Republican Rebels Reach Temporary Truce with McCarthy but Warn Boycott Could Resume

A handful of Republicans holding out on voting with the House majority came to an agreement with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Monday, effectively ending their floor boycott for the time being.

Four of the 11 holdouts emerged from the speaker’s office with a unified stance that they would all vote in favor of a procedural rule on Tuesday after tanking the same vote last week.

“The floor will be functioning this week,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), a member of the House Freedom Caucus and one of the 11, told reporters.

The group had been frustrated over the debt ceiling hike, an agreement between McCarthy and President Joe Biden that the House passed in an overwhelmingly bipartisan manner last month despite about a third of House Republicans opposing it.

While the debt package included spending caps and some other GOP-backed concessions, the group is seeking to limit spending further, to fiscal year 2022 levels, by way of the upcoming appropriations process.

Another from the group, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is not in the Freedom Caucus but often aligns with it on policy, said he and others from the group conveyed to McCarthy that they are “looking for more downward pressure on spending.”

He said they plan to renegotiate the power-sharing agreement that about 20 members, including most of the 11, established with McCarthy in January in exchange for voting for him for speaker after a historic 15-ballot fight.

In the meantime, the group appears to be satisfied by the fact that a bill led by Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) to block a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) restriction on pistol braces will come to the floor this week.

Clyde, another one of the holdouts, had claimed that leadership had “threatened” him over the debt ceiling bill, telling him that his bill would not come to the floor if he did not vote for a procedural vote to advance the debt bill.

Clyde, too, has now signaled he is satisfied with leadership members, who have scheduled Clyde’s bill for a vote in conjunction with votes on other conference priorities, including a bill to prohibit gas stove bans and the REINS Act.

Gaetz warned the House armistice could merely be temporary, though.

“The agreement to vote for the rules package was to liberate the pistol brace legislation, and you know, there will be more votes next week and more rules, and if there’s not a renegotiated power-sharing agreement, then perhaps we’ll be back here next week,” he said.

Another point of contention for the Republican defectors has been that the debt deal garnered more Democrat votes than Republican ones. However, GOP leadership has celebrated negotiating a deal that roughly two-thirds of the conference ended up voting for given the party has historically been loath to support debt ceiling increases.

The terms of any new agreement the group made with McCarthy would “be renegotiated in a way so that what happened on the settlement vote would never have happened where House conservatives would be left as the less desirable coalition partner than Democrats,” Gaetz said.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), who leads a group of more than 70 Republicans as chairman of the Main Street Caucus, signaled tensions ahead between the majority of the conference and the rebellious group, however.

“This can’t be the new normal. We can’t afford to have this kind of disruption every week,” Johnson said, per Axios.