Instead of intense budget discussions, Republicans must deal with one of the last official acts before their recess: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green’s motion to vacate the chair.
Greene made the motion March 22 in response to Speaker Mike Johnson’s support of the $1.2 trillion spending bill. Its passage averted a partial government shutdown but she alleges in a lengthy letter the GOP leader is a promise-breaking traitor.
The move comes less than six months after the House ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy following a move to vacate by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida).
Much like Greene's frustration, Gaetz and other Freedom Caucus Republicans were upset at McCarthy with the passage of a previous spending bill.
McCarthy’s elevation to Speaker came with a ploy that backfired. In order to win over the most conservative party members like Gaetz, McCarthy agreed to a rules change that allowed for a single House member to call for a vote of no-confidence in the Speaker.
Under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Democrat-led House, a motion to vacate could be offered on the House floor only if a majority of either party agreed to it.
“This is a frightful consideration,” Family Research Council Senior Vice President Jody Hice, a House member representing Georgia’s 10th district from 2015-2023, said on Washington Watch Monday.
McCarthy’s ouster plunged the House into a chaotic three-week search for leadership.
Republicans nominated and rejected three other nominees before settling on Johnson as Speaker.
“It would be absolutely disastrous for our entire party, both currently as well as going into an election cycle. I see no value in this whatsoever," Hice commented. "I understand there's some frustration with the speaker. I get that, but you've got to look at the broader picture, and doing such a drastic move as a motion to vacate at this point with such a razor thin majority has no good end to it whatsoever. I urge Marjorie Taylor Greene to not move forward with this."
Frustration with Johnson comes from the far-right branch in the party for his inability to deliver spending cuts in the face of border abuse and social pet projects from Democrats.
Johnson predicted the backlash and spent much of his time in the hours before the bill was passed working to highlight what he saw as Republican wins in the legislation. For example, the bill cuts U.S. funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with its known ties to Hamas.
It adds funding for 2,000 new Border Patrol hires and closes the House office for Diversity and Inclusion.
Conservative Republicans weren’t impressed.
“We just fold,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) told reporters. “The Republican Party needs to decide who we are and what we’re about.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, said money for the Border Patrol just means more illegals being processed by paper pushers as they flood across the border.
“It’s an abomination. Any Republican who votes for this bill owns the murders, the rapes and the assaults by the people who are being released into this country,” Roy told Real America’s Voice.
Greene doesn’t appear ready to heed Hice’s warning and not move ahead with the motion to vacate.
Last Friday she posted on X, “Mike Johnson fully funded the weaponized Department of Justice at the same level Nancy Pelosi did as Joe Biden is trying to put President Trump in jail for the rest of his life!”
Greene says there’s no difference in the Speaker’s chair between Johnson and Pelosi.
“We need a new Speaker of the House!!” she wrote.
In spite of the frustration, there doesn’t seem to be much stomach from the GOP for more rounds of Speaker voting.
“I do not support Speaker Johnson, but I will never stand by and let MTG take over the people’s House,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (R-Florida) wrote on X.
With the House majority so slim, a Speaker vote could possibly end with Democrats in control of the House – to go along with their power in the Senate and White House. Hice believes that path is unlikely but admits it’s there.
It would hinge upon finding a moderate House Democrat which enough Republicans would support.
“I don’t know if there are any moderate Democrats in Washington, D.C., right now. It would be very difficult to find one,” he said.
“There is the possibility of that scenario playing out, but it would be the end of the political career for any Republican to vote that way. Again, we’re only talking one or two people. It’s the flip of a coin, what could potentially happen in all of this … so don’t risk it,” Hice said.
There are considerations beyond simply putting further GOP dysfunction on display.
“This is horrible timing. There’s so much at stake. If that scenario were to take place, it would give the majority in the House, Senate and White House to the Democrats during a time when the Democrat Party is being run really by the radical extremist left wing,” Hice said.
