Freedom Caucus: The Fight Club of Congress – The Christian Science Monitor

If the federal government shuts down at midnight Saturday, nearly everyone on Capitol Hill is ready to blame the House Freedom Caucus.

Yet hardly anyone here can articulate what, exactly, the right-wing group wants or how it plans to get there.

The group designed to be a thorn in the side of GOP leadership has become too fragmented to agree on specific demands, reducing its influence as a bloc. But key individuals have more leverage than ever.

The group has no website, no official roster, and definitely no cameras in the room where it happens.

You can only join if youre vetted and invited. Its all part of the mystique surrounding the ultraconservative group that often seems like Capitol Hills version of Fight Club. (First rule of Fight Club: You dont talk about Fight Club.)

Founded to rein in spending and decentralize power in the House, it has longbeena thorn in the side of GOP leaders. It has shut down government operations and careers before and has made clear it isnt afraid to do so again.

Today, the blocs members have more clout than ever, even as members are divided over tactics.

But some say it has departed from its founding ideals.

Its like, Guys, you used to have actually a fiscal heart and soul, and now youre just playing political games, says Freedom Caucus co-founder Matt Salmon, who left Congress in 2017.

If the federal government shuts down at midnight Saturday, nearly everyone on Capitol Hill is ready to blame the House Freedom Caucus.

Yet hardly anyone here can articulate what, exactly, the right-wing group wants or how it plans to get there.

There isnt even complete clarity on whos in it.The group has no website, no official roster, and definitely no cameras in the room where it happens.

The group designed to be a thorn in the side of GOP leadership has become too fragmented to agree on specific demands, reducing its influence as a bloc. But key individuals have more leverage than ever.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a key player in the shutdown drama, often appears with the Freedom Caucus. But he says hes technically just an admirer. Georgia firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene was a member, and now isnt, under circumstances that remain unclear.

You can only join if youre vetted and invited, says Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, strolling back from the House last week after casting one of six GOP votes that blocked leadership from bringing the defense appropriations bill to a vote.

Andy Biggs, my hero! says Rep. Lauren Boebertof Colorado,a fellow Freedom Caucus member,sidling up to him at the edge of the crosswalk leading back to House office buildings.

Hey, whats up, he says, before turning back and declining to elaborate further on the caucuss internal workings.

Its all part of the mystique surrounding the ultraconservative group that often seems like Capitol Hills version of Fight Club. (First rule of Fight Club: You dont talk about Fight Club.) Founded to rein in spending and decentralize power in the House, it has beena thorn in the side of GOP speakersfrom John Boehner to Paul Ryan and now Kevin McCarthy. It has shut down government operations and careers before and has made clear it isnt afraid to do so again.

Yet while Freedom Caucus members have more clout than ever, including key seats on committees and subcommittees, this latest standoff has also exposed cracks within the group itself. Members have been publicly divided over tactics, the desirability of a shutdown, and whether to accept a short-term fix.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

GOP Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Matt Gaetz of Florida confer during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 20, 2023.

One reason for the chaos is simple math.Republicans hold only a four-seat majority,which means that just a handful of lawmakers can gum up the works.That gives any holdouts outsize leverage,which disincentivizes banding togetheror compromising. As the government edges closer to the brink of running out of money, Speaker McCarthy isnt negotiating just with the Freedom Caucus, but with a rotating cast of individuals, both inside and outside the group all with seemingly disparate demands.

Didnt we sing kumbaya the other night? jokesRep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a Freedom Caucus member, when asked about the groups internal divisions. Mr. Buck himself has publicly criticized Mr. McCarthys decision to launch animpeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, calling it a transparent attempt by the speaker to distract from the spending fight.

We all held hands, quips Representative Biggs, walking alongside him.

Its a big group. And its a group thats going to disagree, says Mr. Buck, more seriously. People look at that and say, Thats disorganized. I look at that and I say, Im learning a lot.

What, specifically, has he been learning?

Theres a lot of conservatives that will vote for more spending.

The Freedom Caucus was born during a secret January 2015 meeting of nine GOP members of Congress in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

During the Obama years, Republicans had retaken the House with the tea party wave of 2010, but many were frustrated that they hadnt made much progress in exacting fiscal discipline. A 16-day shutdown in late 2013 over the presidents Affordable Care Act failed to extract anychanges to the health care policy, and the GOP saw its approval numbers plunge.

Conservatives felt like they were constantly getting rolled, saysMattSalmon,a veteran representative from Arizona who was recruited to join the Hershey meeting.He and his co-founders saw a need for a new group that could harness the collective clout of right-wing members.Their goal:pressure Republican leaders to restore fiscal sanity and constitutional principles,and allow legislators to actually legislate instead of making big spending decisions behind closed doors.

Many today insist the groups mission remains unchanged.Freedom Caucus leaders say they are trying to draw a line in the sand, to get a bankrupt and broken Washington back on track before its too late.

Our members are united on one thing, and that is to make sure that we cut spending in this government and that we fund things that the government should be doing no more and no less, says Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida.

Mr. Salmon, however, is dismayed over the groups current state. He says the caucus abandoned its core principles to become a cheering squad for President Donald Trump, staying mum as the Trump administrationran up big deficits.(What members say in their defense: They werent in Congress yet, or the economy was much better then.)That, he says, created a credibility deficit that has undermined its power.

Where were you during those four years when we were spending like drunken sailors on shore leave? asks Mr. Salmon, who left Congress just before Mr. Trump took office in January 2017.Its like, Guys, you used to have actually a fiscal heart and soul, and now youre just playing political games.

Others on the right are less critical but agree the caucus is struggling to exert the influence it once had.

