A new member of the House Freedom Caucus is calling for a sit-down with Republican hardliners and Republicans leading talks on government spending.
This comes after some of the same hardliners banded together last week to force a procedural vote on a spending bill involving the Justice Department and Commerce Department.
Rep. Eric Burleson (R-Missouri) said the discord was due to two sharply divided groups of House Republicans, rather than traditional interactions between leadership and insurgents. .
“I think the real battle is not with the conference.” [Speaker] Mike Johnson. This is a conference against a conference,” Burleson, who did not vote to kill the bill but voted against House Republicans’ government funding extension last week, told Fox News Digital on Friday.
Mr. Johnson’s first weeks as speaker were marked by Republican struggles and some victories.
Congressman Eric Burleson is a freshman member of the House Freedom Caucus. (Getty Images)
“There is a huge gulf between the mindset of many appropriators who seem unwilling to make deep cuts and those of us in the Freedom Caucus.”
Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee are tasked with putting together 12 spending bills to fund the federal government next year.
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Republican hardliners like Mr. Burlison have accused the Republicans in charge of spending of trying to exceed the maximum amount set in House Republicans’ Limits, Savings, and Growth Act. Conservatives want the House to stick to those numbers, even though the bill failed when it was introduced to the Senate.
Burlison said conservatives’ “real battle” within House Republicans is not with Speaker Mike Johnson, but with Republicans in charge of spending. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Instead, the Senate is including the spending in the top line of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), the debt limitation agreement between President Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. There is a difference of about $120 billion between the two maximum levels.
“I don’t know if they just don’t recognize the severe economic burden we’re facing, or if they just don’t want to take on the responsibility of being the bad guy and cutting back on their own spending. But something has to change,” Mr. Burlison said of the embezzler.
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“After McCarthy was fired, the appropriators decided on their own to appropriate the level of FRA. Without anyone discussing it in the meeting, the appropriators went into a mob…That’s why many people… It’s the lack of respect for the rest of the conference that has angered many conservatives. ”
Representative Kay Granger (R-Texas) is the chair of the House Appropriations Committee. (Getty Images)
Burlison called for a meeting between Republican appropriators and the Freedom Caucus, but said that request has not yet been met.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the House Appropriations Committee, but there was no immediate response.
Tensions between House members in charge of government funding and the right wing of the Republican Party have been steadily rising amid a fight over federal spending. The tension flared up just last month during the House speaker race, when a sizable number of Republicans on the Appropriations Committee became one of the staunchest opponents of then-Ohio Republican House candidate Jim Jordan.
