SCOOP: Freedom Caucus and House GOP leadership team up amidst unprecedented Democratic obstruction
Inside the unexpected team up...
The Freedom Caucus continued its collaboration with House GOP leadership during a rare press conference where Republican leaders and rank-and-file members turned all their ire to the Democratic Party as the Schumer Shutdown continues to drag on.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.), and Whip Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) teamed up with Rep. Andy Harris (R., Md.), the Chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas), the caucus’s policy chair, to emphasize that House Republicans did their job and now is the time for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to do his.
“The reason that the government remains shut down is becoming crystal clear to Americans,” Harris said. “It’s because Senate Democrats have chosen to pander to their radical base instead of doing their job for the American people.”
Harris’s remarks alongside Johnson represent a potential turning point for the caucus he chairs; days before, the Freedom Caucus hosted its first-ever conference call alongside a GOP Speaker of the House. Now, the groups appeared side-by-side in person.
“Senate Democrats,” Harris continued, “have had the opportunity to vote 10 times for the House-passed bill that pays our troops, pays our law enforcement, and pays our air traffic controllers now, and would immediately reopen the government. Instead, they’ve sided with the same radical activists who filled the streets this weekend chanting ‘No Kings’ at rallies backed by the Communist Party USA and socialists….the same people who claim to hate power while demanding more control over your life.”
“The question before us now is simple,” Harris explained. “Will at least five Senate Democrats relent and break from their party’s far-left fringe, and vote to reopen the government today?”
As both parties dig in as the Schumer Shutdown heads towards its second month, Harris took a rare step of thanking the GOP Speaker for “his leadership in standing firm against the radical left’s unreasonable demands and for standing with the American people.”
The complete GOP unity on display throughout the shutdown can be explained at least in part by just how radical a position the Democrats have dug themselves into.
“They’re demanding taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants,” Harris, himself a doctor, said. “They want to eliminate work requirements for welfare for able-bodied adults who could work, but choose not to, and they’re defending hundreds of billions of dollars in continued corporate welfare for big profitable insurance companies that have already made a fortune off Obamacare with the Biden bonuses that the Democrats scheduled to expire at the end of the year.”
Roy, himself a frequent thorn in his own party’s side, nevertheless focused on the far-left No Kings rally, which many of his colleagues attended over the weekend.
“The truth is the marxist, radicals, and Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth,” Roy — who is now running for Texas Attorney General — said. “The truth is that there is a king and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it, and Charlie Kirk was willing to say it and he got killed for it.”