Conservative calls for Johnson to rip up deal frustrate other Republicans

A late push from hard-line conservatives in the House to get Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to back out of a top-line spending deal with Democrats is frustrating Republicans on both sides of the Capitol.

“That’s pretty nasty. It’s ridiculous,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said, noting that the same members have continuously complained about spending deals over the last year. “At some point when you have people complain all the time, it’s like crying wolf. It just lacks credibility anymore.”

Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) had sharper words for the conservatives pressing to renegotiate the deal: “They’re just feckless people.”

“It’s just easier for them to scream and vote no, because it takes a lot of courage to explain a yes vote and everything that’s inside of it,” Miller said. “If I said I was gonna vote no on any of this stuff, my job would be a lot easier.”

After tanking a procedural vote and holding up floor action Wednesday on unrelated legislation in protest of the deal announced over the weekend, conservatives huddled with Johnson in his office Thursday to convince him to retract his commitment to the top-line deal and push for a new spending agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the White House.

“I’m doing everything I can to influence the Speaker to ditch the bad deal for the country, which is the Schumer deal, and to commit to cutting spending over last year and securing the border and doing whatever we can to accomplish that,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) answers press questions after exiting a meeting with the House Freedom Caucus at the Capitol on Thursday, January 11, 2024. (Allison Robbert)

The bipartisan deal sets top-line spending at $1.59 trillion plus around $69 billion in additional budget tweaks — largely in line with the spending caps included in the debt limit deal then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) struck with President Biden last year that outraged Republicans, leading to McCarthy’s ouster. Johnson has touted some tweaks to that agreement, including accelerating clawbacks of IRS mandatory funding and additional clawbacks of unspent pandemic funds.

Johnson assured reporters Thursday that he has not made any commitments to the conservatives — “so if you hear otherwise, it’s just simply not true” — but the chatter about a new framework is enraging Republicans, who are aiming their fire at the rabble rousers who have been at the center of near-constant chaos in the lower chamber.

“Rank-and-file members who just want to solve the problems that face our country, and who understand that that will most likely be done through incremental progress, are furious with the hard-line tactics,” said one House GOP member who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “They think it’s playing into the Democrats’ hands; they think that it is undermining our ability to get a victory in November; and they think it’s moving the country backwards. People are pissed.”

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a key negotiator of the Fiscal Responsibility Act bill last year that is the basis of the spending deal, said that the Freedom Caucus’s calls to renegotiate the top line has “reaffirmed that they’re not focused upon real savings and real outcomes.”

“This is all theatrics for them. This is the drama caucus,” Graves said.

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Graves argued that the continued hardball tactics from those members over the last year — from scuttling spending to ousting McCarthy — have resulted in a prolonged extension of policies approved in spending levels from the last Congress under total Democratic control.

“Who’s the conservative? Nice job, guys,” Graves said.

House appropriators in particular are warning the Speaker against seeking to put forward an alternate deal, saying it will damage his ability to negotiate anything else with Democrats.

“You can’t pull out a deal that was already cut,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a top appropriator.

“If you are not going to honor the terms, then then you have a credibility problem,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), another top appropriator — adding that he thinks the calls to renegotiate the deal increase the chances of a shutdown.

As Congress aims to strike a deal to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, it faces a two-tiered government funding deadline with some programs running out on Jan. 19 and the rest expiring on Feb. 2.

Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans were baffled by the news emerging out of the House’s hard-right faction and their meeting with the Speaker.

“That’s not gonna work,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said bluntly when asked about the news Thursday.

Top GOP members and appropriators said a deal was already in place and that it was too late to change course, especially to mollify Freedom Caucus members who are highly unlikely to back any type of bipartisan bill.

“I assume he’ll do everything he can to get the job done over there, and hopefully he’ll have enough of the Republican caucus working with him who are interested in getting results that they’ll be able to get an outcome, but I don’t know how to predict it at this point,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters.

“I think he’s very sincere and wants to get results, but he has to manage an incredibly divided caucus and I assume at some point they’ll have to get it done in a bipartisan way because I don’t think there are people on our side of the aisle who will vote for anything,” he added.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks with press after weekly policy luncheon at the Capitol on Tuesday, January 9, 2024. (Allison Robbert)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top GOP appropriator in the upper chamber, added that it would be “extremely difficult” to avoid a shutdown if Johnson reneges from the deal with Schumer.

Part of the push from hard-line conservatives centers on what kind of stopgap funding measure to pursue, as the Senate tees up a short-term continuing resolution (CR).

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is among those advocating for a long-term stopgap that would trigger an automatic, across-the-board 1 percent cut that was written into the Fiscal Responsibility Act debt limit bill last year.

“Do the long-term CR and negotiate on the policy we want to get the border,” Jordan said coming out of the meeting in Johnson’s office Thursday. “That creates the incentive to actually do the work we’re supposed to do.”

The idea with a long-term CR would be to then push for conservative policy riders, such as concerning the border and immigration.

But that, too, is facing pushback from appropriators.

“No appropriator likes a CR,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an appropriations cardinal.

Aris Folley, Al Weaver, and Mike Lillis contributed.

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