Rep. Yakym criticizes colleagues who orchestrated McCarthy ouster

 

When eight Republicans joined every Democrat in the House of Representatives to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker, Indiana Congressman Rudy Yakym said it "was about to get quite ugly". 

"There was a lot of emotion there was pretty raw inside that room," Yakym told ABC57 News in an interview Thursday. "People were quite upset."

Leading up to the vote, Rep. Yakym called the motion to vacate a "distraction". An expression he doubled-down on even after the successful ouster of McCarthy.

"You had eight members of our party deciding that they were going to create what is now a huge distraction, not only for the country, but a distraction from legislating," Yakym said. 

Now that so-called distraction has led to a standstill in Congress, with House lawmakers unable to introduce bills or even refer legislation to committee until a new speaker is chosen. 

The Second District Representative says current candidates for Speaker of the House have personally called to ask for support, though Rep. Yakym has not yet announced his endorsement. Yakym believes whoever earns the job needs to be someone ready to work across the aisle to achieve "conservative solutions". 

"The reality is no bill becomes law today without some level of bipartisan negotiation because you have a Democrat Senate, and you have a Democrat in the White House," Yakym said. 

Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio have publicly thrown their hat in the ring for speaker. 

Indiana Rep. Jim Banks is publicly supporting Jordan for the job. 

The House is in recess until Tuesday. Then, whoever is elected speaker will face a looming budget battle to avoid a government shutdown by mid-November. 

"I believe we're unquestionably in a worse position than we were last week [to avoid a shutdown]," Yakym said. "We're burning time that we don't have."