Global Courant
Speaker Kevin McCarthy appears to have reached an agreement with conservatives about easing their blockade of the House floor that sent lawmakers home early last week.
A group of 11 conservatives, furious at how McCarthy, R-Calif., handled debt limit negotiations with President Biden, upended an normally sleepy procedural mood on Tuesday and blocked Republican bills protecting gas stoves. It was the first time in two decades that a majority party saw its own members vote with the minority to reject a bill at that procedural stage.
They also accused the GOP leadership of Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga. That bill, aimed at reversing a provision by the Biden administration about pistol braces, will be voted on tomorrow.
But relations seem to have thawed since last week after House lawmakers left for an early recess on Wednesday. Rep. Ralph Norman, RS.C., told reporters Monday night that he believes the chamber will move forward with a combined procedural vote that clears the way for both the gas stove bills and Clyde’s resolution.
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Rep. Ralph Norman, RS.C., and members of the House Freedom Caucus hold their press conference to oppose the debt limit agreement outside the U.S. Capitol on May 30, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images )
“Yes,” said Norman when asked if all 11 holdouts would allow the vote to proceed. “Well, I can’t speak for everyone. Ask them. My inclination is yes.’
He previously explained, “We’ve aired our issues. We want to see this progress as a body…there are a lot of battles on the way that we’d rather fight together.”
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Norman indicated that McCarthy was “listening” to their concerns and would “involve more of us in the discussions”, but alluded to continued frustration over the debt limit compromise. He added that ongoing spending discussions over the upcoming credit process were “a work in progress”.
McCarthy said there would be no votes Monday night, but “we’re going to combine the line tomorrow, take the line and move on.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talks to reporters just after the Republican majority in the House narrowly passed a sweeping debt ceiling package as they try to force President Joe Biden into federal spending negotiations, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2023 . (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“I thought we had a very productive meeting tonight,” he added. “I think everyone’s attitude in the room was how do we move on? How do we move on to where we were with our powers together? And I think there’s a willingness, that doesn’t mean it’s all locked up, it means we thought that meeting was great… we have many more victories for the American people.
Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., another of the GOP rebels, told reporters, “I think you’ll see an agreement in the next few days or two to move forward with the legislation that we wanted to move last week. “
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A GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital earlier Monday that conservatives are seeking two key assurances from McCarthy in the upcoming appropriation process, when the House Committee on Appropriations will consider 12 separate spending bills for the next fiscal year. One is a pledge to limit federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels, which is below the limit McCarthy and Biden agreed to in the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act.
A 2022 spending limit was the GOP’s original goal when it passed its first debt-limit bill, the Limit, Save, Grow Act, along party lines in April. Several conservatives who organized the blockade, who also voted against the bipartisan compromise, indicated they view anything less than the GOP bill as a loss.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 10: Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) speaks at a news conference with the House Freedom Caucus regarding the debt limit negotiations at the U.S. Capitol Building on March 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
GOP rebels also want a commitment to stop spending on programs whose authorization has expired, a point Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., repeated over the weekend.
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“We’ve got 11,118 programs, okay, 11,118 programs that haven’t been approved by the federal government… It means when they passed a program like the Endangered Species Act of 1973, there was a five-year sunset in five years, unless it was reauthorized. So it was reauthorized in 1978. It hasn’t been reauthorized since then, and every year we increase spending on the Endangered Species Act,” Buck explained in a speech over the weekend.
“We have a house rule that we approve any Congress, Republicans and Democrats. You can’t allocate money to an unauthorized program… We waive that rule in every appropriation bill,” he said.
Brianna O’Neil contributed to this report
Elizabeth Elkind is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.
