After Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, Republicans and Democrats in Congress both said they needed to act quickly to help Israel.
At the time, the House was floundering without a speaker, and members cited the necessity of sending immediate aid to a close U.S. ally as a motivating reason for solving the speaker drama.
But five weeks after Mike Johnson (R-LA) was elected speaker, and nearly eight weeks since the attack, Congress doesn’t appear any closer to passing an aid package—for Israel or for Ukraine, the latter of which has been “weeks” away from running out of weapons for months now.
As Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told The Daily Beast this week, Ukraine needed an aid package in October.
Removing the previous speaker wasn’t about “solving problems”, it was about creating problems and gridlock.
Yes. More than anything they want to shut down the government; McCarthy prevented them from doing so. And they want someone controllable in the third-in-line seat of Speaker, just in case something unfortunate should happen to the president and VP.
But if there were some emergent situation that they could use to funnel money out of the national coffers and into private ones, like all the pandemic aid that disappeared into thin air, they’d be on that like flies on shit. Also, anything quick and superficial that they can use as a cudgel in the media, like John Fetterman’s short sleeve shirt in the Senate.
They CAN do it when they want to, quickly and easily; there are just too many anymore who want to cripple daily governance, civil service functions, and break the US government altogether.