OUTBURSTS REFLECT HOUSE’S LOSS OF DECORUM
Disruptions during Biden’s speech show new, coarse normal
The House floor has been no stranger to rowdy spectacle in 2023, but the eruptions of Republican vitriol against President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address Tuesday night underscored a new and notably coarse normal in Congress, where members of the GOP majority tossed aside rules of decorum and turned the annual speech into a showcase for partisan hostility.
The raucous peals of “liar,” “that’s not true” and at least one expletive lobbed at Biden during his 73-minute address dwarfed outbursts during previous such speeches, most of which have been interrupted by a single disturbance, if at all.
The display — captured in images of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., as she booed and gave a thumbsdown to the president — reflected the ethos that has come to define the Republican-led House.
“If the American people had been on that House floor listening to that speech, it would have been a lot worse names than I called him,” said Greene, who rose to yell “liar!” at Biden repeatedly after he noted that some Republicans favored a plan that could phase out Medicare and Social Security. Asked whether she was worried about being rebuked, she added: “Not one single bit. I have the speaker’s support, and he
has mine.”
The catcallers heckled with impunity, despite a private warning from McCarthy before the speech to be on good behavior and his public promises that the House would avoid “childish games” during the address.
Such members “are proudly disrupters, and I don’t think McCarthy has a very good way to rein in the behavior of his rank-and-file members,” said Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University. “So it potentially allows that behavior to fester and continue, especially if there’s no perceived punishment or cost to doing so.”
Technically speaking, the outbursts most likely violated House rules on decorum, dictating that members wait to be recognized before speaking on the floor and always address their comments to the presiding member “respectfully,” while avoiding any “personality,” or personal criticism.
According to a Congressional
Research Service report on House decorum from 1999, calling the president a “liar” has been ruled out of order.
Yet the rules are only as strict as the speaker charged with enforcing them, and McCarthy took little action to silence his unruly members, staying mostly still as they yelled out. A spokesperson for McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden took the carnivallike atmosphere in stride, at one point almost grinning at the reaction he elicited and suggesting that Republicans had taken his bait on safeguarding entitlement programs. “As we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now,” the president said.
Such outbursts have drawn official rebukes in the past, such as in 2009, when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled “you lie” to President Barack Obama during an address on health care. He apologized profusely later that night, and the House voted within days to condemn his commentary as a “breach of decorum” that “degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House.”
But in the intervening years, other displays of protest have been allowed to slide by. Last year, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., faced no consequences when she yelled “you put them there — 13 of them” when Biden mentioned the flag-draped coffins of American service members.
The president had been discussing measures to help veterans suffering from cancer, but Boebert was referring to the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when an attack on the Kabul airport left 13 U.S. service members dead.
In February 2020, a handful of Democratic House members walked out in protest during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. That was before Speaker Nancy Pelosi dramatically ripped up the pages of Trump’s address after the close of his remarks — an episode that even Republicans who were uneasy about Tuesday night’s outbursts reached for to justify them.
“We should raise the decorum of the House. But it’s being sanctimonious on their end — should we have rebuked Speaker Pelosi for ripping the speech?” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. “I think we should all do better.”