House conservatives say they’re willing to give a pass to two of their top lieutenants for supporting this week’s stopgap spending measure.
Over 60 percent of House Republicans voted against a funding bill Wednesday that averted a government shutdown but did nothing to strip funds from Planned Parenthood.
But among the minority of 91 Republicans backing the legislation were Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), two men looking to move up the GOP power ranks in the wake of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) pending resignation.
{mosads}Some conservatives say they were disappointed to see the two help push the bill through. But the House’s right flank also says it’s more concerned about how the GOP conference will operate in the future than any votes during the current upheaval.
In essence, conservatives say they want assurances that McCarthy and Scalise, should they get promotions, won’t put the House in a position to have to take those sorts of votes again.
“I don’t know that people are using votes as a litmus test,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). “For me, it’s been more about process, changing the rules, and making sure that every voice is heard.”
Members of the House Freedom Caucus say they’re focusing mostly on the race to succeed Boehner, a contest in which McCarthy is currently the favorite.
House Republicans of all stripes acknowledge that budget issues — and the process that’s led to a series of stopgap spending bills in lieu of a proper appropriations process — will play a big role in the race for Speaker. But it could loom even larger in Scalise’s race for majority leader against Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), who voted against the continuing resolution on Wednesday.
Several conservative groups are sitting down Tuesday with the Speaker candidates, currently McCarthy and Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), a meeting that Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) called the opportunity to have a “50- or 60-on-one” conversation.
“This is an accountability mechanism,” added Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), who said the meeting was critical not because of what conservatives could learn about the candidates but for the opportunity to pin them down on particular topics.
“To be able to go back and say, ‘Hey, you told us this in front of 70 people,’ that’s pretty powerful,” he said.
McCarthy’s vote on the short-term spending measure will undoubtedly come up at the meeting, according to several conservatives who want to attend.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the Freedom Caucus, said his group will be considering a host of issues, such as the future of the Export-Import Bank. Supporters of the bank are currently pushing a procedural maneuver, called a discharge petition, to force a vote to restore the lender’s expired charter.
“We just want to do the right policy around here,” he said. “There’ll be a host of things we talk about.”
The Wednesday government funding vote is far from the first time that Price and Scalise have come down on different sides on fiscal matters. Scalise actually went around Price earlier this year to try and secure additional defense funding when House Republicans worked to pass Price’s first budget as chairman, pitting defense hawks eager for more funds against fiscal hawks trying to hold firm on spending limits.
Scalise’s efforts clearly resonated with defense hawks like Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), who said he would be openly lobbying his colleagues to support Scalise and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) for leadership positions.
McHenry, currently Scalise’s chief deputy, is seeking to slide into the majority whip slot. Price, meanwhile, has gotten high-profile endorsements from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), one of the most influential members of the GOP conference, and Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas).
“The numbers that we have currently funding the Department of Defense in 2016 are a direct result from Steve Scalise and Patrick McHenry’s hard work and dedication,” Turner said. “I think people know it, they see it, and I think they’re going to vote accordingly.”
House Republicans were eventually able to pass their budget, but it was the sort of messy process that conservatives want to avoid in the future.
Instead, conservatives want to upend the current top-down process in which congressional leaders frequently negotiate major pieces of legislation like spending measures, and give more power back to the committees and rank-and-file lawmakers. That sort of procedural overhaul, conservatives insist, could prevent the sort of last-minute votes that all House members were forced to take on Wednesday.
“All that we could expect is just to have a seat at the table that’s an equal and fair representation of the body,” said Meadows.
Still, other conservatives made it clear that McCarthy and Scalise’s vote this week would weigh on them more heavily, even as they remain focused on more fundamentally changing the power dynamics in the House.
“The current Speaker has said he wants to clean out the barn, I think was his expression,” Garrett said, referring to Boehner’s comments about moving on looming big-ticket items before leaving at the end of the month.
“I think this is part and parcel with what John’s trying to do. And apparently this is part and parcel with what Kevin is trying to do to facilitate it,” Garrett added.
Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), the Tea Party favorite who last year unseated Boehner’s former heir apparent, Eric Cantor, took an even tougher line on McCarthy and Scalise’s vote, even as he also hammered the process that led to it.
“I want to see rules and regular order followed. And I think if that happens, you’d get rid of this kind of ‘Hell, No’ caucus language,” Brat said Thursday. “We’re forced into a position, on principle, of having to vote no on certain rules because they result in outcomes like we got yesterday.”