Congressional members finished up their first week on the job after a long drawn out vote for the House Speaker.
While the Congress voted on new House rules under Republican leadership, most of the attention on the party has been on freshman Rep. George Santos, a newly-elected member of Congress representing parts of Queens and Nassau counties who admitted to fabricating parts of his resume and is accused of lying about even more.
Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents New York’s 17th Congressional District — which covers all of Rockland County, Putnam County and parts of Westchester and Dutchess counties — joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Friday to discuss the 15-vote House speaker vote saga, the future of the House, and his views on Santos.
It took 15 rounds of voting for Rep. Kevin McCarthy to get voted in as the Speaker of the House, a vote that hasn’t gone past the second ballot in a century
Lawler said being in the middle of it “could be frustrating.”
“And so for me, I was right in the thick of it working with the Speaker’s team, my colleagues, to make sure we got him across the finish line,” he said.
“Certainly when you take a step back, it was history,” Lawler continued, adding that it was “kind of cool to be a part of it” despite his family missing his swearing-in because of the delays.
When asked about House rules changed as part of concessions made by McCarthy to his opposition within the Republican caucus, Lawler said he wasn’t worried the business of the House would be disrupted by a rule that would allow any member of Congress call for a new Speaker vote at any time.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi eliminated the rule during her tenure between 2019 and 2023.
“So this is restoring the rule that was in place for over 100 years and I’m frankly not too concerned because, at the end of the day, if one person does bring the motion to vacate forward, the rest of the Congress can move to table it,” he said. “I’m not too concerned about the impact of it.
When asked what it means for the stances he will take, especially since he’s in a seat that Democrats may want back, Lawler said he plans on working with both sides of the aisle.
He mentioned that he won a state Assembly seat two years ago in a two-to-one Democratic district and won this year in a district that has 71,000 more Democrats than Republicans.
“Voters wanted a check and balance on the Biden administration and that’s certainly what we will do in the House Republican majority. But I also want to get things done on behalf of my district,” Lawler said.
Lawler said in order to do that, “you need to work across the aisle.”
When asked about Santos, he said “his conduct was embarrassing.” Lawler previously called on his fellow Republican to resign.
“We’ll see how this plays out,” he said. “There’s multiple investigations, the process will play itself out and then we’ll take it from there.”