GOP rep predicts ‘messy two years in Washington’

Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) on Wednesday predicted a “messy two years in Washington” as the GOP-controlled House heads into the second day of the new Congress without a Speaker. 

“This is going to be an incredibly messy two years. And a messy two years because we’re allowing the process in Washington, in the Capitol, to play out the way the founders designed it, in a messy way where everybody on both sides of the aisle gets to be a part of it,” Mast told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. 

“That’s gonna make it actually more difficult for us to get the things done that we want to get done, but we’re reflective enough to say that’s the way things are supposed to work here,” Mast said.  

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) failed to get a majority of votes in three consecutive rounds of a Speakership election Tuesday, and the House adjourned without selecting someone for the top leadership slot.  

Democrats, now in the minority, are united behind Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), and 19 GOP lawmakers cast their ballots for someone other than McCarthy in the first two votes, respectively, while 20 Republicans voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) in the third round. 

This year’s Speakership election marks the first time in a century that the contest has spilled over into multiple rounds of voting, and critics fear that the discord among Republican lawmakers could be foreshadowing for how they’ll manage power in the House over the next two years. 

The lower chamber will reconvene at noon Wednesday and is set to head into a fourth vote. The incoming lawmakers of the 118^th Congress can’t be sworn in until a Speaker is elected, delaying the lawmakers from getting into legislative business.