In a private meeting on Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer offered a motion to affirm that it is preparing for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Then in a dramatic turn of events, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt of Missouri voted with House Republican Leader, Kevin McCarthy to block the motion, a move that prevented the inaugural committee from publicly accepting that the January 20 inauguration will be for Joe Biden.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hoyer voting in favour of recognizing Joe Biden as the president-elect.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have repeatedly refused to recognize that the next President of the United States will be Biden and Hoyer told reporters he could not speculate why Republicans voted against the motion.

Republican Roy Blunt responded to criticism that Republicans would not approve Hoyer’s motion to recognize Biden as the President-elect.  Blunt said in a statement “It is not the job of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies to get ahead of the electoral process and decide who we are inaugurating. The JCCIC is facing the challenge of planning safe Inaugural Ceremonies during a global pandemic. I would hope that going forward, the members of the JCCIC would adhere to the committee’s long-standing tradition of bipartisan cooperation and focus on the task at hand”

But now McCarthy looks to agree with AOC that members of Congress deserve a pay raise. Without a salary increament, McCarthy says, only millionaires will be able to serve.

The top Republican in the House made the comments this week as lawmakers scrapped the bill over the possible backlash from increasing salaries for themselves and their staffs.

“When you talk this subject about COLA, a cost-of-living increase, it does invoke an emotion, kind of an impulsive emotion,” McCarthy told reporters, according to the Washington Examiner.

“I think it’s one that we should pause and look at. It’s been more than 10 years in the process. The current study says that pay has decreased by 15 percent. I do not want Congress at the end of the day to only be a place that millionaires serve. This should be a body of the people.”

Members of Congress generally make $174,000 per year, with senior leaders earning more, and no cost-of-living adjustments have been made in the past nine years.

Last month, some vulnerable swing-state Democrats, concerned how the proposed $4,500 pay hike would look if it didn’t also have Republican support, had signed onto amendments rejecting a similar measure to increase their pay.