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(Trends Wide) — Republican Rep. Chip Roy on Monday accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of striking a deal that could complicate negotiators’ efforts to pass a bill to raise the US debt ceiling this week.
But McCarthy’s allies quickly rebutted the Texas Republican, underscoring the tension ahead of a key House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday, and putting new pressure on a conservative, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who it has not yet taken a position on the plan.
Roy maintained that McCarthy reached a handshake agreement in January that all nine Republicans on the powerful panel must agree to advance any legislation; otherwise, the bills could not be considered by the full House for majority approval. Basically, that would doom the debt ceiling bill, since Roy, who is on the panel, and another conservative member of the commission are trying to stop the bill from moving forward.
“A reminder that during the President’s coalition-building negotiations, he was explicit that nothing would pass the Rules Committee without at least 7 Republican votes, and that the committee would not allow rules to be reported without unanimous Republican votes,” Roy tweeted.
Senior Republican sources acknowledged that there was an agreement for seven Republican members of the committee to agree to move forward to bring a bill to the floor, but they strongly dispute that there was an agreement for all nine to sign on to advance legislation.
“I haven’t heard that before. If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. “And frankly, I doubt them.”
The dispute is important because Roy is on the committee, which is split between nine Republicans and four Democrats, as is Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both men have become leading enemies of the bipartisan debt limit bill to avoid a default on June 5, arguing that it does little to rein in government spending.
A third conservative sitting on the panel, Massie, hasn’t said anything about how he plans to handle the committee vote on the rule. McCarthy agreed to name the three men to the panel as part of promises he made during his hard-fought victory as Speaker of the House, all to give conservatives more power on committees, including on the Rules committee, which usually stacks up. with the closest allies of the president of the Chamber.
If Massie joined Roy and Norman in voting against the rule at this Tuesday’s meeting, she could effectively stop the measure in committee.
But in January, Massie told Trends Wide he was reluctant to vote against the rules to stop the bills in their tracks.
“I would be reluctant to try to use the rules committee to achieve a legislative result, particularly if it doesn’t represent a large majority of our caucus,” Massie said at the time. “Therefore, I never intend to use my position there to take anyone hostage, or to take legislation hostage.”
Democrats on the committee can also vote on the rule, sources told Trends Wide, and that would ensure it has the votes to advance to the floor. But if Massie were to oppose the rule, only six Republicans would support it, complicating McCarthy’s efforts to bring the plan to the floor, since he previously agreed to accept bills with the backing of only seven Republicans on the committee.
Massie’s office declined to comment on how he might vote Tuesday, and neither Roy nor the House speaker’s office responded to requests for comment on the Texan’s claim.
But Republicans close to McCarthy rejected the notion that the bills could only go forward with the unanimous support of the GOP in committee.
“I’m a rules guy,” Johnson said. “And when I checked, there wasn’t a rule that something has to come out of the Rules Commission unanimously. Now Chip is also a rules guy. So I think you’re going to understand that, that this is a majority institution, and that ultimately we’re going to serve the American people the best way most of us know how: pass this bill.”
Other McCarthy allies agreed.
“I don’t know what Chairman McCarthy agreed to, but that hasn’t been something any of us are familiar with,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma. “I think that comment was that it had to be unanimous to leave the Rules Committee to go to the floor is the tweet I read. And I think that’s inaccurate, at best, but I don’t know because I wasn’t in the room. I don’t know how you would get something like that to work functionally.”
— Trends Wide’s Lauren Fox, Morgan Rimmer and Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.
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