In an age where the Filibuster is the most frequently used stall tactic in the Senate, none other than House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) deliberately delayed today’s vote on President Biden’s Build Back Better bill by talking for more than eight hours on the floor of the House, without stopping. His stunt delayed voting on the Build Back Better Bill, and numerous members of his Party fell asleep, as he didn’t stop talking until this morning.
His purpose was obviously to remind his base — which is virtually the same as that of Donald Trump — that he considers himself to be a lot more important than he actually is and, not only that, he wants Nancy Pelosi’s job so he can be third in line for the presidency (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-speech.html).
So we quickly consulted with our Chief Congressional Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, to ask her why the House of Representatives permits filibusters. Normally, the Speaker or her designated Representative are allowed to speak for only a couple of minutes or so — something we wish Mitch McConnell would consider, especially when he leaves his office in the Senate, flanked by his leadership team, and mumbles into the microphone with the cameras running, issuing vague comments about what he thinks the American people want (which in every case is what he wants).
Seems that the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader and the Speaker are granted special privileges which they occasionally take advantage of.
McCarthy’s blah blah (in the now famous words of climate activist Greta Thunberg, in her comment about the recently concluded COP26 conference in Glasgow) was a strident objection to everything in the Build Back Better bill, which has torn whatever fragile coalition House Democrats had, only they did end up voting for it.
So now the bill goes to the Senate, where infamously holdout conservative West Virginia senator, his own version of a Democrat, will decide its fate.
Paying close attention to McCarthy’s eight hour rant were Californians Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian, who fled their California home by cutting off their electronic tracking bracelets and abandoning their three teenage children. Ayvazyan and Terabeilian face prison for their role in a massive Covid relief fraud scheme (https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/us/covid-relief-fraud-scheme-cec/).
Our California-based associate solitary reporter, Susanna Sherman, interviewed the couple after they arrived in McCarthy’s District Office in Porterville.
Ayvazyan and Terabelian told Sherman that they chose Porterville because they helped John Fogerty compose his “Porterville,” about running away from responsibility. Listen to it at https://www.lyricsbox.com/john-fogerty-feat.-creedence-clearwater-revival-porterville-lyrics-572w8v4.html or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys2x4p2yp2o
The most prominent feature of the song is the refrain “I don’t care.”
"We don’t care anything about our three teens whom we abandoned so we could hang out here in Porterville," Ayvazuan told Sherman. “We just care about keeping all that Covid relief money we stole.”
In short, the reason the House passed the Build Back Better bill was because McCarthy stopped talking.