McCarthy Warns Blocked Speaker Election Will Delay GOP Agenda

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Sunday that if he doesn't get the 218 votes he needs from House Republicans to become the next House speaker, they won't be able to move forward with their key agenda items such as securing the border or holding the government accountable and that they risk "squandering" their majority hold.

"That’s going to delay our ability to secure the border," the California Republican said in an interview on Fox News's "Sunday Morning futures. "That’s going to delay our ability to become energy-independent. That’s going to delay our ability to repeal 87,000 IRS agents. That’s going to delay our ability to hold the government accountable. There's no subpoena that can go out until that gets done."

During an internal conference meeting last month, House Republicans picked McCarthy to be their next speaker by a vote of 188 to 31. However, when the matter comes up for a vote on Jan. 3, McCarthy can't lose more than four Republican votes, if all 435 House members vote in the election for speaker.

At least five House members, Reps. Matt Gaetz,R-Fla., Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Bob Good,R-Va., and Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., have all said they will not vote for McCarthy as House leader.

Republicans are expected to hold the House majority in January with 222 seats, compared to 213 seats for Democrats.

If the Republican majority doesn't unify on a vote, the Democrats could get a say in who becomes the next speaker, McCarthy told Newsmax last week.

"Right now, it's delaying our ability to govern as we go," McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday. "I'm hopeful that everybody comes together and finds a way to govern together. This is what the American people want. Otherwise, we'll be squandering the majority."

Meanwhile, McCarthy told show host Maria Bartiromo that he spoke with President Joe Biden last week and "laid out very clearly what the difference will be with the new Republican majority."

The first victory could come as soon as this week when the National Defense Authorization Bill will be released on Monday.

Republicans are pushing through the legislation to remove vaccine mandates for the military, said McCarthy, "because what we're finding is they're kicking out men and women that have been serving" and the armed forces aren't able to meet recruitment goals.

The bill will not move, he said, if the mandate is not lifted.

"That's the first victory of having a Republican majority, and we'd like to have more of those victories," said McCarthy. "We should start moving those now. "

"I've been very clear with the president," said McCarthy, adding that Biden "worked with me on this."

"You've got some compromise here, and we've got something that the Republicans have been working very hard and a number of Democrats, too, trying to find success," he said. "One-party rule would never allow that to go forward, and now we're going to have some success."

McCarthy said Republicans will also announce a new select committee on China next week, and he'll be announcing the chairperson as well.

"We're going to look at every single industry that China has us leveraged in," he said. "We're going to start bringing the supply chain back from China to America. You look at our medicine, what's being made in China, you look at critical minerals, you look at what they're doing around the world. This is going to be a committee of Republicans and Democrats alike focused so we have one policy, one mission to confront China about what they've been trying to do to America and rule the world, and it's one of the best things we'll see moving forward with the new Republican majority."

McCarthy also promised investigations that will include Facebook and Google, which he called "arms of the Democratic Party" and the Biden administration and officials who use the intel community to "lie to the American public."

"Should those people keep their clearances? Should those people still be allowed to have information? If they're going to be political individuals, then, no, they should not," said McCarthy. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of what we need to investigate going forward."