by Madeleine Hubbard
The conservative House Freedom Caucus slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed top-line spending deal with Senate Democrats as a “total failure,” arguing the potential agreement costs about $68 billion more than the Louisiana Republican said it would.
Johnson told members of Congress on Sunday that he reached a $1.590 trillion spending deal with the Senate and White House, but the Freedom Caucus slammed the proposal later that evening in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“It’s even worse than we thought,” the caucus wrote. “Don’t believe the spin. Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is $1.658 trillion — not $1.59 trillion. This is total failure.”
At the end of last month, the Freedom Caucus released a statement titled, “House GOP’s New Year Resolution Must Be Cutting Spending,” which stated that the U.S. is “on the path to fiscal ruin” but that Congress has “done little to force a course correction from this calamity.”
With a slim Republican majority, the 45-member Freedom Caucus holds a significant amount of sway in the 435-member House, and most recently played an integral role in deciding the House speaker.
Now, the House needs to pass a deal before government funding completely expires on Feb. 2.
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Image “Speaker Mike Johnson” by Speaker Mike Johnson.
