It’s been another week of confusion and chaos in Congress—this one, historic.  It was confusion and chaos that was built into the rules of the House this year by the new Republican Majority.  This January, House Republicans adopted new rules to govern the business of the House, rules that every single House Democrat voted against.  Among them was a rule that gave any one member of the Republican conference the right to bring a motion to remove the Speaker of the House.  And this week, one of them used it.

This threat has hung over former Speaker McCarthy all year.  And it meant that, to keep his position, Speaker McCarthy catered to extreme members of his party on all kinds of unreasonable demands—including demands that he refuse to work with House Democrats and instead advance a divisive, extreme, deeply partisan agenda.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  I’ve been saying this over and over this year.  And I know it’s true because it wasn’t this way in my two prior terms when Democrats controlled the House.  We did not have this rule that allowed any one member to call a vote of no confidence on the Speaker of the House.  But, more important, we didn’t govern—or fail to govern—like this. 

We were focused on governing responsibility, meeting the needs of the American people in unprecedented times, protecting our democracy, and working across the aisle whenever we could.  We didn’t engage in brinkmanship over the debt ceiling or threaten to shut down the government.  We did pass some important bills with only Democratic votes, but we welcomed bipartisan support where we could get it.  When you hear President Biden and House Democrats talk about our accomplishments from the last two years in particular, so many of the titles start with the word bipartisan.

As Leader Jeffries explained this week, since the beginning of this Congress House Democrats have made it clear that we will find common ground with our Republican colleagues wherever possible and at the same time we will combat extremism whenever necessary.  House Democrats compromised with Republicans to avert a catastrophic default on our national debt that would have crashed the economy.  Rather than celebrate this major achievement, House Republicans threatened the Speaker over it, and backed out of the agreement they had negotiated after it became law.  And then they started talking about shutting down the government unless they got extreme policy passed into law.

So, where do we go from here?  Republicans must nominate a new Speaker.  At this time, some hardline members of their party have emerged as potential successors. For the sake of our country,  I hope House Republicans will pick a different path forward.  I hope they will reject the extreme partisanship that got us here in the first place.  And I, like my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus, will be there to work together in a bipartisan way for the good of our country.

I’ll also be working to make sure that the next Congress does not work this way.  We do that by electing a Democratic majority and electing Hakeem Jeffries our next Speaker of the House.  It is as clear to me as ever, after this historic week, that our work together to make this happen is essential.

Together, we can do anything,