Kevin McCarthy Expresses Frustration with Freedom Caucus Over Funding Fight, Possible Government Shutdown

After meeting with Republican lawmakers behind closed doors on Thursday morning, House speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed his frustration with House Freedom Caucus members regarding their reluctance to back a critical defense spending bill.

The Freedom Caucus members say they are using the bill as leverage to force President Joe Biden to negotiate with them over border security, weaponization of the federal government, and abortion policy. They have also floated the idea of trying to oust McCarthy from his post.

The federal government will shut down if the spending bill isn’t approved by the end of the month.

“Nobody wins in a government shutdown. Nobody wins. I’ve been here,” McCarthy, (R., Calif.) told reporters on Thursday, according to Fox News. “But what we want to do is we want to be able to win the policies that we’ve been fighting for and telling the American public we want to make sure our border becomes secure. We want to stop the runaway spending.”

The House must come to a consensus on the funding bill before it moves to the Senate and Biden’s desk, all of which must happen by September 30. If not, the federal government will run out of money, prompting a shutdown.

The private meeting was intended for House Republicans to discuss their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which they did, but McCarthy started the discussion with a defensive rant about his position.

“If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the [expletive] motion,” McCarthy said at the beginning of the meeting, according to three Republicans in the room, Politico reported.

The House speaker’s comments came one day after Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) called him out on the House floor, demanding a motion to remove him from the speakership for failing to comply with the deal that secured him the position in January.

“It’s put up or shut up time not just for McCarthy but for the 20 [Republican representatives],” Gaetz said on Wednesday, referring to an agreement he helped broker in January to make McCarthy the Speaker of the House on his 15th attempt. “Because if we aren’t serious about bringing him into compliance with the deal, then we were never really serious about the deal in the first place.”

The deal involved McCarthy making concessions to a rules package that would govern the 118th Congress.

Despite the Freedom Caucus making their demands on the spending bill clear for months, McCarthy claims he is “not quite sure what they want.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand how members, they have no complaint about the [Department of Defense] bill. But they don’t want to pass it,” he said ahead of Thursday’s closed-door meeting, according to Punchbowl News. He said he was referring to a “small group of members.”

Last month, the Freedom Caucus announced its list of conditions for the bill, which included the House-passed Secure the Border Act of 2023, measures against weaponization of the DOJ and FBI, and an end to the Pentagon’s paid-abortion-leave policy.

With these demands, Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas), a member of the caucus, said Thursday “we are trying to force Kevin and the leadership of the Republican conference to understand that now’s the time to force Biden to come to the table.”