Almost a year ago, Rep. Chip Roy went to the House floor and challenged his peers to name a single accomplishment the Republican conference had managed during the 118th Congress.
“I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One,” the Texas Republican said. “Explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done.”
With the election a few short weeks away — and lawmakers getting ready to head out of town — his assessment isn’t as harsh as it once was. But it’s clear he still thinks something about the GOP’s strategy needs to change.
“The goal is to use the power that you’ve got to actually move the ball down the field and score, and do what you said you would do,” Roy told NOTUS on Tuesday. “There’s a lot that we’ve left on the field that I think we could have accomplished had we been more aggressive.”
Roy’s view — that Republicans could have done a lot more if they’d been willing to hold the line, like demanding border security measures in exchange for further aid to Ukraine — represents the strategic divide that has torn the party apart throughout this Congress. Some conservatives remain furious that leadership didn’t do more to fight what would likely be a futile battle with Democrats.
“On every significant piece of legislation, we have surrendered to the White House and to the Democrat-controlled Senate,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia told NOTUS on Tuesday. Republicans, he said, “don’t have anything to show for having controlled the House for two years.”
For many of his colleagues, however, simply keeping the government funded, passing GOP messaging bills and exercising some oversight through committees are achievements for the party in a divided government. They never expected to fundamentally reshape the nation’s capital while controlling just one chamber, and with a razor-thin majority at that.
“Chip knows that we can pass all the bills in the world. If the Senate doesn’t work with us, then they’re not going to become law,” said Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who defended the party’s record this session. “We checked the boxes that we told the American people we were going to check.”
“We passed the border security bill, we passed an energy reform bill,” he told NOTUS, referring to messaging bills that died quickly after making it through the House. “We passed just about every piece of our legislation,” he said before narrowing that statement — “every major piece of our legislative agenda.” But, “unfortunately, the Senate Democrats didn’t take it up.”
Roy said he is likewise proud of passing the GOP’s hard-line immigration bill, even though it didn’t ultimately become law. And he told NOTUS he’s glad that government spending has largely stayed flat, even if he couldn’t enact the sweeping cuts he wants.
“We have shifted the conversation enormously by virtue of the fights that we picked,” he said. But he wants to see a different style of leadership after the election.
“We need to go get elected and finish the job next Congress and actually deliver on what we said we would do,” Roy said.
Some of Roy’s allies wish GOP leaders had threatened a government shutdown earlier this year. Of course, a shutdown would cause political blowback for more moderate Republicans, especially those in swing districts. House Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly pushed back on the idea, including as recently as this week, saying it would hurt the party’s reelection chances.
Instead, the House is gearing up to pass a short-term government funding package, likely with overwhelming support from Democrats, and punt the question until December. At that point, Republicans will almost certainly find themselves staring down yet another massive omnibus spending bill as Christmas approaches, negotiated behind closed doors by congressional leaders. And they don’t have high hopes that Republicans will obtain any meaningful policy wins from Democrats.
“I don’t think there’s been a lot of accomplishments,” Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said. “We’re still spending money that we don’t have at a clip that is hard to even fathom.”
“We weren’t able to shore up the southern border,” he added, “because that would have led to a government shutdown, possibly, which we weren’t prepared to do for the American people.”
“The vast majority of the time, it’s us in the House that just blink first in this game of chicken,” he said. “It’s unfortunate.”
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, meanwhile, blamed conservatives for losing those stare-downs before they’ve even started. He said some of his colleagues are so inflexible that the House GOP conference hasn’t really been able to make strong opening bids in negotiations with Democrats.
“You’ve got purists that won’t vote for anything unless it’s perfect, and you’ve got the other end that won’t fight to accomplish anything,” he summarized.
“It’s unfortunate that we haven’t found a way to work together to force more votes in the Senate,” he said. He pointed to this month’s failed attempts to pass a stopgap funding bill with a GOP voting registration bill attached.
“It was a pretty limited objective, just pass the SAVE Act,” he said. “The Senate may have stripped it out if we sent a CR over until March with the SAVE Act, but maybe we would have landed with a CR all the way til March.”
But, he complained, “we couldn’t even get the thing delivered to the Senate.”
Davidson, like Roy, doesn’t want to dwell on strategic missteps or missed opportunities at this point. He’s focused on the election.
“After the election, we’ll come back with a clear message from the voters,” Davidson said.
At least, he hopes it will be a clearer message than an almost evenly split House.
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.