Republican senators are expressing shock and disbelief that conservative allies of former President Trump in the House threatened to strip colleagues who voted for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill of their committee assignments.
The incredulous reactions of Republican senators to a motion filed in the House to boot Rep. John Katko (N.Y.) from his position as the top-ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee because of his vote for the infrastructure bill reveal the chasm that is opening up between the Senate and House GOP conferences.
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has created something of a bulwark against Trump’s complete takeover of the Republican Party, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has made public shows of loyalty to the former president and done little to rein in the most rambunctious and provocative pro-Trump conservatives in his conference.
The starkly different attitudes among Senate and House Republicans were laid bare this week when Trump’s allies in the lower chamber made a push to punish the 13 GOP colleagues who voted for infrastructure legislation by threatening their committee assignments.
The calls for retaliation are coming from a small number of conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and are unlikely to result in lawmakers actually being kicked off committees, but the fact that there’s even a serious discussion of it is causing heartburn.
Senate Republicans warn that taking such a drastic step against fellow Republicans over a good-faith policy disagreement would be foolish and dangerous to the long-term health of the party.
“That’s absolutely nuts,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said of talk in the House of stripping Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill of their committee seats.
“The infrastructure bill was bipartisan. It was voted for by Mitch McConnell,” he said, arguing that it will now be tougher for Democratic leaders to persuade centrists such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to vote for a bigger climate and social spending bill because funding for popular hard infrastructure priorities moved separately.
“Republicans were smart to support it,” insisted Romney, who was one of 19 Senate Republicans who voted for the infrastructure legislation.
Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the threatened retaliation against House Republicans “draconian.”
Shelby, who has served in Congress since 1979, opposed the infrastructure bill, joining most of his GOP colleagues in voting against the legislation in August.
But he said he’d never heard talk about stripping a lawmaker of a committee assignment because of how he or she cast a vote on a particular piece of legislation.
Another Senate Republican who voted for the infrastructure bill called talk of meting out punishment against House colleagues who voted for the bill “ridiculous.”
“That’s utterly, utterly ridiculous, and McCarthy ought to squelch that,” the lawmaker said. “They don’t have caucus discipline.”
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Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who also voted against the infrastructure bill, warned that retaliating against fellow Republicans who vote for things they believe are in the best interests of their constituents is a dumb move.
“That’s just not a smart thing to do,” he said. “Retaliatory actions like that, I think, are counterproductive in the long run.
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“That’s absolutely nuts,” Sen. Mitt Romney said of talk in the House of stripping Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill of their committee seats.https://t.co/zdVrIhNkjy
— The Hill (@thehill) November 19, 2021
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