Team,

It’s Day Two of the 118th Congress, and unfortunately, we've finished a second day of voting (for a total of 12 hours now) and still don’t have a Speaker of the House.  

The Republicans’ infighting started to turn up a notch, so we spent a second day without a Speaker, without being sworn in, and without being able to get on with the work of legislating.

For those of us who follow politics, it can be tempting to watch this leadership fight unfold like a sport. But it’s not good for our country. For everyday people in places like Michigan, this is yet another example that their government just doesn’t work for them.  

Back in November, voters by and large rejected political extremes. It was a close election that gave Republicans just a four-seat majority in the House.

That’s the same margin that Democrats had in the last Congress. And when we had a few Democratic colleagues oppose each of our big bills (think infrastructure and CHIPS), in order to get those bills passed, it was essential to have at least five to ten Republicans who voted with us. That means those bills were ultimately negotiated to gain broad, bipartisan support.  

If Republicans want to have a productive Congress, they’ll need to learn the same lesson: We can only get things done when we set aside the extreme influences in our party and work together. 

I’ve said for a long time that only the Republican Party can fix what the Republican Party is going through right now, and I’m glad they’re finally having a conversation about the influence of the extreme elements of their party. And for the sake of the country, my hope is that cooler heads prevail and we can get to work. 

We’ll be back at it at noon tomorrow when we head to a seventh round of voting for a new Speaker.
 

Elissa