Rep. Matt Gaetz on Thursday continued his campaign to hold Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy accountable to the agenda of conservative House Republicans.
The Fort Walton Beach Republican released a statement lamenting the failure of an effort to introduce term limits for Congress.
Still, Gaetz pointed to a silver lining in the Judiciary Committee’s 19-17 vote to defeat the term-limits measure he had co-sponsored.
“In January, during the contest for Speaker of the House, there was a group of us who wanted to change the way Washington, D.C., operates before allowing Kevin McCarthy to ascend to the speakership. These concessions included the advancement of single-subject spending bills, advancing balanced budgets, and, critically, taking a vote on term limits,” Gaetz said.
“For the last eight months, Speaker McCarthy has been in breach of that agreement. Just weeks ago, I took to the House floor to inform Speaker McCarthy that if he did not hold a vote on term limits, then he would face a motion to vacate. It seems that those remarks may have animated him because we voted on term limits today in the House Judiciary Committee.”
“Today,” Gaetz added, “marks an important first step in achieving term limits for the Legislative Branch. Although the vote failed 17-19, the American People now know who supports term limits and who does not.”
Yet Gaetz was not done as far as McCarthy was concerned.
On X (formerly Twitter), the congressman offered a post called “Kevin’s Report Card,” with what appeared to be McCarthy’s high school yearbook photo.
McCarthy, said Gaetz, “improved compliance with the January Agreement by holding a term limits vote, which sadly failed. There remain significant areas for needed improvement.”
While Gaetz gave the speaker an “A” for the term-limits vote, he received “Fs” for allowing votes on a balanced-budget constitutional amendment and for fully releasing all tapes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Gaetz graded McCarthy “incomplete” for allowing single-subject spending bill votes.
In comments on the report card, Gaetz added, “While Speaker McCarthy has been irritable and unhinged at times, we remain hopeful in his ability to improve.”
In one last shot at McCarthy, Gaetz also posted on X an interview he did with WEAR in Pensacola.
Gaetz was asked about the potential government shutdown, which is looming as of Saturday, if Congress cannot agree on a new spending bill, and how that might affect McCarthy’s future.
Gaetz said a shutdown was not his goal. But, he added, McCarthy “cannot use Democrat votes to advance the spending priorities of [President] Joe Biden and expect that he’s going to remain the Republican speaker.”
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