House Democrats are having informal talks with their Republican colleagues about a potential bipartisan solution to finding a speaker, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday.
In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Jeffries said that Democrats are “ready, willing and able” to find a solution.
“There are informal conversations that have been underway,” he said. “When we get back to Washington tomorrow, it’s important to begin to formalize those conversations.”
The House has been without a speaker since a handful of conservative Republicans instigated a vote that ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3. Representative Jim Jordan is currently the frontrunner for the position, but a number of moderate Republicans have said they will not support him either.
Jeffries said that Democrats aren’t making any demands as part of the talks, but he added that they would like to change House rules so that measures with bipartisan support can come up for a vote.
“We want to ensure that votes are taken on bills that have substantial Democratic support and substantial Republican support so that the extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda,” he said.
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Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who voted against ousting McCarthy, said that Democrats threw away an opportunity for bipartisanship when they failed to rescue McCarthy on that vote.
“At this point, I would prefer there to be, you know, a Republican solution because when they rejected bipartisanship, it’s kind of hard to then go back to it,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
