Welcome to Washington: The Zombie Freedom Caucus

Congressman Jim Jordan and a band of other GOP rebels founded the Freedom Caucus more than a decade ago to fight Speaker Boehner. If there’s one thing proven last week in the fight over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it’s clear that the group is no longer willing to fight the way it used to. Welcome to Washington, where on Wednesday night Speaker Johnson was forced to hold open a vote for more than seven hours — a House record — because Freedom Caucus members were rebelling against the big, beautiful bill. How they handled the battle could give observers a glimpse into how they plan to govern in the coming months. “My colleagues in the Senate failed us,” Congressman Chip Roy said Tuesday after the Senate passed the legislation by using a budget trick to zero out the cost of making the 2017 tax cuts permanent. “They sent us a bill knowingly, using a policy baseline gimmick. … They sent it knowing it was gonna have increased deficits.”When Mr. Roy and other Freedom Caucus members withheld their support from the original House bill back in May, they were hoping for more serious changes made by Republican leadership in order to reduce the deficit implications of the bill. After it became clear the Freedom Caucus did not have the wherewithal to fight, they sent it off to the Senate hoping conservatives there could make it more fiscally responsible.It was a bad bet. The price tag of the bill actually increased, energy credits were protected, and several issues related to firearms taxation, judicial review, and funding cuts for Planned Parenthood were stripped from the legislation. Freedom Caucus members griped, though it ultimately amounted to nothing. With President Trump in the White House prepared to go after any Republican lawmaker who dares cross him, it appears that the group may be ready to bend to his will. It’s a sharp contrast with how they acted in 2017, when the caucus had fewer members at a time when the GOP had a much wider House majority. It would only take four members of the 32-member caucus to band together to kill any party-line bill. At the start of Mr. Trump’s first term, it would have taken 24 Freedom Caucus members to stall any legislation. At the time, it had only 29 members. Despite that math, they still stood up to the president. They killed the first version of the American Healthcare Act — the president’s legislative package aimed at repealing and replacing some of the Affordable Care Act. It isn’t just the last week that confirms the Freedom Caucus members coming to heel. They also voted for the budget framework with nothing more than a handshake and a pinky promise from Senator Thune, and they backed the original House bill despite several problems. Explaining their vote for the final version of the Senate bill on Thursday afternoon, it was clear they walked away with nothing. Congressman Ralph Norman said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday morning that the president had promised to — somehow — not send out money from the Treasury for green energy tax credits. “What’s different is President Trump is going to use his powers to — like on the [green energy] subsidies — to make sure that these subsidies won’t remain in effect from here on out,” Mr. Norman said on Thursday before voting for the bill. It goes without saying that the executive cannot legally decide which tax laws to enforce or not enforce. The only semblance of a victory the Freedom Caucus members walked away with was a photo in the Oval Office with the president. The next battle, conservatives say, is the annual budget fight that will come before the end of September. It is the same fight that cost Speaker McCarthy his job in 2023, after he worked with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution in order to keep the government open. That decision got him fired, though given how the Freedom Caucus has been acting, it seems Speaker Johnson is in no such danger.

Welcome to Washington: The Zombie Freedom Caucus

Welcome to Washington: The Zombie Freedom Caucus

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