Here we go again: Kevin McCarthy has yet another mess waiting for him when Congress returns from recess in September. The House Speaker, whose nine months with the gavel have been marked by one bruising battle against his right flank after another, told his conference last week that he would likely seek a stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown in order to buy more time for a longer-term spending bill. But on Monday, the House Freedom Caucus shot back with their response: Hell no.
“We’ve got to hold the line,” Chip Roy, a key member of the far-right caucus, said in a Newsmax interview with Greta Van Susteren Monday evening.
As expected, the Freedom Caucus—which has used the GOP’s razor-thin House majority as leverage against McCarthy, who holds only a tenuous grip on power—said in a statement that it would oppose a short-term funding measure. It’s “designed to push Congress up against a December deadline,” they argued, and “force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget busting, pork filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill” at the end of the year. “We will use every procedural tool necessary to prevent that outcome,” the caucus added, outlining a set of extreme-right demands on immigration, Ukraine, so-called “woke” Pentagon policies, and the supposed “weaponization” of the Justice Department. Which is to say: The right is essentially threatening to shut down the government in five weeks if McCarthy doesn’t do more to protect Donald Trump from his legal perils. “I WILL NOT vote for any continuing resolution that doesn’t smash [Joe Biden’s] DOJ into a million pieces,” as Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson, a Freedom Caucus member, wrote on social media last week. “The DOJ has very rapidly become the enemy of the American people, and if nothing is done soon, our rights will be GONE.”
Twitter content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
It goes without saying that these demands are not just non-starters on a divided Capitol Hill; they are, in their vagueness and extremity, also impossible to meet by design. Roy, a ringleader of the Freedom Caucus, tried Monday to put the onus on Democrats and McCarthy. “There could be a shutdown,” he told Van Susteren, “if Democrats continue to be partisan and continue to not carry out the wishes of the American people, and secondly, if Republicans refuse to do what they always campaign on.”
But, of course, this is just another example of MAGA extremists seeking to hold their speaker—and, by extension, the country—hostage. “House Republicans are determined to shutdown the government and crash our economy,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday. “We will fight these MAGA extremists every step of the way.”
The big question is what McCarthy will do. When Republican obstructionists nearly pushed the country into an unprecedented debt default, he ultimately pulled back from the brink and struck an agreement with Biden and the Democrats. But that rankled his far-right members, who haven’t let him forget that he’s always just a vote away from a motion to vacate, per a concession he made to get the gavel back in January. For the most part, McCarthy has sought placate them in the months since—even going so far as to fan the flames of their Biden impeachment push. Will he disobey them again, potentially putting his job at risk? Or will he appease them—even if it means a government shutdown this fall? Only time will tell.