New Delhi: US House Republican Kevin McCarthy on Sunday expressed confidence in his ability to retain his speakership despite facing a challenge from a hardline critic within his party, who called for his ouster following the passage of a stopgap government funding bill that drew more support from Democrats than Republicans, reported news agency Reuters.
Rep. Matt Gaetz informed several US media outlets that he would file a “motion to vacate,” a call for a vote to remove McCarthy as speaker. This move is designed to assess McCarthy’s level of backing within the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where his party holds a slim 221-212 majority.
“I’ll survive,” McCarthy said on CBS. “This is personal with Gaetz.”
Gaetz is one of a group of about two dozen hardliners who forced McCarthy to endure a withering 15 rounds of voting in January before he was elected speaker, during which they squeezed out concessions including a rule change to allow any one House member to call for a vote to oust the speaker, according to Reuters.
However, it was not clear how much support McCarthy would have in such a vote since he angered Democrats last month by launching an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.
“If at this time next week Kevin McCarthy is still speaker of the House, it will be because Democrats bailed him out,” Gaetz said in an interview on ABC. “I am relentless and I will continue to pursue this objective.”
McCarthy stunned Washington on Saturday when he backed a bill to fund the government through November 17, averting a partial shutdown but not imposing any of the spending cuts or changes to border security that his hardline colleagues had called for, reported Reuters.
The bill, which was approved by the Senate on a broad bipartisan basis and signed into law by Biden, is meant to give lawmakers more time to agree on a deal to fund the government through September 30, 2024.