Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested Sunday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s threat to call for a vote on her motion to vacate Speaker Mike Johnson is all an act.
“I don’t believe the motion will come up,” Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican who resigned from Congress last year months after being removed as speaker, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I don’t think the Democrats will go along with this, either.”
Ms. Greene, Georgia Republican, filed the motion against Mr. Johnson on Friday after the House passed a budget that conservatives said fails to control runaway spending and gives too many concessions to Democrats. But she said the timing of when she’ll call for a vote on her motion is yet to be determined.
Congress is on a two-week recess for Easter.
Some Democrats say they would vote to protect Mr. Johnson and that the move could prove advantageous with voters for the November elections.
“We’re close to the election. We watched what transpired the last time you went three weeks without Congress being able to act,” Mr. McCarthy said. “You can’t do anything if you don’t have a speaker. I think we’ve moved past that.”
On “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” Ms. Greene cited America’s more than $34 trillion debt and said voters are “sick and tired of failure” in the House.
“We cannot have a Republican speaker of the House that is willing to do the bidding of [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer, handing over the gavel to him, and letting him pass the Schumer-House bill on the floor, and not allowing any of us Republicans to do our jobs,” she said.