Republicans quit Congress as more Speaker chaos looms

Firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a vote for a new Speaker on the same day prominent congressman Mike Gallagher announced he would quit the House of Representatives.

Republicans face losing their razor-thin control of the House of Representatives with massive ramifications for the balance of power in Washington after disaffected members threatened to remove Speaker Mike Johnson and prominent Republican congressman Mike Gallagher announced he would quit within a month.

Mr Gallagher, a long-standing co-chairman of the Friends of Australia Caucus, unexpectedly on Friday (Saturday AEDT) said he would leave the House of Representatives on April 19, reducing the Republican majority by one to 217 seats and thereby ensuring the GOP can afford only one defection in any vote to avoid defeat, in a chamber with 214 Democrats.

Mr Gallagher, who had earlier said he would not contest his Wisconsin seat at the election in November, made his announcement the same day fellow Republican Ken Buck spent his last day in congress, reflecting a concerning pattern of resignations among GOP members, which, if repeated, could see Democrats seize the majority and embark on a more ambition legislative program.

Separately, firebrand Georgia congresswoman Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a ‘motion to vacate’, or remove, Speaker Mike Johnson, after the House of Representatives passed $US1.2 trillion ($1.84 trillion) worth of spending bills, by a vote of 286 to 134, a majority that included only a minority of Republican members – a rare outcome in a chamber nominally controlled by Republicans.

“I am saying the clock has started. It’s time for our conference to choose a new Speaker,” Ms Greene said on the footsteps of Congress after announcing her motion, which couldn’t trigger a leadership spill until Congress returned from a two-week Easter recess on April 9.

Passage of the six bills, which finalise spending for the 2024 financial year, appeared to avert a government shutdown, which would begin Saturday night local time, if they are quickly passed by the Senate, where Democrats command a slim majority.

Ms Greene, who said she had not spoken to Donald Trump about her decision, in a speech in the chamber earlier said the bill was “not a Republican bill”. “This is a Chuck Schumer, Democrat-controlled bill,” she added, referring to the Democrat leader of the Senate.

“They just passed a funding bill that doesn’t secure our border … it funds full term abortions, it funds DEI, it funds trans ideology on youth as young as 12,” she told reporters later on the steps of Congress, telling a journalist “absolutely it’s the fight we want to have in election year”.

Ms Greene, who said other unnamed members supported her motion, and other Republicans were frustrated by the limited time available to scrutinise the six bills, which ran to 1012 pages, and were released to members in the early hours of Thursday morning local time, providing members with fewer than half the customary 72 hours to read them.

“Democracy is messy,” Speaker Johnson told CNBC on Thursday, dismissing time complaints from Republicans. “It’s particularly messy right now and in a moment like this, but we have to get the job done and there are some very substantial wins in here.”

Republicans have been increasingly divided over to what extent they should accommodate Democrat demands and insist on their own in the House of Representatives, given Democrats maintain a majority in the upper house and the President’s veto pen in the White House.

Influential Texas Republican Chip Roy slammed the bills – and Speaker Johnson for endorsing them – on Thursday as an “abomination”, speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room. “It’s total lack of backbone, total lack of leadership, and a total failure by Republican leadership. There’s no other way to describe it”.

The bills, which together fund around three quarters of the US government, included $US824 billion for defence, a $US27 billion increase from the previous year made up in large part of a 5.2 per cent increase in pay for military personnel, the largest in 20 years.

Ms Greene’s motion could only succeed if Democrats all voted to support Speaker Johnson’s removal, as they did with Kevin McCarthy in October last year, which gave powerful leverage over their Speaker’s future to a small group of disgruntled Republicans.

Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who triggered Mr McCarthy’s ouster with a ‘motion to vacate’, said on Friday another attempt to find a new speaker would leave the House in Democrat hands. “When I vacated the last one, I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with the Democrat speaker,” he told reporters.

The Democratic Party leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, has in the past suggested Democrats would come to Johnson’s assistance in the event of a spill motion