A more unified Freedom Caucus would actually be helpful in the current situation, argues Rep. Thomas Massie,a Kentucky libertarian who is not in the group but is a fiscal conservative. If they were functioning as they were founded, where they consolidate ideas and plans among the most conservative portion of the party, they could win some meaningful concessions, he says.

The problem we have right now is that the Freedom Caucus is not leading the dissent, Mr. Massie adds. A lot of times when you find five or 10 dissenters, theres no common objection.So its hard to get past that impasse.

Anybody seen a bald guy with a goatee? asks someone in the bowels of the Capitol where journalists are milling around to get the latest scuttlebutt after a GOP meeting breaks up.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Texas Rep. Chip Roy and members of the House Freedom Caucus hold a news event outside the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 12, 2023, calling for Congress to rein in "out of control" spending.

Its a tongue-in-cheek reference to Rep. Chip Roy, an ideological heavyweight within the Freedom Caucus and one of the most prominent members pushing Speaker McCarthy to hold the line on government spending.

Mr. Roy knows all about government shutdowns, and the political risks they carry: He was serving as chief of staff for GOP Sen. Ted Cruz when the senator championed the 2013 shutdown over the Affordable Care Act.He doesnt want another one now, and hes chastised some of his more hard-line colleagues for flirting with danger.

But hes also insistent that Congress needs to rein in out of control spending.

The federal government will spend $2 trillion more than it takes in this year, Representative Roy said at a Freedom Caucus press conference earlier this month, noting that the government had already added $1.5 trillion in debt since the so-called debt deal in June. Were now spending more on interest on the debt than we are on defending the United States of America.

Thank God for the Freedom Caucus, chimed in Florida Sen. Rick Scott at the same presser. Weve gotta stop this insanity.

Still unclear is how they plan to do that.

With Democrats currently in control of the Senate, and President Biden in the White House, nothing can pass without bipartisan support, which means, in the end, that some form of compromise will be required. The question for conservatives is how much pain they want to try to inflict in advance of that eventual compromise and whether those efforts will actually help or hurt their cause.

Many are still irate over the debt ceiling deal Mr. McCarthy brokered with the president back in June. Others concede that the speakers hands were essentially tied.Some critics question whether the current holdouts can be placated by any concessions, or simply want to fight for the sake of fighting.

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who withheld his vote for Mr. McCarthy to become speaker until the 11th of 15rounds, sayshes fine with being one of only a handful of GOP membersstanding apart from the rest of the Freedom Caucus if thats what it takes to achieve economic security.

Were going to fight for the country, says Representative Norman. I dont care whether weve got four [members], or weve got more.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina looks over notes as the House Rules Committee meets to prepare an appropriations bill for a floor vote, at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 29, 2023. He says he doesn't mind being one of the few Republican holdouts.

Hanging over the negotiations is the threat that at any moment, a single disgruntled member could bring a motion to vacate the speakers chair in other words, a vote on whether to kick Mr. McCarthy out of his job.

In a Sept. 12 phone call with reporters, Mr. Gaetz accused Mr. McCarthy of backtracking on promises he made to conservatives when trying to win the speakership and threatened to bring such a motion every single day for as long as it takes.

Democrats have been watching this drama unfold with a mixture of frustration, schadenfreude, and even a touch of sympathy.

Weve all had friends in relationships where we say to them, Theyre not good for you, and theyre not that into you, says Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington. And this feels like that dynamic.

The majority party has always had to deal with disgruntled factions, notes former House historian Ray Smock. But its unusual for a handful of people to wield such outsize power.Previous Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to largelymaintain discipline in the last Congress with an 11-seat Democratic majority.

The fact that the leadership on the Republican side has not found a way to deal with their own hotheads, as Im prone to call them, is kind of a mystery, says Mr. Smock. At some point they will have to be called to account.

Over the pastweek, Mr. McCarthy began bending to someof the renegades demands. Mr. Gaetz and others have been insisting on 12 separate spending bills rather than one big omnibus, which has become the default for Congress and makes it difficult to influence funding levels in specific areas.

Earlier in the summer, however, some of those same members stalled that 12-bill process by bringing the House floor to a complete standstill inretaliation for Speaker McCarthys compromise on the debt ceiling. Conservatives said Mr. McCarthy had reneged on promises he made in January to win their backing for the speakership.

What we ended up doing was sort of re-litigating January ... in July, says Representative Massie. It was sort of like, OK, Kevin, you didnt hold your end of the bargain, so were going to stop you from doing anything.

The speaker heldvotes Thursday on four of those 12 bills, and got three of them passed in addition to one that passed this summer. But he got little in return.On Friday, 21 Republicans torpedoed a GOP stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR that would have kept the government running in the short term.

The measure, which Representatives Roy and Donalds, along with Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry, hashed out with other Republicans, provides for lower overall spending levels and provisions toimprove border security. But more than 10 of their own Freedom Caucus colleagues, including Mr. Biggs, Mr. Buck, and Ms. Boebert, helped kill it.

Rep. Garrett Graves, who was the chief negotiator between the caucus and Mr. McCarthy during the debt ceiling standoff, said last week that walking away from the CR was a big mistake. The measure wouldnt have passed the Senate as written, but it would have given Mr. McCarthy some leverage in his negotiations with Democrats. Now, they may be heading for a politically damaging shutdown that eventually forces Republicans to cave entirely.

I think the closer we get to shutdown, the more and more leverage you lose, he said.

When asked whether the stalemate reflects a breakdown in ideological cohesion, personalities, or just general dysfunction, he gave a tired smile.

Ive got a whole lot of reasons as to why thats happening, he said. Tapping his head, he added, But Im just going to keep them right there for right now.

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Freedom Caucus: The Fight Club of Congress - The Christian Science Monitor