background
After the president and his deputy, the chairmanship of the House of Representatives is considered the third most important position in the USA. The Republican McCarthy must now vacate him – as the loser of an internal party power struggle.
For the first time in US history, Kevin McCarthy, the chairman of the House of Representatives, was removed from his post by a parliamentary vote. A majority of the House voted to remove the Republican leader from office. The background is an internal revolt among the Republicans. The Presidency of the House of Representatives is considered the third most important in the United States after the President and his Vice President.
Led by Republican hardliner Matt Gaetz, several other Republicans voted to oust McCarthy. The Democrats in the chamber, in turn, decided not to come to McCarthy’s aid and voted against him. The Republicans actually have the say in the chamber, but only by a small margin. Due to the number of internal revolters in their own ranks, a narrow majority against McCarthy was achieved.
Budget dispute in the USA as an occasion
The leader of the revolt, Gaetz, introduced a motion for McCarthy’s removal to the House of Representatives on Monday evening. The 41-year-old accused McCarthy, among other things, of making common cause with Democratic President Joe Biden instead of working for the Republican faction. The reason is the budget dispute in the USA.
Gaetz was bothered by the fact that McCarthy used the votes of Democrats to avert an impending government shutdown at the last moment last weekend. On Saturday, Congress passed an interim budget until mid-November. But he also accused McCarthy of violating several intra-party agreements – so he should not be trusted. Since the Parliamentary Chamber elects its chairman itself, it is also the only body that can force him out of office – upon request from the ranks of the MPs.
However, never before has a chairman of the chamber lost his position in this way. In the history of Congress, there has only been one previous vote in the plenary session of the House of Representatives on a motion to remove the chairman. That was more than a hundred years ago: 1910.