The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus blasted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hours before lawmakers vote on whether to elect the minority leader as speaker of the House.
McCarthy made a number of concessions to the caucus in a GOP rules package released late on Monday, but Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), the leader of a group of conservatives largely opposed to McCarthy’s speakership, has said his overtures have fallen short.
MCCARTHY’S FIVE BIGGEST RULES CONCESSIONS IN BID TO BECOME SPEAKER
Perry, in a statement released early Tuesday, complained that McCarthy has been “dragging his feet” in negotiations with the conservative holdouts, claiming he wouldn’t offer “firm commitments” on a number of demands.
@GOPLeader: It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. #Speakerofthehouse pic.twitter.com/docTJrwEoJ
— RepScottPerry (@RepScottPerry) January 3, 2023
“Kevin McCarthy had an opportunity to be Speaker of the House. He rejected it,” Perry wrote.
Republicans won a narrow House majority in the midterm elections, meaning McCarthy can only afford to lose a few votes in the Tuesday election for speaker. This has given the Freedom Caucus outsize influence in the GOP conference and is threatening to tank McCarthy’s bid.
His detractors are making a number of difficult-to-swallow demands, including committee assignments for members of the Freedom Caucus before the speaker vote takes place and calls for Republican leadership not to take sides in primaries.
“We’ve worked in good faith for months to change the status quo,” Perry said in the statement. “At nearly every turn, we’ve been sidelined or resisted by McCarthy, and any perceived progress has often been vague or contained loopholes that further amplified concerns as to the sincerity of the promises being made.”
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Among the concessions McCarthy made to his detractors, the most significant is agreeing to lower the threshold of lawmakers needed to force a vote on whether to oust a sitting speaker, known as the “motion to vacate the chair.” McCarthy is willing to reduce that number to five.
He has asked members of the Freedom Caucus to present their list of demands at a closed GOP conference meeting ahead of the vote.
