Thread: Speculation about possible Boehner-Pelosi deal on DHS funding

Speculation about possible Boehner-Pelosi deal on DHS funding reignites chatter about Boehner ouster

Published February 28, 2015 FoxNews.com

Nov. 6, 2014: House Speaker John Boehner at news conference on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. (AP)


Multiple reports that House Speaker John Boehner has cut a deal to pass a long-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security without ties to rolling back President Obama’s executive action on immigration has reignited rumblings about a Boehner coup.

The deal was purportedly struck as the House agreed late Friday night to fund the agency for seven days to avoid a partial shutdown.

At least one congressional aide said the deal between Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was to get enough Democratic votes in the Republican-led chamber to avoid the shutdown at midnight Friday, in exchange for Boehner’s promise to allow a vote next week on a long-term funding bill “clean” of the immigration issue.

Boehner spokesman Mike Steel told Fox News that such a deal doesn’t exist. Pelosi’s office has neither confirmed nor denied such a deal.

The calls for Boehner’s ouster appear to be coming mostly from the 50-plus, most-conservative members who formed the new Freedom Caucus. And they appear to be growing more restless.

The number of House Republicans who voted Friday night against the 7-day funding for DHS was 55, compared to 52 who voted against the failed 3-week funding bill earlier in the evening.

The party’s most conservative wing tried unsuccessfully in January, at the start of the 114th Congress, to replace Boehner.

A dozen House Republicans either voted for somebody else or didn’t cast a vote.

Ousting a House speaker is unprecedented. Electing a House speaker and thus trying to remove one is a “privileged” effort in the lower chamber. Privileged resolutions can skip to the front of the legislative line and not be sidetracked by leadership.

Jefferson’s Manual, crafted by Thomas Jefferson and still used today as one of the main sources for House operations, says the following:
“A Speaker may be removed at the will of the House and a Speaker pro tempore appointed.”

But it’s unclear how that process happens since no speaker has ever faced a challenge in the middle of the Congress.

Boehner opponents could write a “privileged” resolution declaring that the speakership is vacant. The House would then vote on that motion or possibly vote to table or kill it.

The closest the House ever got to this scenario came during the failed coup attempt in July 1997 on House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

They tried to bring forth such a privileged “vacancy” resolution, but the coup fizzled after Gingrich learned of it and those who tried it realized they didn’t have the votes.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...nites-chatter/

Is there anyone who could win the speakership in a new election filled with resentments that we would approve, too?

I did not know this. Just found it will doing some research.

"The Constitution does not require that the Speaker be an elected House Representative, though all Speakers have been an elected Member of Congress."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker...epresentatives

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
Seal of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Flag of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Incumbent John Boehner since January 5, 2011
Style	Mr. Speaker (Informal and within the House) The Honorable (Formal)
Appointer	U.S. House of Representatives (Elected by)
Term length	No term limits are imposed; elected by the House at the start of each session, and upon a vacancy
Constituting instrument	U.S. Constitution
Formation	March 4, 1789
First holder	Frederick Muhlenberg April 1, 1789
Succession	Second in the Presidential Line of Succession
Website	Speaker of the House John Boehner

The Speaker of the House is the presiding officer of the chamber. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, which states in part, "The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker..." The current Speaker is John Boehner, a Republican who represents Ohio's 8th congressional district. The Constitution does not require that the Speaker be an elected House Representative, though all Speakers have been an elected Member of Congress.^[1]

The Speaker is second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the Vice President and ahead of the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.^[2] Unlike some Westminster system parliaments, in which the office of Speaker is considered non-partisan, in the United States, the Speaker of the House is a leadership position and the office-holder actively works to set the majority party's legislative agenda. The Speaker usually does not personally preside over debates, instead delegating the duty to members of the House from the majority party. The Speaker usually does not participate in debate and rarely votes.

