The House Freedom Caucus has warned Speaker Kevin McCarthy that unless their demands are met in a Continuing Resolution (CR) that McCarthy is preparing in order to keep the government running after September 30, they will introduce a “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair, forcing a vote on whether McCarthy can remain as speaker.
“File the f— motion,” McCarthy said during a meeting of the GOP caucus.
The Freedom Caucus’s demands are all non-starters in the Senate, leaving McCarthy with little choice but to try to cobble something together that at least some Democrats can support.
“In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a Continuing Resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” the Freedom Caucus said in a statement.
Unless a GOP border bill is part of the CR, along with addressing “the unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and ending “woke” Defense Department policies, the caucus will refuse to back the short-term spending bill.
With a government shutdown looming, McCarthy is confronting the same stubborn problem that has driven Republicans before him from the speaker’s job — trying to lead a ruptured GOP majority that’s split between what’s left of the traditional party and a harder-right element largely allied with former President Donald Trump.
Even his decision to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden did little this week to appease the demands of the Freedom Caucus and others as they threaten to shut down the government in pursuit of deep spending cuts or move to a motion to oust him from office.
McCarthy’s one advantage in this face-off is that there is literally no one else in the GOP caucus who could get enough votes to win the speakership. The Caucus is so hopelessly split that herding cats would be a breeze by comparison.
Of course, this was the problem in January when the Freedom Caucus said they would absolutely, positively, never vote for McCarthy for speaker. In the end, six members of the Freedom Caucus ended up voting “present,” giving him the speakership—but not without conditions.
And he broke one of those conditions when he refused to use the debt ceiling measure as leverage to effect spending cuts. This enraged the Freedom Caucus members and will now almost certainly lead to another tedious series of votes trying to elect another speaker.
“I showed frustration in here because I am frustrated with some people in the conference,” McCarthy said after the meeting in the Capitol basement. “But when we come back, we’re going to get this done. Nobody wins in a government shutdown.”
Top McCarthy ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who is also close with Trump recaptured the speaker’s message. “He said, ’If you want to throw in a motion to vacate, that’s fine. I didn’t survive 15 rounds for nothing and I’ll survive another 15 rounds.”
That said, there still is no viable plan or having the House pass the bills needed to run the government by Sept. 30, when current funding runs out, risking the shutdown.
Freedom Caucus conservatives are demanding cuts lower than what McCarthy agreed to in a budget deal with Biden earlier this year —- and even lower than the speaker promised he would fight for when he agreed to their demands during his election to become speaker.
If the past is any indication, McCarthy has a core of about 170 Republicans in the House who will vote for him and no one else. No other member—even McCarthy’s deputy Steve Scalise—comes close. So the Freedom Caucus’s threat is an empty one. When they changed the rules in January to lower the threshold to “vacate the chair,” they made it possible to hold regular votes to kick McCarthy out of his office. What they failed to do was guarantee that there would be anyone else who could get enough votes to oust him.
They just want to make trouble for McCarthy and try to force a few more concessions from him. Since nothing can possibly be accomplished with these antics, it’s just a gigantic waste of time.
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