I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that the House cannot conduct any other business until it succeeds in electing a Speaker of the House. I’d never heard it before last January, but it was all over the place back then — as the 15-ballot McCarthy Farce was unfolding. And it has been repeatedly said again (in the aftermath of McCarthy’s being ousted) as the nation confronts some urgent needs that cannot be met except with the help of a functional house.
(Needs like funding the aid to Ukraine, and now also to Israel, and — next month — funding the United States government itself, avoiding a shutdown.)
But something about that “House paralyzed” idea didn’t make sense, so last night I turned to google, and asked “Where in the Constitution does it say that the House cannot conduct any business until it has elected a Speaker of the House?” What I found is that there’s nothing in the Constitution about that. (Actually, there’s very little about the Speaker at all.)
Then I asked ChatGPT to ask some similar questions, and received this in reply:
In the absence of a Speaker of the House, the House of Representatives can still conduct business and pass measures, including funding bills. The election of a Speaker is an important procedural step, but it does not prevent the House from functioning. The rules and procedures of the House are determined by the House itself, and the absence of a Speaker does not prevent the House from carrying out its legislative duties.
In practice, when the House convenes at the beginning of a new Congress or after a Speaker's resignation or removal, a temporary presiding officer, often the Clerk of the House or a senior member of the majority party, will preside over the House until a Speaker is elected. During this time, the House can continue to operate and pass bills, including those related to funding important government functions.
What are we to make of this?
- If what we’ve been hearing about that presumed paralysis is true, what authority dictates it so incontrovertibly that the nation can be incapacitated in important ways because the Republicans cannot get their act together and coalesce to elect a Speaker?
- And if what ChatGPT says is true, what accounts for the nation’s political functioning being bound and tied by a rope that isn’t even there?
I’m guessing that ChatGPT is at least right enough that there is no insuperable barrier to the House by-passing its Speakerless condition, and getting the necessary business done.
(Back in January, when this idea about the Paralysis of the Speakerless House was bandied about, the point was made that the members of the new Congress hadn’t even been sworn in. So they did not have the authority to conduct the business of the United States. But that problem wouldn’t apply to now, would it? They’ve all be sworn in, and nothing about McCarthy’s fall has deprived them of their status as duly elected and sworn Members of the House of Representatives.)
Imagining that ChatGPT is correct on this point, who should do what?
I can imagine some political advantage for Democrats to keep that correct idea under their figurative hats. It appears that the Republicans will be totally incapable of solving the Speaker problem on their own (i.e. that no Republican will be able to get the votes of virtually all the Republicans). That confers two advantages to the Democrats:
One advantage is that the Republicans will be showing in florid fashion how messed up the Republican Party is. The drama of their dysfunctionality will be played out in a way that gets the attention of the American electorate, and this would be advantageous to Democrats seeking to regain control of the House a year from now.
(However, the dysfunctionality of the Republicans in the House has already been amply displayed, and its not clear that there would be any great marginal advantage from adding this chaotic drama.)
A more important, second advantage is that if the Republicans continue to flail about inconclusively — and the pressure intensifies to get the House doing its job of opening the national purse for essential purposes — the chances will increase that some sane and constructive Republicans (if that species is not altogether extinct, and there are at least five such among the 221) will be willing to make a deal with the Democrats to form a bipartisan majority to get a Speaker.
That would be a big deal, if the deal goes beyond the Speaker to provide the nation with a House of Representatives that actually works to do necessary things.
My inclination is to go with the truth — “truth” being presumably what ChatGPT said — in the hope that even if the pressure gets taken off the House to get its act together, the Republicans will still not be able to solve the Speaker problem, and that eventually that will mean that some sort of bi-partisan solution to getting a Speaker of the House will be necessary.
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My principle goal in my work is to disseminate the core of my life’s work — a way of understanding our species’ nature, our troubled history, and the challenges we face — that I call A BETTER HUMAN STORY. I’ve lately embarked on presenting a series of essays here for that purpose. So far there have been these two entries:
This “integrated vision” of the situation of our civilization-creating species can be found, presented in its entirety, on my website.