Aside from duties relating to heading the House and the majority political party, the Speaker also performs administrative and procedural functions, and represents his or her Congressional district.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Selection
• 2 History
  
  • 2.1 Notable elections
  
  
• 3 Partisan role
• 4 Presiding officer
• 5 Other functions
• 6 List of Speakers of the United States House of Representatives
  
  • 6.1 List of Speakers by time in office
  • 6.2 Number of Speakers per State
  • 6.3 List of living former Speakers
  
  
• 7 Recent election results
  
  • 7.1 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, 2007
  • 7.2 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, 2009
  • 7.3 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, 2011
  • 7.4 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, 2013
  • 7.5 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives election, 2015
  
  
• 8 See also
• 9 Bibliography
• 10 Notes
• 11 References
• 12 External links

Selection[edit]

The House of Representatives elects the Speaker of the House on the first day of every new Congress and in the event of the death or resignation of an incumbent Speaker. The Clerk of the House of Representatives requests nominations: there are normally two, one from each major party (each party having previously met to decide on its nominee). The Clerk then calls the roll of the Representatives-elect, each Representative-elect indicating the surname of the candidate he or she is supporting.

Representatives-elect are not restricted to voting for one of the nominated candidates and may vote for any person, even for someone who is not a member (or member-elect) of the House at all. They may also abstain by voting "present".^[3]

To be elected as Speaker, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of all votes cast for individuals, i.e. excluding those who abstain. If no candidate wins such a majority, then the roll call is repeated until a Speaker is elected. The last time repeated votes were required was in 1923, when the Speaker was elected on the ninth ballot.^[3]

The new Speaker is then sworn in by the Dean of the United States House of Representatives, the chamber's longest-serving member.

In modern practice, the Speaker is chosen by the majority party from among its senior leaders either when a vacancy in the office arrives or when the majority party changes. It is usually obvious within two or three weeks of a House election who the new Speaker will be. Previous Speakers have been minority leaders (when the majority party changes, as they are already the House party leader, and as the minority leader are usually their party's nominee for Speaker), or majority leaders (upon departure of the current Speaker in the majority party), assuming that the party leadership hierarchy is followed. In the past, other candidates have included chairpersons of influential standing committees.

So far, the Democrats have always elevated their minority leader to the Speakership upon reclaiming majority control of the House. However, Republicans have not always followed this leadership succession pattern. In 1919, Republicans bypassed James Robert Mann, R-IL, who had been Minority Leader for eight years, and elected a backbencher representative, Frederick H. Gillett, R-MA, to be Speaker. Mann had "angered many Republicans by objecting to their private bills on the floor" and was also a protégé of autocratic Speaker Joseph Cannon, R-IL (1903–1911), and many members "suspected that he would try to re-centralize power in his hands if elected Speaker."^[4] More recently, although Robert H. Michel was Minority Leader in 1994 when the Republicans regained control of the House in the 1994 midterm elections, he had already announced his retirement and had little or no involvement in the campaign. Including the "Contract with America", which was unveiled six weeks before Election Day. Michel opted not to seek re-election because he had been isolated in the caucus by Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and other younger and more aggressive Congressmen.

It is expected that members of the House vote for their party's candidate. If they do not, they usually vote for someone else in their party or vote "present".

Those who vote for the other party's candidate often face serious consequences, up to and including the loss of seniority. The last instance where a representative voted for the other party's candidate was in 2000, when Democrat Jim Traficant of Ohio voted for Republican Dennis Hastert. In response, the Democrats stripped him of his seniority and he lost all of his committee posts.

If the Speaker's party loses control of the House in an election, and if the Speaker and Majority Leader both remain in the leadership hierarchy, they would become the Minority Leader and Minority Whip, respectively. As the minority party has one less leadership position after losing the Speaker's chair, there may be a contest for the remaining leadership positions. Most Speakers whose party has lost control of the House have not returned to the party leadership (Tom Foley lost his seat, Dennis Hastert returned to the backbenches and resigned from the House in late 2007). However, Speakers Joseph William Martin, Jr. and Sam Rayburn did seek the post of Minority Leader in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Nancy Pelosi is the most recent example of an outgoing Speaker who was elected Minority Leader, after the Democrats lost control of the House in the 2010 elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker...epresentatives