Congress still has a divided house as the search for U.S. House Speaker continues.
A third attempt at trying to vote in Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan failed to reach the 217-vote threshold today. It’s left some Americans watching and Congressional members frustrated, including Missouri Republican Eric Burlison. He told Missourinet affiliate KCMO in Kansas City that he still supports Jordan.
“It makes no sense that they are taking out their anger against Matt Gaetz on Jim Jordan,” Burlison told KCMO’s Pete Mundo. “Jim Jordan is the guy who gave a speech to endorse McCarthy who was there giving the speech to try to stop McCarthy from being removed, but yet people want to exact some pound of flesh on somebody and so they’re going to take it out on Jim Jordan.”
It remains to be seen what the U.S. House of Representatives will do regarding the speakership position, but one hot item on the agenda is a request from the Biden Administration to give more than $105 billion in security assistance to the military conflicts in Ukraine and Israel.
“These knuckleheads that are voting him down, they’ve got to cool off,” Burlison added. “They’ve got to be reasoned with and come to the conclusion that it’s either going to be Jim Jordan or it’s going to be a shared power, some kind of coalition government between Democrats and Republicans and, in my mind, that’s a non-starter.”
Burlison said that if Jordan does not become the House Speaker, the deadlock likely will continue for another week or two.
“I want to get this done,” he added. “I want to pass the appropriation bills. I want to fix the border. If Joe Biden wants Ukraine money, he’s going to have to fix the border and he’s going to have to do it immediately. There’s a lot of things that this administration wants. We need to hold some of these items hostage and try to negotiate everything we can out of these negotiations. We need a speaker to do that.”
Click here to listen to the interview in podcast form.
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