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In new GOP House, more guys named Mike chair committees than do women [1]

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Date: 2023-01-14

Business Insider:

The House of Representatives is set to have more members of Congress named "Mike" than women serving as committee chairs under the new Republican majority. [...] Lawmakers typically ascend to the top of committees through a combination of seniority and decisions made by party leadership. On Monday, House Republicans sorted out a number of contested chairmanships, and House Majority Steve Scalise released a list of recommendations for chairmanships that were ratified by the conference on Tuesday. The result: men named "Mike" will outnumber women two-to-one among committee chairs.

Yup, the math checks out. Six Mikes—Rogers, Gallagher, Bost, Turner, McCaul, and Guest—have secured committee chairs (including for nonstanding committees) in the new GOP House, while only three women, Kay Granger, Virginia Foxx, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, were so honored.

Of course, it doesn’t help that there are only 33 Republican women in the House—as opposed to 91 Democratic women—but that doesn’t make it any less absurd. If there were only three men with House chairmanships and six women named Rashida, you can rest assured Tucker Carlson would need two weeks off to tan his testicles, lest he be overcome by the billowing mist of raw estrogen creeping over the moors.

Then again, the new House majority seems hellbent on hewing to serial absurdities. The bananas debt ceiling debate looms, and there’s a nonzero chance that the U.S. will default on its obligations, leading to a global economic meltdown because—well, you tell me. I mean, the only discernible goal they appear to have is to kill President Biden’s economy and make old ladies starve, but that can’t be right, can it?

Meanwhile, as Dana Milbank points out in The Washington Post, House Republicans aren’t even pretending to focus on inflation anymore—possibly because the problem has largely been solved—but are instead channeling all their energies and meager political capital into patent nonsense.

After the chaos of the first week of the 118th Congress, many Americans wondered: If it took them 15 ballots just to choose a speaker, how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction. On Monday, their first day of legislative business, they voted to repeal funding for a fictitious “87,000 IRS agents” who don’t exist and never will. On Wednesday, they approved legislation purporting to outlaw infanticide, which is already illegal and always has been. In between, they set up the deep state committee. What next? Sorry, that’s secret. And therein might be the biggest falsehood of all. After numerous promises of “transparency” from the new leaders, they are refusing to reveal multiple backroom concessions Kevin McCarthy made to secure the speakership. You might even call it a conspiracy of silence.

And we’re just getting started.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with Republicans flying their true colors for all the world to see. That portends well for 2024. I just hope they don’t destroy the global economy in the meantime. Or find new and imaginative ways to ruin the lives of our most vulnerable citizens.

P.S.: Women representatives in the Democratic-controlled 117th Congress received more chairs than Republican women in the current House, but they were still far outnumbered by their male counterparts. We can do better, both when it comes to the number of women in Congress and in leadership positions—Nancy the Great notwithstanding.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/14/2147219/-In-new-GOP-House-more-guys-named-Mike-chair-committees-than-do-women

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