Matt Gaetz says he's going to try to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership 'every single day'

Matt Gaetz is threatening Kevin McCarthy with motion to vacate votes for the House speakership.
Gaetz on Tuesday remarked that McCarthy wasn't pursuing conservative reforms as he had promised.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats have not discussed a potential motion to vacate vote.

Rep. Matt Gaetz hasn't been afraid to tussle with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, repeatedly voting against the California Republican for the speakership in January and later pressing the GOP leader to tackle the national debt and open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

In a Tuesday speech on the House floor, the Florida Republican raised the stakes on his criticism of McCarthy, arguing that the speaker was "out of compliance" with the agreement that he made with conservatives earlier this year. Gaetz later called for votes for McCarthy to be replaced should he push for a stopgap measure to continue funding the government past Sept. 30 in order to avert a shutdown.

"We're going to have them regularly. I don't anticipate them passing immediately," Gaetz told reporters of potential votes for McCarthy's ouster. "But I think that if we have to begin every single day in Congress with a prayer, the pledge, and the motion to vacate, then so be it."

And during a Tuesday evening appearance on CNN, Gaetz reiterated his calls for motion to vacate votes against McCarthy absent conservative reforms that the congressman has sought.

"If we just had compliance with a vote on term limits, a vote on a balanced budget, individual spending bills, I do think Speaker McCarthy could save his job and not even face a motion to vacate if he came into compliance with our deal," he told journalist Abby Phillip, while expressing his desire to pare down the Department of Education and Department of Labor.

Phillip then pressed Gaetz on previous attempts to use "leverage" against McCarthy to adopt such reforms, with the congressman responding that he would continue to push the speaker on conservative demands.

"I'm going to do it over and over again until it works, and today we saw a baby step towards that with more robust efforts on impeachment, but I'm going to keep doing it," Gaetz said.

While on the House floor earlier on Tuesday, Gaetz argued that he wanted voters to witness what conservatives were fighting for in Congress.

"I will concede that the votes I have called for will likely fail: term limits, balanced budgets, maybe even impeachment," he said. "I am prepared for that eventuality because at least if we take votes, the American people get to see who's fighting for them and who's willing to tolerate more corruption."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday said that Democrats have not had any talks about a possible motion to vacate and indicated that it wasn't a priority for party leadership.

"The motion to vacate question is a hypothetical one that's not before us," the New York Democrat told reporters on Tuesday. "We've had no discussion about it, and I don't expect us to have any discussion about it moving forward."

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