The conservative House Freedom Caucus paralyzed the House again on Wednesday and forced Speaker Kevin McCarthy to cancel votes for the rest of the week.
For the second consecutive day, hard-line conservative holdouts blocked Mr. McCarthy from bringing a slew of Republican initiatives to the House floor. Members of the Freedom Caucus say the delay is warranted because of Mr. McCarthy’s deal last week to suspend the debt limit until after the 2024 presidential election.
“These continued sellouts breach the agreement we made in January for a unified, functioning Congress,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, Colorado Republican. “I’ve had enough of the games.”
The rebels demanded that Mr. McCarthy stop using Democratic votes to pass legislation, as he did with the debt limit deal because the same faction of Freedom Caucus members refused to back it.
Mr. McCarthy downplayed the significance of the continued stifling of floor action after 11 archconservatives derailed votes Tuesday on a series of Republican bills.
“We’ve been through this before; we’re [a] small majority,” said Mr. McCarthy, California Republican. “You work through this, and you’re going to be stronger.”
SEE ALSO: House GOP leaders delay legislative business amid opposition from conservatives
On the losing end of the conservative blockade are bills prohibiting the Biden administration from banning gas stoves and requiring Congress to approve any regulation costing the economy more than $100 million annually.
An overwhelming majority of House Republicans support both measures. One centrist Republican lawmaker told The Washington Times that frustration was running high because of the delay.
“This is the agenda that we campaigned and won the House on that’s being ground to a halt,” the lawmaker said. “This stuff should be settled behind closed doors in a [Republican] conference meeting rather than out in the open.”
Given the narrow House majority, Mr. McCarthy can lose only four Republican lawmakers on any vote before relying on Democrats. That happened when the speaker reached his debt limit deal with President Biden.
The agreement, which hikes the debt ceiling until January 2025, passed because of a coalition of House Republicans and Democrats. Overall, 71 Republican lawmakers bucked Mr. McCarthy and voted against the legislation.
Conservative rebels say Mr. McCarthy broke his word by pushing through the debt limit agreement with Democratic votes. Although they have issued few public demands, conservative hard-liners are pushing Mr. McCarthy to rule out reliance on Democrats to overcome Republican opposition in the future.
“We’re going to force him into a monogamous relationship with one or the other,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “What we’re not going to do is hang out with him for five months and then watch him go jump in the back seat with [House Democratic leader] Hakeem Jeffries and sell the nation out.”
Conservative hard-liners fret that Mr. McCarthy’s reliance on Democrats could become a habit.
Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona Republican and a former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, expressed concern that Mr. McCarthy would rely on Democratic votes to steamroll conservative opposition to major legislation.
“I continued to be concerned because he hasn’t repudiated that coalition,” Mr. Biggs said. “My guess is he’s prepared to do that again on the next three must-pass bills: [the] Farm Bill, [the defense bill] and the budget.”
Others want Mr. McCarthy to agree to $130 billion in spending cuts for the upcoming fiscal year. The push contradicts Mr. McCarthy’s debt limit agreement with the White House, which keeps domestic spending flat while hiking the defense budget by more than 3%.
Mr. McCarthy hinted that the agreement to keep spending flat was merely a ceiling, not a floor.
“Whenever you put a cap, that’s the ceiling,” the speaker said. “We can always spend less. I’ve always advocated for spending less.”
It is unlikely that Mr. Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate will see it similarly. If they demand spending equal to the caps and Mr. McCarthy sticks with the Freedom Caucus demands, it would set up a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The Freedom Caucus nearly tanked Mr. McCarthy’s speakership bid this year. In exchange for allowing Mr. McCarthy’s ascension, the group pushed through a rules package that decentralized the power of congressional leadership.
Outside of the rules package, much of Mr. McCarthy’s agreement with the hard-liners was informal. Mr. Gaetz, for instance, has said that the speaker agreed not to pass legislation without the support of at least half of the Republican conference.
Rep. Ken Buck, Colorado Republican, said Mr. McCarthy would need to revisit the agreement and offer more concrete pledges to break the gridlock.
“We’ve been lied to, and we can’t trust people,” Mr. Buck said. “They’re going to have to make a trustworthy deal again, and then we can unify and move things forward.”
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
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