Frustrations are bubbling up among House Republicans after the conference — by the skin of its teeth — overcame internal disputes to adopt a framework for President Trump’s legislative agenda, a troubling sign for the group as it heads into the next, more difficult, step in achieving the president’s domestic policy priorities.
The rocky week leading up to the budget resolution’s adoption — with fiscal hawks withholding support as they pushed for commitments on spending cuts, forcing leaders to postpone a scheduled vote on the budget blueprint until the hard-liners acquiesced — left a bad taste in the mouth of Republicans in the other parts of the conference who worry that the high target for cuts could lead to slashes to Medicaid.
One moderate House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said members are “annoyed with the attention this small group gets.”
“These guys get all the attention, meanwhile the people who actually have vulnerable situations in terms of races, you know, we take tough votes,” the lawmaker added.
Beyond the gripes about tactics, the clearly mismatched expectations about the level of cuts in the final package are setting the stage for more clashes. The Freedom Caucus says it got commitments from leadership for $1.5 trillion in cuts, but moderates are banking on those assurances being non-binding, fearing that the target could lead to intolerable slashes to Medicaid or other social safety net programs.
Leaders will have to bridge that gap in the next step of the process, hashing out the exact details for Trump’s tax cut, energy policy, and border funding priorities over the coming weeks.
They’ll also have to decide how to handle the hard-liners if they deploy more strong-arm tactics.
A second House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive deliberations, expressed frustration with how leadership handled the situation this time around.
“Members like me expect these tactics from [the House Freedom Caucus]. The anxiety, however, comes from leadership capitulating to it,” the GOP lawmaker said. “It’s appeasement — not peace through strength!”
That dissatisfaction rose to the surface this week when Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) briefly voted “no” on the budget resolution before switching to “yes” — a move that he described as a symbolic “shot over the bow” at the House Freedom Caucus. He vowed to “personally sabotage every single thing the Freedom Caucus does until they get their mind right.”
“When they're doing the reindeer games, they're disenfranchising my voters, and I will not tolerate that any longer,” Van Orden said. “I don't care if I get reelected if we can't be effective.”
Asked if any of his frustration is directed at Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for heeding their demands, Van Orden said: “That’s none of your business.”
In another sign of the tension, moderate Republicans huddled with Johnson during the final vote on the budget resolution Thursday to talk though concerns about what was being promised to the Freedom Caucus. After some of those centrists withheld their vote, they green-lit the budget blueprint with the understanding that the level of cuts — and what they apply to — would be still negotiable.
“The important thing is that the Speaker said we're going to try our best to get to $1.5 trillion in savings, but he didn't put anything in this resolution that would bind us to do that,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), one of the members in ...
