McCarthy, Scalise tensions bubble into public over GOP rebellion

Tensions between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) bubbled up into the open last week as House GOP leaders dealt with hard-line conservative rebels bringing action on the floor to a halt over the debt limit compromise with the White House.

McCarthy on Wednesday morning directly named Scalise when explaining to reporters why the conservatives rebelled, pointing to a “misinterpretation” between Scalise and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.).

McCarthy answered “yes” when asked Wednesday evening if members of his leadership team were on the same page amid the floor drama.

But in an interview with Punchbowl News on Wednesday afternoon, describing the rebellion on the House floor, Scalise pointed to the conservative members feeling “misled by the speaker” over McCarthy’s handling of the debt limit deal compared to the commitments he made during the Speaker’s race in January — a gripe that Scalise neither affirmed nor shot down.

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The two men publicly pointing to differing reasons behind the conservative rebellion represents a rare public display of the tensions between the GOP leaders managing a slim and spunky House majority. It’s a situation that some members hope can be put to rest sooner rather than later.

“Cooler heads have got to prevail. They’re great people. They’re actually very similar,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said of Scalise and McCarthy, adding that he hopes they can work together. “They better.”

McCarthy and Scalise have never been viewed as the best of friends, but any animosity has mostly stayed out of their public statements.

During the historic 15-ballot Speaker election in January, Scalise — the most obvious potential alternative to McCarthy if he had been forced to drop out of the running — always publicly supported McCarthy, and gave one of the nominating speeches in favor of the Republican Speaker nominee on the floor.

But last week’s unexpected floor rebellion, in which 11 GOP members sunk a procedural rule vote for the first time since 2002, has exposed cracks between the leaders and in how the GOP leadership team functions.

Clyde’s legislation

One key dynamic at the core of the floor rebellion was an allegation from Clyde that a member of leadership — whom he did not name — had threatened to keep one of his legislative items from getting a floor vote if he did not voted no on the rule vote for the debt bill May 31.

Clyde was one of 29 Republicans who did oppose that rule, forcing the GOP to rely on Democratic support to advance the debt limit bill.

McCarthy later named Scalise directly in relation to Clyde when explaining the chaos on the floor.

“The Majority Leader runs the floor. And yesterday was started on something else,” McCarthy said. “It was a conversation that the majority leader had with Clyde, and I think it was a miscalculation or misinterpretation of what one said to the other. And that’s what started this, and then something else bellowed into it.”

Scalise had a different account when asked about Clyde’s allegation at a press conference just hours before the 11 GOP members sunk the rule. Scalise said Clyde’s resolution, which would block the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from banning pistol brace attachments, did not yet have enough support in the GOP to pass — but that Scalise was working to get it to pass.

Clyde had told The Hill the day before that he spoke to leadership and was expecting a vote on his legislation the following week. But after Scalise’s comments, Clyde reiterated in a statement that he was threatened by leadership.

The stunning floor rebellion hours later, which blocked advancement of legislation relating to gas stoves and regulatory reforms, included Scalise and Clyde in a heated discussion on the House floor that later included other GOP rebels. Clyde was not one of the 11 GOP members who voted against the rule, but some who did — like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — specifically mentioned the alleged threat against Clyde when explaining the rebellion.

Debt limit bill tension

But others in the group of 11 rebels, including Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.), said the alleged threat was only a “symptom” of a larger problem that sparked their votes against the rule.

“We had an agreement that had been forged by all of us together, and it was utterly jettisoned unilaterally by the Speaker,” Bishop said of the debt limit bill.

“We’re concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed Kevin McCarthy to assume the Speakership had been violated as a consequence of the debt limit deal,” Gaetz also said.

Bishop said leadership flouted an agreement struck in January during the Speaker’s race to revert total discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels.

It is not clear whether such an agreement existed, though conservatives at the time called for a budget resolution within that framework — and GOP leaders have defended the debt bill as increasing defense spending and reverting other spending to around fiscal 2022 levels.

Scalise was not a key negotiator in either the debt limit deal with President Biden or during the Speaker’s race — in both, Reps. Garret Graves (R-La.) and Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) were key McCarthy deputies.

The No. 2 House Republican highlighted the members’ frustration about feeling betrayed when explaining the floor impasse to Punchbowl News.

“There was a lot of anger being expressed. And frankly, you know … a lot of the anger they expressed was that they felt they were misled by the speaker during the negotiations in January on the Speaker vote,” Scalise said. “Whatever commitments were made, they felt like he misled them, and broke promises. And they expressed that.”

“I don’t know what those promises were. [I] understand some of them went and talked to [McCarthy] and when they left, they still publicly were expressing anger with him over what they perceived as broken promises, and that’s got to get resolved,” Scalise said.

In a demonstration of mending the issue with Clyde, Scalise released statements from himself, the Georgia congressman and gun rights groups in support of the pistol brace rule repeal. The measure is slated for a vote Tuesday, Clyde said after emerging from a meeting with Scalise hours following the sunk rule vote.

The offices of McCarthy and Scalise did not provide any additional comment for this story.

McCarthy and Scalise are far from the first party leaders to have bumps in the road. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) had a working dynamic sometimes described as “frenemies.” 

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said McCarthy and Scalise will “work together when they need to work together,” noting that it was a very high-stakes environment to get the debt limit bill across the finish line.

“They pull it together when they need to. And I think that’s indicative of a relationship that works on a professional level when it needs to,” Thune said.

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