Truly the most important thing the interim House speaker should be focusing on right now - petty bullshit while someone is mourning a colleague. /s
Truly the most important thing the interim House speaker should be focusing on right now - petty bullshit while someone is mourning a colleague. /s
They can just give the Speaker Pro Tempore more powers like that?
Why bother with electing a new Speaker then?
A new speaker is constitutionally required, however the Speaker Pro Tempore fulfills that constitutional requirement. Once that requirement has been filled, the house is free to run itself in whatever manner it chooses including rearranging the office furniture while the country is on fire.
I’m asking why not just keep the Speaker Pro Tempore? Why have a vote at all?
Because that would allow an ongoing process of just appointing a new Speaker pro tempore by the current Speaker (or current pro tempore), then voting to remove the current Speaker and let the new tempore take over, etc, so the Speaker is never voted in by a majority by both sides. It’s an intentional limit to make sure the current party cannot just keep passing the ball without input from the other side except to remove whoever is currently in the position.
The house can if they want. But presumably some plurality of the house would prefer a different speaker, so that vote will probably happen at some point in the future. It doesn’t have to though.