Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) revealed what finally made him come around to voting for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for House Speaker—a drawn-out process that the Florida Republican said will help make the lower chamber “once again become the people’s House.”
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Donalds said he is being placed on the House Republican Steering Committee, which is the body that chooses the GOP chairs and members for most of the committees. He said his appointment will be key in having "more [Republican] voices on more committees."
“Early on, I gave Kevin the benefit of the doubt. But it came pretty quickly clear to me that we were getting nowhere,” said Donalds, who joined the anti-McCarthy group after the third round of voting. “And so, at that point, it was saying, ‘OK, how long is this going to go? What’s this going to play out like?’ And so, it was really about trying to make sure that we can get people to the table in order to construct a framework that everybody in our conference can get behind.”
He said he’s “happy” the vote is over and the group “got something transformational and sound for the American people.”
“We were able to land this plane, and now we are going to move on to the business of the American people,” he added.
On Monday, McCarthy must get a rules package passed, which Donalds expects will go smoothly.
“I think everybody is going to kind of take the weekend, day-and-a-half that we have, and then look at these rules with a sound mind, and then we’re going to go ahead and get them through,” Donalds said.
At least one Republican, however, has said he will oppose the rules package over defense spending.
“This has a proposed billions of dollar cut to defense, which I think is a horrible idea,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) told CBS News's Margaret Brennan. “When you have aggressive Russia and Ukraine, you've got a growing threat of China in the Pacific — you know, I'm going to visit Taiwan here in a couple of weeks — how am I going to look at our allies in the eye and say, I need you to increase your defense budget, but yet America is going to decrease ours?”
McCarthy can only lose four votes.