Conservatives Call for McCarthy to Play Hardball With McConnell on Spending Bill

House conservatives are calling for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to take a harder line with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), arguing that the California Republican should threaten to withhold bringing Senate-led bipartisan bills to the floor next year unless McConnell demands his conference tank the bipartisan omnibus bill.

The spending fight is so crucial to House conservatives they are demanding McCarthy “declare war” on McConnell-backed bills if Senate Republicans sign off on a major funding bill pushed by Democrats in the final weeks of their House majority.

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Conservative lawmakers in the House have repeatedly called for a stop-gap bill that funds the government into next year, a move proponents argue would provide Republicans more leverage in negotiations to cut spending in certain areas and provide more funding for issues such as border security since they will hold the majority in the lower chamber. McConnell has said there’s “widespread agreement” between leaders in both chambers that an omnibus is needed before the end of the month.

While McCarthy has made television appearances and held a press conference voicing opposition to a full-year funding measure coming to the floor before the end of the year, some GOP hardliners have argued that he has not made a large enough effort to stop the measure from passing, with one alleging he’s taking a “hope yes, vote no, publicly” approach to the bill. McCarthy’s remarks stating he is a “hell no” on the bill come as he faces an uphill battle in gaining the support of a group of conservatives in his quest to become the next speaker of the House.

“There’s reports, even from Republicans who are supporting Kevin in the House for speakership who are saying privately that they know he is for the omnibus deal privately, but talking against it publicly because of his … desire to become speaker,” Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) told the Washington Examiner.

Good believes that McCarthy doesn’t want to deal with conservatives in January on a spending fight so he’s “at least privately complicit with Mitch McConnell’s efforts to make a terrible deal with the Democrats to fund the government well into next year through September.”

Good said McCarthy should demand “all Republicans in the House vote against anything beyond a clean CR (continuing resolution) funding the government just through the end of the year into early January, and challenging the Senate to do the same and telling Mitch McConnell that he’ll provide no bipartisan coverage in the House with any votes from House Republicans and … that if McConnell makes this deal with Democrats, that we will essentially declare war on any bill coming from the Senate.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) echoed Good’s sentiments that McCarthy should play hardball with the Kentucky Republican.

“I would be looking at McConnell in the eye and saying if you’re going to jam this thing through and completely steamroll the newly-elected House Republican Conference, we are going to absolutely make your life a living hell next year,” Roy said. “Be like: ‘Every bill you want, everything you want, Mitch, is dead on frigging arrival,’” he said.

Roy said it’s up to McCarthy to put pressure on McConnell to demand a short-term extension into the next Congress — or else Republicans will face political consequences for the border crisis and beyond.

“And I would make the Republican Conference rally to that and say look, you cannot be steamrolled by 12 or 15 Republican senators who suck and don’t give a s*** about Texas at all, don’t give a crap about us dealing with wide open borders, and don’t give a crap about the immigrants who are dying in tractor-trailers and getting sold in the sex trafficking trade,” Roy said. “They then want to go around claiming it’s the Biden border crisis … it’s going to be the frickin’ McConnell/Republican border crisis — they’re funding it. It’s garbage.”

One conservative House lawmaker told the Washington Examiner that they have spoken with centrists within the conference who are “in agreement that it is not unreasonable” to push for a short-term continuing resolution that lasts into the start of next year.

And House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) argued that passing the omnibus would be surrendering power that voters wanted Republicans to have.

“Democrats are attempting to use the Christmas deadline to handcuff the incoming House majority to a radical liberal agenda for another year,” he told the Washington Examiner.

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“Failing to stop this omnibus is a surrender of the GOP agenda and, more importantly, any chance at stopping so many of the Biden-created crises,” Perry said. “Sen. McConnell must demand a short-term extension into the next Congress.”

Congress recently passed a stop-gap funding measure that lasts through Dec. 23 to provide negotiators additional time to strike a deal on a larger bill. Leadership in both chambers has voiced plans to pass the larger bill ahead of the Christmas holiday.