GOP leaders face down conservative threats to paralyze House again

House GOP leaders return to Washington this week struggling to quell the conservative angst that’s threatening to derail their legislative agenda heading into the summer’s major policy fights with President Biden.

Eleven conservatives shut down all floor action for almost a week earlier in the month to protest Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) handling of the debt ceiling talks. That forced the Speaker to host a string of closed-door meetings last week with hard-liners, who want concrete assurances he’ll demand deeper spending cuts in the coming fight over government funding.

While those detractors allowed floor votes to resume during the course of those talks, there was little sign of progress by week’s end, when the hard-liners left Washington grumbling about McCarthy’s strategy for 2024 spending and warning that they’re ready to shut down the floor once again if the Speaker doesn’t meet their ill-defined demands. 

“I haven't been overly pleased or participatory ... but I'll just say that I don't think we're moving in the right direction as far as solving this massive growth in national debt,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, of the McCarthy talks. 

“My biggest concern is, what's the coalition that the Speaker has built?” he continued. “We want to know who his coalition partners are. Is it the Democrats, or is it going to be the conservative voices and the other Republicans in the conference?”

Asked whether the conservatives would resort to their successful strategy of blocking floor action, Biggs didn’t pause. 

“Oh, I think it's always on the table,” he said. “I'm an 'all tools' guy.”  

“That is a distinct possibility,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) echoed when asked whether the floor could shut down this week.

Those threats highlight the dilemma facing McCarthy and GOP leaders as they attempt the delicate balancing act of cutting deals with Biden and the Democrats — for the sake of enacting must-pass bills like raising the debt ceiling and funding the government — without infuriating the conservative firebrands who view deficits as a greater threat than a default or a shutdown.

“I'm not worried about a shutdown,” Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) said. “The country's going to be permanently shut down if we don't get our spending under control. And I'm tired of hearing, 'We'll do it tomorrow.'”

After shutting down the House floor two weeks ago, the conservative rebels backed off of their revolt last Monday, announcing they would let legislative business resume — for the time being. Emerging from a closed-door meeting with McCarthy, Gaetz — one of the 11 GOP defectors — said the group would work toward renegotiating the “power-sharing agreement” conservatives struck with McCarthy during January’s drawn-out Speaker race — a characterization McCarthy has disputed. 

McCarthy has tapped a familiar top deputy, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), to help in the effort to mitigate the conservatives’ concerns, according to those familiar with the talks. Graves took a lead in the negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling bill, and he appears to be doing the same in the current talks. 

“The Speaker introduces Garret and then five minutes later walks out,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), another hard-liner who helped gum up the floor earlier in the month. 

After days of talks last week, however, some conservatives said there were no breakthroughs to report. 

“Haven't had anything new since Monday,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said as he was leaving Washington late last week. “I guess we'll see what next week brings to us.” 

Asked what requests he’s made of leadership, Rosendale was vague. 

“I never asked for anything but good government,” he told a reporter. “That's what you need to put in there." 

But if there’s no progress by the time the House is set to vote on another rule — which could happen as soon as Wednesday — Gaetz last week suggested conservatives might block floor activity once again.

“There’ll be more votes next week and more rules, and if there’s not a renegotiated power-sharing agreement, then perhaps we’ll be back here next week,” he told reporters last Monday.

Despite the lack of any concrete agreement, some of the rebels said they were satisfied McCarthy would give them a greater voice in the budget talks to come.

“I think he just committed to us that he would forge ahead with a conservative, a fiscally conservative agenda, and he gave us his word that he would work with us and keep us in the loop,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the GOP defectors, told CNN on Thursday night. “And I think that’s the key thing as he should with all different factions with the party.”

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), another one of the Republican rebels, aired an optimistic tone about the direction of talks with McCarthy.

“There have continued to be constructive, healthy conversations on how we're gonna work together this entire conference to cut spending,” Good said Thursday.

Asked whether they were making progress, he responded, “I think so.”

“My hope would be that we’ll see that demonstrated going forward,” he added.

Not all the GOP rabble-rousers, however, were pleased with the progress — or lack thereof — made thus far.

“It’s not going well, and we don’t have future meetings scheduled,” Gaetz said Thursday.

The talks with McCarthy were going poorly, he said, “because they’re all about spending at this stage of the game” — an issue that has been center stage in the leadership-conservative squabble.

The GOP hardliners for months have pushed to cut fiscal 2024 spending down to 2022 levels, which would lead to a reduction of about $130 billion from current spending. But the debt limit deal struck by Biden and McCarthy set 2024 spending well above that figure — essentially frozen at 2023 levels with a 1 percent increase set for 2025 — in a move that infuriated conservatives.

In an apparent attempt to allay that anger, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) — the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee — said her panel would mark up bills below the cap, at 2022 levels. But even that show of good faith was not enough to earn the trust of the GOP hard-liners, who accused leadership of utilizing budgetary “gimmicks,” known as rescissions, to make the cuts appear larger than they are. 

“The American people aren't stupid,” Good said. “The American people need us to cut spending.”