Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told members of the House GOP conference Wednesday morning that he will not bring the Senate’s bipartisan continuing resolution to the floor for a vote.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told reporters after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting that McCarthy informed lawmakers during the gathering that he will not bring the upper chamber’s legislation to the floor for a vote, even after the Senate voted to advance it in a bipartisan fashion Tuesday night.
“I don’t think he plans to do that,” Good said when asked about bringing the Senate stopgap bill up for a vote. “He reiterated that this morning. I called on him to consistently say that to the public, let the Senate know that’s dead on arrival and that there’s no way the House would pass that bill.”
You do need a leader for any legislative body. Under normal conditions, this is fine. The problem is when you have a minority obstructionist party in power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and an arbitrary limit on the number of members of said legislative body.
That last item is a major one. The House is capped at 435 members. It’s been capped at such for just over 100 years. The US population has tripled in size since then, and we’ve added two states.
This arbitrary limit was in response to fierce fighting over apportionment that lasted almost a decade. So in 1929, congress said fuck it, no more increase in size.
It solved the problem of the past, but created the current problem of today, where a minority party can easily gain majority status.