The House Freedom Caucus Rises Again

“House Republican leadership is happy for, perhaps, the first time in years,” a July 9 X post from Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman read. “HFC imploding.” But Sherman’s X post was not from this July—in the wake of passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, House conservatives “folding” on the Senate version of the bill, and the continued unfolding of the Biden autopen saga. It was from July 2024.

The reports of the House Freedom Caucus’s death have been greatly exaggerated before. They are so again.

I’ve frequently quoted something President Donald Trump said at the One Big, Beautiful Bill signing ceremony on July 4 because it’s a perfect encapsulation of that legislation on multiple levels. “The largest spending cut, $1.7 trillion,” Trump said, “and yet, you won’t even notice it.” 

You won’t notice the spending cuts because they are meant to target individuals attempting to game the system—illegal immigrants and able-bodied adults on Medicaid, for example. Then, of course, you won’t notice the cuts because they, sadly, will probably have a negligible impact on the debt and deficits for the foreseeable future. That’s not great for the long-term prospects of the economy, but the short-term prospects of pulling over $4 trillion out of the economy over the next 10 years through tax increases would be much worse.

Without the House Freedom Caucus, however, the party of fiscal responsibility’s spending cuts would have been laughable. When the House was debating the budget resolution that would serve as the framework for the reconciliation package from January to April, the initial proposals in February included just $300 billion in cuts. House Freedom Caucus members and hardline conservatives told House Speaker Mike Johnson and leadership to do more. Johnson was hesitant to go back to the drawing board, however, and tried to convince the fiscal hawks they could agree to do more spending cuts later—but he really needed to move the resolution forward. The budget resolution would not pass until mid-April, in which the House agreed to more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, and also agreed that tax cuts beyond a certain threshold would require dollar-for-dollar offsets in spending cuts.

Ultimately, this framework did not hold in the Senate version of the bill that the House was stuck with in early July. But the framework did create the leverage needed for conservatives in both chambers to exact some more wins.

The House Freedom Caucus and conservative allies pressed House and Senate leadership to cut Biden-era environmental subsidies, for example. While some of the subsidies remain and others will not sunset for a few years, when all is said and done, a vast majority of these subsidies will cease to exist—despite moderates’ desire for far fewer cuts and phase-out periods that would render them almost irrelevant. 

Even with the Senate’s changes, “ Freedom Caucus deserves some kudos for how much we were able to to accomplish,” Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri and House Freedom Cacus member recently told me on my show “The Signal Sitdown.” 

Burlison cited specific “Medicaid spending reductions” as evidence of their success. “We were able to get the provider tax moved from 6 percent to 3.5 percent. That was a Freedom Caucus fight,” Burlison said. “We were able to put in work requirements for Medicaid and for food stamps. That was a Freedom Caucus priority and fight.” 

“We were told early on in the year that we are never going to get those things and look where we got.”

Each of these wins added up. Despite the Senate’s low spending-cut requirements in their own budget resolution (which most believe was crafted to maximize flexibility and not allow figures like Sen. Susan Collins to get their minds set on a specific number), the Senate’s cuts came in at over $1.5 trillion. 

And that did not stop the House Freedom Caucus from pushing for more once the bill returned from the Senate. The final 48 hours of the budget reconciliation negotiations were a blur, and the biggest moments often occurred in the dead of night. But the beginning of the end for conservative pushback came at a White House meeting on July 2. 

“We sat down with the White House,” Burlison recalled. “The president was very earnest and very sincere, and he shared the same values and the same goals that we have.”

“We wanted the Green New Deal erased immediately, and so did the president. We wanted to get to a balanced budget and so does the president,” Burlison said.

In a later conversation with Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas, I asked him about the White House meeting. “There’s nothing that we discussed that the president was not wanting to get done. I mean, all of it was his agenda,” said Cloud.

The White House addressed conservative’s concerns line by line. “We went through a series of items, [and] the White House assured us that they’ve looked at the language and that they have enough authority through executive action to be able to mitigate many, if not all, of the concerns that we had had,” Burlison told me. 

Others in the GOP conference “rebuffed” the Freedom Caucus’s requests, according to Burlison: “We were told ‘you’re not going to get that. It’s not going to happen.’”

“But, by 2:00 AM, we did get it. And they, the White House staff, did reach out and they basically went down the list of requests and… told us exactly how they were gonna deal with our concerns through executive action,” he continued. “The fact that they basically address nearly all of our concerns was a huge win.” When I pressed Burlison for specifics, the Missouri congressman demurred. “Out of respect for the White House, I’ll let the White House walk those out at the time that they feel comfortable to do that.”

Cloud also held his cards close to the vest. “It was a private meeting, so I’m not going to go through all the list of the things.”

Nevertheless, House Freedom Caucus members remain optimistic. “I do have confidence that the White House will continue to address it,” Burlison said of conservative concerns. And there is already some evidence that the administration is delivering on those promises. On July 7, Trump issued an executive order aimed at “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” which was a major talking point for the Freedom Caucus when pushing for the end of Biden’s green subsidies. The Interior Department has also increased its scrutiny for reviewing renewable energy projects receiving taxpayer dollars.

I reached out to the House Freedom Caucus about the media’s pre-written obituaries. “The House Freedom Caucus remains one of the most influential forces in Congress and in the conservative movement—no matter what the media says. When the liberal press attacks us, it only confirms we’re doing our job,” the Caucus replied. “The House Freedom Caucus is proud to keep leading the fight for taxpayers and real conservative change.”

It’s certainly true that the current House Freedom Caucus is not the HFC of 2023 to 2024. Nor should it be. 

Even though Republicans were the majority in the House during the 118th Congress, Democrats held the Senate, and anything that came out of Capitol Hill had to withstand the scrutiny of the managers of the autopen. Republicans were the minority in the broader lawmaking process. But they weren’t acting like it. The former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was vacated for striking a debt-limit deal with Biden that took the national debt off the table of campaign issues. He went along with spending levels set by the firm of Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi. That’s what cost McCarthy the gavel.

The political role of a minority party is to disrupt, derail, and destabilize the governing coalition. Now, Republicans have a true majority and their task is to govern. That’s not “folding”; that’s playing the game as it should be played.

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