McCarthy and hardliners reach tentative agreement to resume House floor business

CNN
—
Hardline conservatives have agreed to end their blockade of the House floor while they continue discussions with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy about future spending decisions and a new “power-sharing agreement,” according to multiple members leaving the speaker’s office.

Conservatives who had voted against a procedural vote in retaliation for how GOP leadership handled the debt ceiling deal now say they are willing to support the procedural vote, after they received new commitments from McCarthy about how the California Republican plans to operate going forward, though they said the exact details are still being worked out and did not say whether they would ever be made public or put into a written statement.

Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, said of the nearly hourlong meeting in McCarthy’s office: “We aired our issues. We want to see this move forward as a body.” Norman said one of the things McCarthy agreed to was to involve conservatives more directly in future decision making.

A group of hardline conservatives have held up legislative action in the GOP-led House for nearly a week in protest of the deal McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden to raise the nation’s borrowing limit last month. Conservatives wanted the debt ceiling deal to cut more federal spending than it did, and several far-right members of McCarthy’s conference accused him of reneging on commitments he made to them in private in order to win the speakership in January.