Some rank-and-file Republicans balked at a package of proposed changes to House rules that would enshrine concessions the speaker made to win support from ultraconservative members.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, after winning the speakership early Saturday.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Speaker Kevin McCarthy raced on Monday to line up votes to pass a set of operating rules for the Republican-controlled House, toiling to tamp down defections from rank-and-file members who said he had given too many concessions to the hard right in the desperate and drawn-out process of securing his job.
Mr. McCarthy clinched the speaker’s gavel early Saturday after a historic 15 rounds of voting that stretched across five days, and after giving in to a sweeping series of demands from the ultraconservative rebels who opposed him that included allowing any single lawmaker to call a snap vote to oust him. The struggle underscored how difficult it would be for him to corral his narrow majority; on Monday, he was already confronting the first challenge.
The measure scheduled for a vote on Monday evening includes the so-called Holman rule, which allows lawmakers to use spending bills to defund specific programs and fire federal officials or reduce their pay; opening up spending bills to unlimited amendments; and paving the way for the creation of a new select subcommittee under the Judiciary Committee focused on the “weaponization” of the federal government.
Taken together, the concessions would increase transparency around how legislation is put together. But they could also make it difficult for the House to carry out even its most basic duties in the next two years, such as funding the government, including the military, or avoiding a catastrophic federal debt default.
Mr. McCarthy’s team was working on Monday afternoon to address concerns from more moderate Republicans, who said they could not accept the terms that the speaker had negotiated, many of which were becoming fully known only in the hours before the scheduled vote. It underscored the precarious balance that Mr. McCarthy must strike to appease the far right while maintaining the backing of a much larger group of more mainstream conservatives to pass any legislation on the House floor.
The concessions enumerated in the legislation Republican leadership hopes to pass on Monday include measures that conservatives have sought for years in an effort to increase transparency, such as requiring that lawmakers receive the text of bills 72 hours before a vote. It would end proxy voting, a procedure instituted by Democrats during the coronavirus pandemic.
It would also include the stipulation that legislation must address a “single subject,” in an attempt to discourage the introduction of sprawling legislation that mashes together numerous pieces of unrelated bills.