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Say what you will about George Santos, he is still in Congress for some reason. He has resisted every call for him to resign since the stories about his propensity for lying first broke soon after November’s election. He has even announced he will run for re-election next year after promising he would not.
As of last week, he’s also an indicted alleged felon. And yet he still gets to wear his member pin and use the House gym and eat quesadillas from the House cafeteria and hang out with the House insanity lodestar Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s probably his best run of luck since he won the lottery and a Pulitzer on the same day.
INDICTED! Nobel Prize Laureate, Purple Heart Recipient George Santos Indicted On Federal Charges
On Wednesday, Democrats, ever the generous types, teed up an opportunity for the Republicans to rid themselves of this human canker sore by bringing to the floor a privileged resolution that would have expelled Santos from Congress. Normally the majority party’s leaders control what gets heard on the floor, but a petition to expel a member of the body is considered privileged, so the minority can bring it up for consideration over leadership’s objections and it has to be voted on.
There is an argument that the Dems knew the resolution would fail, and this was just a way of getting Republicans to take a vote they didn’t want to take so their opponents could hammer them over the heads with it in campaign ads. “So-and-so had the chance to boot lying degenerate George Santos from office, but decided having him around to vote to reduce your Medicare benefits was more important,” that sort of thing.
This was the GOP’s chance to call Democrats’ bluff. To rid themselves of this millstone around their neck. Everyone wants Santos gone: his constituents, the other members of the New York delegation, Mitt Romney …
Instead Kevin McCarthy punted by referring the resolution to the House Ethics Committee, which will now consider it and report back a recommendation about what to do next.
One can almost hear McCarthy’s justification: Sure he’s an alleged felon recently indicted on 13 counts of wire fraud, theft of public money, and money laundering, but he’s our alleged felon recently indicted on 13 counts of wire fraud, theft of public money, and money laundering.
There is also another possibility having to do with the Republicans’ tiny, tiny margin in the house:
McCarthy is in the middle of demanding huge budget cuts in exchange for lifting the nation’s debt ceiling, and the number of loons in his caucus who would vote for defaulting on all our debt far exceeds the Republicans’ margin in the House. So he needs all hands on deck for the delicate operation of sliding America right up to the brink of economic catastrophe before taking a deal he can spin to the nuts in his party as a victory.
That said, an Ethics Committee referral actually makes it easier to vote Santos out in the future. The privileged resolution on Wednesday would have required two-thirds of the vote to pass. An Ethics Committee recommendation to boot Santos to the curb would only require a simple majority. So in the long run, Santos’s odds of retaining his seat might have gone down.
But conveniently for McCarthy, and perhaps inconveniently for the bond market and America’s fiscal health, that won’t be for a while. At which point we’ll all be more worried about finding solid cardboard boxes to sleep in than whatever Congress is doing anyway.
