Ralph Norman becomes fifth House Republican to declare he won't vote for McCarthy as Speaker

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., declared Monday night he won't vote for Kevin McCarthy in January to be the next House Speaker, becoming the fourth Republican to officially oppose the party's leading candidate.

"I'm not going to support Kevin McCarthy," Norman said during an interview on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "Washington is broken. There's a cancer in this country and it can't be fixed with aspirin. It's called overspending. When you're bankrupt, you can't function as a country."

Norman said one of his main points of contention with McCarthy is over the time it will take majority Republicans to bring runaway federal spending under control. "I had asked Mr. McCarthy during one of our meetings to agree to the seven year budget that the Republican Study Committee had put out to pay off the deficit and to get this country back," Rep. Norman explained. "He said no. I'm simply not going along with another 20 year budget, which is what he wanted to propose."

Norman joins Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Matt Rosendale of Montana in declaring they won't support McCarthy in the official Speaker's vote, leaving the California Republican a narrow path to securing enough votes to win.

McCarthy needs to win the majority of the votes cast in early January in a House in which Republicans will hold only a few seat majority over Democrats.  McCarthy easily won the GOP nomination for Speaker last week, but 31 Republicans voted against him.

Norman's opposition is not necessarily surprising, given that he supported Biggs' challenge to McCarthy in the House GOP caucus vote last week. He said Monday he still thinks Biggs would make a better Speaker.

"Andy Biggs would make a great one," Norman said. "He's knowledgeable. There are a growing number of us who have just lost faith that McCarthy could do the job. The speaker is the most important position at this point in time in this country."

Biggs told the same television show Monday that the budget is one of the most crucial issues facing the country and it needs to be addressed.

"We haven't done a budget process really, from start to finish," Biggs said on the "Just the News, No Noise." "I think it's like 20 years- longer than I've ever been in Congress. You have to do that if you're going to stop this out of control federal spending. If you don't stop the out of control federal spending, you will keep inflationary pressure there."

Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Good has said McCarthy hasn’t “done anything to earn my vote.”

Kevin McCarthy's office wasn't immediately available for comment.