests for Israel.

Hours after the surprise attack by Hamas, President Joe Biden urged lawmakers in a national speech “to take urgent action to fund the national security requirements of our critical partners.”

The White House has not finalized a funding package for Israel. Biden said he’s sending existing U.S. funding for Israel’s immediate needs. But when the White House proposes a bill, administration officials will urge lawmakers to act in swift bipartisan fashion. 

Most House Republicans have expressed support for additional aid to Israel, but several have balked at pairing Israel funding with defense assistance for Ukraine.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” last Sunday that House Republicans must agree quickly on former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s replacement because a drawn-out succession battle could project U.S. instability to other foreign adversaries.

“I look at the world and all the threats that are out there, and what kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern?  While we’re dysfunctional? When we don’t even have a speaker of the House? ” McCaul said.

Keeping Government Open

Congress and the White House have just one month to agree on how to fund the government for the next fiscal year. If they don’t  — because of the distraction of the House Republican majority’s internal battle over a speaker — the U.S. government could shut down.

A short-term spending bill has kept the government open for the past two weeks. But that funding expires on Nov. 17 — and the House and Senate have much work ahead of them to avoid a shutdown.

House Republicans had planned to approve all 12 appropriations bills to take to the negotiating table with the White House and Senate Democrats to cut a deal on 2024 federal funding. But they’ve passed just four.

The early front-runners for speaker — Jordan and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) — told their caucus another short-term spending bill will be needed.

Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the nonprofit fiscal policy group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, described his concern about a government shutdown as “medium.”

Asked if there is enough time and enough cohesion in the House to pass a continuing resolution and then negotiate 2024 appropriations, Goldwein replied, “They passed the last CR with like two hours left. There is time. Cohesion and negotiation? Who knows.”

Aid to Ukraine

U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia looms as an important issue for the House as it looks ahead to the final 2024 government appropriations package. But House internal politics and priorities have complicated that funding.

Objections by some House Republicans to include Ukraine funding in the short-term spending bill agreed to last month led negotiators to strip out $24 billion for Ukraine proposed by the White House and Senate.

Bipartisan support for the aid exists in Congress, but so do opposition and skepticism.

A small group of House Republican hard-liners including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Santos (R-Nassau/Queens) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) demand an end to U.S. aid to Ukraine, arguing there is no plan to end the war.

Reps. Anthony D’Esposito (R-Island Park) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) join other moderates who support Ukraine aid only with more fiscal oversight.

And Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and others only support more Ukraine aid if Congress also boosts spending to secure the U.S. southern border — something the White House has signaled it is willing to do, McCaul said last week. 

But the clock is ticking. White House national security spokesman John Kirby warned that “we’re coming near to the end of the rope” for available aid to Ukraine.

Sacking Santos

The new speaker will face an awkward choice: to expel Santos or not.

D’Esposito and five other first-year New York GOP members of Congress introduced a motion to expel Santos Wednesday, a day after federal prosecutors hit the scandal-plagued lawmaker with 10 additional criminal charges alleging he filed fraudulent fundraising reports. Santos denies the charges.

The vote cannot be held until House Republicans elect a new speaker.

McCarthy scuttled a Democratic attempt to expel Santos in May by having D’Esposito refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee. McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was ousted as speaker on Oct. 3, could not afford to see his slim majority trimmed. Now, Republicans can lose four votes on legislation and as they try to install a new speaker. Without Santos, it would be three.

But in calculating what to do with Santos, the new speaker also must consider the four prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, GOP campaign strategist Del Percio said.

“Here's the issue for a lot of Republicans — George Santos has not been convicted of anything,” Del Percio said.

“You know who else hasn't been convicted of anything? Donald Trump,” she said. “So how do you say that George Santos should be expelled and that Donald Trump is still a viable candidate for president?”

Keeping a speaker

When House Republicans elect a speaker, the question will be: Can they keep him?

Since the 1980s, conservatives have forced out three of the last five Republican speakers, who resigned, and most recently McCarthy, who became the first speaker ousted with an obscure measure called a “motion to vacate” the office.

McCarthy lost his post in part because he relied on Democrats for votes to avoid a government default in a bipartisan deal on lifting the federal debt limit and passage of the stopgap spending bill on Sept. 30.

In 2015, then Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) faced a similar dilemma with a shutdown looming and not enough Republican votes to keep the government open while facing adamant opposition from the right to compromise with Democrats.

Boehner announced his resignation on Sept. 25 but postponed it until Oct. 9, after he cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government funded.

Assessing House Republicans now, Princeton politics professor Frances Lee said, “The party is fractured and factionalized, and much of this conflict seems rooted in personal rivalries rather than larger policy disputes.”

She continued: “The problem looks much closer to what John Boehner described as the difficulty of ‘keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow.’ ”