By Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona and Morgan Rimmer | CNN
A group of Republican hardliners has caused the derailment of two bills and caught GOP leaders off guard. They claim their actions are in retaliation for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement with President Joe Biden to suspend the national debt limit. The revolt has revealed the delicacy of McCarthy’s narrow majority and highlights the tenuous relationship with the right-wing faction of the House GOP over the country’s debt deal. However, the members have not expressed any desire yet to vote for the removal of McCarthy from his position as Speaker, an action that would break the House GOP and lead to chaos in the Chamber.
For now, the conservative group has opted for a strategy to thwart McCarthy’s legislative agenda until he listens to their list of demands. They argue that McCarthy violated the deal he made in January to take the Speakership position, although the specifics of that agreement were never made public. They demand that the next round of funding bills roll back domestic funding levels to those of 2022, which is refused by Democrats and some members of their own party. Some Republican critics have accused the leadership of crushing legislation by Rep. Andrew Clyde to avenge the Georgia Republican’s opposition to the debt ceiling deal.
The vote against the procedural rule failed, effectively blocking the legislation to ban gas stoves and impose more congressional oversight on federal rules. A rule typically passes with the support of the majority party, and the last time the rule failed was in 2002, posing a question on how long the conservatives intend to maintain their protest or what their next course of action would be.
The rising anxiety between McCarthy and his allies and the small block of hardliners committed to making his speakership more difficult is evident. It only takes five Republicans to disrupt a party-line agenda in the narrowly divided chamber.
The battle played out behind closed doors, with McCarthy’s allies criticizing their colleagues who tried to sink the rule on the debt limit bill last week. They also repeated the threat of doing it again. But the conservatives have remained steadfast and are ready to enforce the agreement reached in January. They aim to reforge Republican unity and stated that the majority cannot function without unity.
GOP Rep. Chip Roy from Texas maintained that their end game was “freedom, less government, less spending.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
