Show-Me State Times

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt has voted against allowing the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies to move ahead with the planning the inauguration of Joe Biden until the Trump campaign has exhausted all legal remedies. 

“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,” Blunt said in a statement. “The JCCIC [Inaugural Committee] 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.”

Fellow Republicans - House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) - serving on the committee joined Blunt to block the ceremony planning from moving ahead. 

Democrats House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) voted in favor of moving ahead with the inauguration planning.

“This has become a weekly ritual. The Electoral College is going to meet on the 14th and cast a vote, and we’re going to have a swearing in of the next president on the 20th of January,” McConnell told reporters.