Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader since 2019, fell short of the required votes in five additional rounds of voting Thursday afternoon.
Washington: The US House of Representatives adjourned for a third day without electing a new Speaker, despite 11 votes, becoming the longest contest to choose a new Speaker in 164 years.
According to Xinhua, the House will not meet on Friday noon, the second anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot.
Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader since 2019, fell short of the required votes in five additional rounds of voting Thursday afternoon.
Since the 118th Congress convened on Tuesday, the House has voted 11 times, making this the longest speaker election in 164 years.
The lower chamber of Congress has not voted on a Speaker so many times since 1860, when the US’ union was fraying over the issue of slavery.
It took 44 rounds of voting back then.
A group of 20 hardline Republican lawmakers are refusing to provide the California congressman with the required 218 votes.
The lower chamber, which has a slim Republican majority over Democrats, is unable to conduct legislative business until a speaker is elected.
McCarthy has the support of the majority of House Republicans as well as former President Donald Trump, but the 20 hardliners have pressed him to decentralise power as Speaker.
In the election, all House Democrats voted for Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, to be Speaker.
Though Jeffries is unlikely to be elected, he will be the first African-American lawmaker to lead a party in either chamber of Congress.
Republicans won the House by a slim margin of 222 to 212 in the 435-seat chamber in the November 8, 2022 midterm elections, while Democrats retained control of the Senate.
Earlier on Thursday, McCarthy stood firm in the face of stiff opposition, declaring that he will continue to face opposition until he reaches an agreement with his critics.
“It’s all going to be this way until an agreement comes. “It’s easier if we can all come to an agreement,” he told CNN.
When asked when he would realise that the outcome would not change, McCarthy told the network, “After I win.”
Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the 20 dissidents, told the BBC that he simply does not trust McCarthy.
McCarthy’s team, according to the Congressman, had threatened political retaliation against them in the weeks leading up to the impasse.
“We were about to be kicked off committees… We will lose every privilege we have. “And we’d basically told them, ‘If we can’t ask questions, if we can’t vet out the most powerful person we’re about to put in office, we’re out,'” he told the BBC.
After Vice President Kamala Harris, the Speaker of the House is the second in line to the presidency.
In the House, they set the agenda, and there is no legislative business.
They set the agenda in the House, and without them, no legislative business can be conducted.
