(NewsNation) — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is pleading for change in Congress after Tuesday’s removal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.
“It’s a sad day, especially when the political crime that you’ve committed was working with the other side,” Manchin said Tuesday on “CUOMO” after the House vote.
The centrist from West Virginia has been a central figure in key negotiations in the upper chamber of Congress, including on passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
He and other senators watched as history was made Tuesday when McCarthy became the first speaker to be voted out of the position. There was no clear successor, and Republicans will take the week to figure out a path forward.
McCarthy’s ouster was set in motion by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who has criticized McCarthy for supposedly breaking promises, as well as working with Democrats last week to avert a government shutdown.
“How did we get this? What was the cause of all of this?” Manchin said of the situation and general infighting in Congress.
He lamented the idea that McCarthy would be voted out for working across party lines, which he believes should be the ultimate goal of legislators. He referenced efforts to update the Electoral Count Act, a bill boosting clean energy and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Manchin has been critical of both the Republican and Democratic parties and chastised them for what he called was their “business model” of preying on division in the country.
“The country is not as divided as you may think and people want you (to) believe,” he said. “The business model in Washington, the Democrat and Republican parties, their business model preys on basically the division that we have. That’s a better business model for them.”
The eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy were angered over his handling of the debt ceiling negotiations, as well as last week’s deal he struck with Democrats to pass stopgap spending measure and avert a shutdown.
Republicans’ slim majority in the House has given outsize power to a small group of hard-line members who claim their goal is to shake up the status quo and disrupt the traditional way of thinking in Washington.
“When you start rewarding and sending more money to people for bad behavior, they’ll be twice as bad tomorrow as they were today,” Manchin said of the bloc’s antics. “We’ve got to change this.”