GOP Rep Buck calls for patience on speaker vote, 'way a deliberative body should be'

GOP Rep. Ken Buck on Thursday suggested patience with the days-long House voting to elect a new speaker, saying, "This is the way a deliberative body should be interacting."

Voting started Tuesday, and by Thursday afternoon it had reached an eighth round without a winner – as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tries to become speaker now that his Republican Party has the chamber majority.

"I know that they’re negotiating, there are some compromises on the table," Buck told Just The News on Thursday morning.

He also said the group of roughly 20 House Republicans, among the most conservative in the chamber and voting against McCarthy, needs to meet and is probably going to stick together.

"But the bottom line is – and I really think people are misreading this – This is the way a deliberative body should be interacting," Buck said. "There is a lot of good faith negotiation on how to make this institution work better so that it’s not broke."

Still, the Colorado Republican, elected to Congress in 2014, was critical of how congressional Republican in the last Congress, when McCarthy led them in the House, passed a multi-trillion-dollar, thousands-of-pages appropriations bill.

We need to let this play out "so we don’t have an omnibus bill on Christmas Eve that's 3,000 pages that nobody has time to read that is stuffed with terrible earmarks," he said. "There really is a need to examine how Congress works and how to make it work a better.”

On Thursday's voting, Buck predicted that if McCarthy fails to chip away at the 20 members opposing him, there still may be several more votes and attempts for him to cut last-minute deals to save his failing speaker bid. 

“I think we’ll know if we adjourn. It means that both sides think they’re getting close," Buck concluded. "If we have a vote and it's less than 20, it means the compromises have moved a few people. If we have a vote and it’s still 20 'no' votes for Kevin, then I think we will end up having several more votes and something may need to change at that point."