As far as the far-right House Freedom Caucus was concerned, voters might’ve elected a Democratic president, a Democratic majority in the Senate, and a narrow Republican majority in the House, but it was the members of the right-wing faction in the lower chamber who were really in charge.
Last month, for example, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy managed to pass a debt ceiling hostage note, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz boasted, “The leadership just picked up the House Freedom Caucus plan and helped us convert it into the legislative text.”
A week later, Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, another Freedom Caucus member, told Politico that McCarthy had privately assured the group that he would “personally oppose and fight against any debt ceiling agreement that doesn’t include all of the red-meat provisions in the House bill.”
Feeling emboldened, the Freedom Caucus started barking out demands about how the budget talks with Democrats should proceed, and new far-right ideas the faction expected GOP leaders to add to their existing ransom note.
But as the negotiations approach an apparent finish line, the House Republicans’ most radical faction is learning that it isn’t likely to get everything its members demanded — and for the Freedom Caucus, that’s not going to work. The conservative Washington Times reported:
Ultra-conservative lawmakers are up in arms over alleged details of a compromise that leaked out of the negotiations. Rep. Tim Burchett shared with fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus a document purporting to detail a list of spending compromises agreed to by negotiators. … [Freedom Caucus members] want everything from the debt limit bill passed by the House last month plus several new concessions from the White House.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said in a radio interview yesterday, “I am going to have to go have some blunt conversations with my colleagues and the leadership team. I don’t like the direction they are headed.”
Some of…
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