The hard-line House Freedom Caucus’ latest revolt against McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is over the National Defense Authorization Act, the law that authorizes the annual budget for the U.S. military.
That bill has historically passed with bipartisan support, and Republicans and Democrats had reached broad consensus on this year’s version, with plans to pass it by the end of the week. But Freedom Caucus members demanded a slew of controversial last-minute amendments, including measures that would ban the military from reimbursing service members who travel for abortions and prohibit the armed forces from paying for gender-affirming care. If Republicans approve these amendments, Democrats have promised to pull their support from the defense spending bill, forcing Republicans to pass it by themselves.
McCarthy has tried to project calm in the face of the hardliners’ latest demands. He’s managed to weather the House’s roiling crises so far without losing his job or triggering a U.S. debt default. And after enduring the public embarrassment of his 15-ballot fight to become speaker and a recent Freedom Caucus tantrum over his debt-ceiling deal with President Biden, he seems resigned to the mayhem.
“This just seems like another week in Congress,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I’ll get through it, we’ll figure it out as we go.”
But even if McCarthy can successfully pass the defense spending bill, a bigger battle waits after Congress returns from its August break.
Congress must pass a government funding bill by the end of September to avoid a government shutdown, and Freedom Caucus members are gearing up to use that negotiation as leverage to further slash government spending.
On Monday, 21 of their members sent McCarthy a letter with a list of demands for the government funding bill — and a threat to vote against the defense bill if they don’t get what they want. The letter, organized by Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Policy Chairman Chip Roy (R-Texas), demanded that McCarthy abandon the agreement he struck with Biden to avoid a debt default earlier this summer and authorize spending at lower levels.
Roy shrugged when asked about concerns that the Freedom Caucus might lead to a government shutdown.
“Everybody gets just so spun up about ‘oh, it’s shutdown drama,’” Roy told The Times. “You only have so many leverage points here. At some point, the power of the purse has to mean something.”
The Freedom Caucus’ latest protest has forced House GOP leaders to negotiate a bevy of possible last-minute changes to the defense bill. House GOP leaders agreed Wednesday to allow votes on 80 different amendments to the legislation, a process that will likely drag late into the night Thursday.
Even if House conservatives succeed in making their favored changes to the spending bill, though, the current fight is unlikely to end in their victory. The Senate is still in Democrats’ hands, as is the White House, and Democratic negotiators will insist on stripping out the most controversial measures before allowing the bill to become law.
McCarthy’s most important allies recognize that reality. “The final NDAA bill, it will be bipartisan,” House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “No matter what we come out of here with, we’re going to sit down and negotiate with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president. So the bill is going to move.”
“We’re working hard, harder in my opinion than we should have to work, but everything’s hard in this Congress,” Cole added ruefully a minute earlier.
The Freedom Caucus’ decision to turn the defense bill into just another partisan brawl indicates that the looming government shutdown fight will get ugly, moderate lawmakers worry.
“It’s really discouraging to see that even this might be partisan. This has always been a place where we have come together as a country,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) told The Times.
Freedom Caucus members aren’t particularly worried about political blowback from a government shutdown. In fact, many of them believe that triggering shutdowns has worked for them in the past. In 2013, Roy was Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) chief of staff and helped convince House Republicans to force a 17-day shutdown in an attempt to repeal Obamacare.
At the time, House GOP leaders hoped that rank-and-file Republicans would feel the pain and never want to shut down the government again. But the stunt had no obvious political ramifications — Republicans did extremely well in the next midterm elections — and hard-line Republicans internalized the opposite lesson.
“When we went into that shutdown, we referred to it as a ‘touch the stove’ moment,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who worked for GOP House leadership at the time. “And the reality is they didn’t get burned. It’s not that they didn’t learn their lesson — they learned the wrong lesson.”
The Freedom Caucus helped drive then-Speaker John Boehner into retirement in 2015, then blocked McCarthy from becoming speaker not long afterward because they didn’t trust his conservative bona fides. They even caused havoc for then-President Trump at times, demanding his Obamacare repeal plan move hard to the right to earn their support.
But their power to cause chaos has grown this year because of the House GOP’s razor-thin majority. Republican leaders can afford to lose just four of their members on any House vote, allowing the dozen or so lawmakers on the far right of their caucus to disrupt the chamber at any time.
Hardliners forced McCarthy to make deep concessions before allowing him to become speaker after 15 rounds of voting over five days early this year. They were unhappy that McCarthy’s deal with Biden earlier this summer to avoid hitting the debt ceiling didn’t go far enough — then grew furious when he used Democratic votes to overcome their objections. They responded by withholding their support for any GOP bills for more than a week, grinding the House to a halt in a warning to McCarthy.
Roy credited McCarthy for listening more closely to his group as of late after their post-debt ceiling show of force.
“He’s being much more inclusive and open about including us and sitting at the table and talking through everything — I mean, pretty open kimono on this,” he said.
Given the current circumstances, McCarthy is “handling it as well as he can and as well as anybody can,” Heye said.
But Heye warned that the possibility for a government shutdown by the end of the year “is very real” because of the Freedom Caucus, which he called the “nothing will ever be good enough caucus.”
And the group’s latest antics are frustrating mainstream Republicans.
When Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), a McCarthy ally who represents a swing district, was asked whether the Freedom Caucus’ pressure on the speaker was healthy or helpful, he offered a deadpan response.
“I mean, they think it is. Some of us would disagree,” he said. “I’m one of the ones who’d disagree.”