Kevin McCarthy voted out: How the House chaos affects you

Congress was stunned this week by House Republicans suddenly removing Kevin McCarthy from his House speaker position, but the turmoil’s immediate impact for ordinary Americans will be somewhat muted.

Congress was already operating at a crawl when it came to major bills, as the GOP-controlled House struggled to pass legislation — including funding the government — that had any hope of votes in the Senate or bypassing President Biden’s veto pen.

Among the legislation that made it out of the House but no further was the Parents Bill of Rights, which attempted to federalize GOP scrutiny of educators many are dealing with at the state level, and a border security bill heavily criticized by the White House. Neither chamber took up legislation in response to the recent spike in child poverty announced by the Census Bureau last month.

The removal will also likely affect the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, although GOP members are split on exactly how its impact will be felt. One of McCarthy’s final acts as speaker was launching the investigation without a full floor vote as he had initially promised. The witnesses at the first open hearing presented no evidence the president had committed any crimes, with the lack of tangible evidence being a throughline of the GOP case.

Read more: Answering your FAQs about McCarthy’s removal

While many of the effects may not directly reach most Americans, there are consequences of McCarthy’s removal that could cause pain both short- and long-term for the country.

Another looming shutdown

Hard-right Rep. Matt Gaetz said one of his reasons for leading the vote against McCarthy was the GOP leader’s negotiations with Democrats over a short-term funding bill that Congress passed over the weekend. Without it, the government would have shut down this week.

But the bill is only a 45-day stopgap, and another will be needed soon. The next House speaker, whoever that is, will have to navigate fractures in the GOP caucus on aid for Ukraine and a balancing act between passing a bill that can make it through the Senate and appease the Republican right flank.

Time spent selecting the new speaker is not being spent on figuring out a long-term spending bill that will eliminate the near-term chance of a shutdown.

The potential effects of a shutdown are far reaching, as roughly 4 million federal employees would not be paid, including more than 1 million active members of the military. While some will receive back pay, contractors — like those who work in food or custodial services at the Capitol — will not.

And while air traffic controllers and TSA agents are considered essential employees and will be told to report to work without pay, a five-week shutdown caused by former President Trump’s demands on money to build his border wall that spanned December 2018 into 2019 resulted in travel delays when those workers began calling out sick.

A shutdown would also limit inspections of food and workplaces, as well as affecting the millions of Americans who use the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. The program assists low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women and children under age 5.

Areas that won’t be affected include social security payments, the postal service and anyone who receives their health care through Medicare, Medicaid or veterans’ hospitals. Members of Congress will also continue to receive their paychecks, as they are funded by a permanent appropriations account.

‘It should set off alarm bells that something is not right’

A potential broader and long-term effect of McCarthy’s ouster, according to historians and political scientists, is the continued degradation of American democracy.

“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” said Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University, to the Washington Post after Tuesday’s vote. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.”

McCarthy was among the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election results, a group that also includes Reps. Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Kevin Hern, party leaders who’ve declared their intention to run for the speakership. In the days after the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, McCarthy privately told GOP leaders of Trump, “I’ve had it with this guy,” but when the former president remained popular with the party, McCarthy embraced him, flying to Florida to visit Trump weeks after Congress was overrun.

McCarthy was not an outlier in his behavior. As Yahoo News’ Jon Ward explained in the aftermath of the unprecedented vacancy, Republicans have become increasingly antigovernment in recent years.

The party has been trending that way for years, with political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norm Ornstein writing in 2012, well before Trump ascended to the top of the party, “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”