Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, made his bluntest threat yet against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning that a motion to vacate the House Republican leader is “not off the table.”
“I’m leaving it on the table. I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go file it tomorrow. I’m not saying I’m not going to file it tomorrow,” the Texas conservative said on “The Steve Deace Show” Tuesday.
“I think the speaker needs to know that we’re angry about it. He needs to know that we need to sit down at the table and try to solve this.”
It’s notable criticism from Roy, who was not one of the eight House Republicans who joined Democrats in ousting former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October.
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Roy has been on a war path against Johnson’s agreement to fund the government struck with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., over the weekend.
He called the bill, which follows through with most commitments cobbled together by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Biden during talks to raise the debt ceiling last year, “garbage” and dismissed Johnson’s promise to negotiate conservative policy wins in the eventual spending bills.
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The deal would set a statutory limit of $1.59 trillion for discretionary government funding but would honor a McCarthy-Biden side-deal of an added $69 billion. Johnson announced on Sunday that he secured an extra $16 billion in cuts for this fiscal year to offset some of that.
Johnson told reporters on Tuesday evening, “I am a conservative. This is not what we all want. It’s not the best deal we could get if we were in charge of both chambers and the White House. But it’s the best deal we could broker under the circumstances.”
But he was optimistic about scoring wins down the line.
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“We have the topline agreement. This allows us to fight for our policy priorities, for our policy riders now, and our appropriators are resolute in doing that,” Johnson said. “Our members are excited about getting that done, and we’re going to do our job here.”
Speaking to Fox News Digital earlier this week, Roy was skeptical of what could be achieved.
“I will amend my sentence if we end up getting some massive policy wins attached to the spending, but I do not believe that we can possibly get enough policy wins on the riders to offset the damage of spending that much more money,” Roy told Fox News Digital on Monday.
Fox News Digital reached out to Roy for further comment and to the speaker’s office for a response.
