House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy conferred in the center aisle of House chamber late Friday morning.

Lawmakers buzzed around them as the House prepared to vote on a controversial farm bill and food assistance measure. Ryan, R-Wis., and McCarthy, R-Calif., cupped their hands over their mouths like a pitcher and a catcher discussing the signs during a visit to the mound after a cross-up.

House GOP leaders and members certainly got their signals crossed Friday on the farm bill. It was unclear for days whether Republicans could unilaterally pass the measure without help from the other side. All Democrats and some Republicans balked at the bill due to a provision to bolster work requirements for able-bodied persons to receive food aid.

“What they’re doing here is just mean,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. “We already have work requirements.”

Peterson said the GOP plan would produce “a lot of red tape and hassle” for those down on their luck to qualify for food assistance. And he suggested Republicans were trying to make the process so onerous that those in need “will quit and give up.”

The work requirement provision proved pivotal. No Democrats would support the bill. But the Republican leadership was confident that the work mandate alone would secure the votes of skeptical Republicans.

That is, until there was insurrection by the conservative House Freedom Caucus over immigration. A band of moderate Republicans is inching closer to executing a parliamentary gambit to go over the heads of the GOP leadership to force debate on a series of immigration and DACA measures. The Freedom Caucus then elected to push for an immediate debate on a conservative immigration plan before addressing the farm bill.

Should disparate issues like immigration and border security mesh with food policy?

“We coupled them,” said Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.

Meadows argued that the immigration debate “was coming” thanks to the push by the moderates and his group. And he said Republican leaders would be wise to address immigration right away -- especially in connection with the farm bill, perhaps the only “must-pass” measure hitting the floor between now and September.

Ryan was suddenly hearing it in stereo as an alloy of moderate and conservative Republicans threatened to incinerate the farm bill on the floor unless the GOP leadership responded on immigration.

He dismissed the fusion of immigration and farm policy when asked about it by Fox News at his weekly press conference.

“They are unrelated and I wouldn’t describe that as accurate. They’re trying to tie one to the other,” Ryan said.

Like it or not, that is the new political reality on immigration among House Republicans. That’s why the leadership offered the Freedom Caucus a chance to consider the conservative immigration plan in late June in exchange for support of the farm bill.

There was still no deal.

“There are not enough votes to pass the farm bill,” Meadows told Fox colleague Anne Ball.

And so what would Ryan be willing to do to coax just enough Republicans to support the farm bill?

“I’m not going to negotiate in the media,” he replied. “We’re having good productive conversations with our members to advance our agenda on all fronts.”

But apparently, not productive enough.

There was chatter Thursday that Republican leaders could yank the farm bill off the schedule if they lacked the votes for passage. But it became clear that the GOP would forge ahead, rolling the dice.

“Steady as she goes,” observed a senior Republican leadership source to colleague Mike Emanuel.

“It’s going to be tight,” predicted one knowledgeable GOP source about the fate of the vote.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., is often emphatic in his predictions prior to big roll call votes. He sometimes declares “we have the votes” or replies “yes” when asked if a measure will pass. But Scalise was far from unequivocal as a mob of reporters followed him to the floor before the farm bill vote.

“We have a narrow path,” he said. “These are the bills that are always the toughest to pass.”

Scalise is right. The last farm bill melted down on the floor in epic fashion in 2013. An effort to override President George W. Bush’s veto of the 2008 farm bill imploded over an embarrassing clerical error. Scalise’s vagueness meant one thing: No one really knew if the bill would pass.

House Republicans should have had the farm bill in the bag a few days ago. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C.,  and a coalition influential Republicans pushed an amendment to modify the federal sugar program by subjecting the commodity to market forces.

Ironically, many viewed the sugar amendment as a “poison pill” for the farm bill as it appeared to cleave the GOP conference.

“The sugar amendment comes up every time,” Foxx noted. “The last time it failed by only seven votes.”

“I’m working really hard to defeat it,” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, said on Fox News Radio. “If we’re not able to defeat it, then it calls into question whether I can pass the bill.”

When the sugar amendment hit the floor Thursday, it wasn’t even close. The House voted 278-137 to reject the sugar modification proposal. Foxx conceded she thought the amendment would pass and certainly not experience a 141 vote beat down.

In retrospect, it may have been better for the Republican leadership had the House approved the sugar amendment. Under those circumstances, Conaway and GOP leaders could have blamed the sugar amendment for the farm bill’s failure -- or at least given them a reason to snatch the measure off the floor.

But the touchstone issue wasn’t sugar. It was immigration.

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.,  the vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, emerged from an elevator en route to the House dais to chair the final debate and vote on the farm bill. Collins sits on an elite roster of members the leadership taps to preside when controversial bills hit the floor. He told Fox News that GOP leaders gave him no guidance to pull the bill from the floor.

“I just assumed that the way they were behaving that they had the votes,” Peterson said.

During the vote series, Ryan, McCarthy and Scalise huddled with Meadows and other Freedom Caucus leaders Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Scott Perry, R-Pa.

The scrum broke up as the leaders then scurried about the chamber talking to other lawmakers. Nobody appeared panicked. They also seemed resigned to their fate. Ryan extracted an iPhone from his pocket and pecked out a message. No one recalls Ryan using an electronic device in public since he became speaker and stalked the halls with an iPod, listening to tracks from Led Zeppelin.

The current House membership stands at 428 members: 235 Republicans and 193 Democrats. That means it takes 215 yeas to pass a bill if everyone votes. It also means the GOP can lose only 20 members and still prevail.

But on the amendment votes, the high-water mark for lawmakers voting was 411. So, 206 was the magic number for passage. When the vote on the farm bill started, the number of GOP nays quickly hit 21.

The bill was doomed, failing 213-198.

“This isn’t over,” said Scalise as he made his way to a U.S. Capitol Police SUV parked under the House carriage entrance amid a midday cloudburst.

Would the GOP have been better off had they not written a bill geared to garner only Republican support?

“It’s not a partisan bill,” Scalise insisted.

“This was about food stamps,” said Peterson after the vote. “If they will listen to me, I can deliver a lot of Democrats to vote for it.”

Peterson said the GOP wouldn’t even talk to him about his proposals. And he said that until Friday, he and Conaway, the Agriculture committee chairman, hadn’t spoken in five weeks.

Peterson knows something about courting moderate Democrats to vote for GOP proposals. He represents a rural district in western Minnesota that favors Republicans by 12 points. President Trump carried the district by 31 points.

“I decided to stick my neck out,” Peterson said.

In other words, if he thinks the bill is so extreme even he can’t support it … .

Moreover, by not pulling the bill, dozens of vulnerable Republicans are now on the record, documented, as voting for the work requirement. Democrats could have a field day in campaign commercials this fall weaponizing the farm bill vote against GOPers who voted yes.

Lots of lawmakers wonder whether Republican leaders would have been in this quandary if Ryan wasn’t departing. The insurrection by two wings of the House GOP Conference reflects restlessness among the rank-and-file.

So far, Ryan hasn’t quashed that rebellion. Same with McCarthy and Scalise. This calls into question whether there is a leadership vacuum, spurred by Ryan’s retirement announcement.

The failure of the farm bill and revolt over immigration may reflect a lack of political capital available to GOP leaders. The brass elected to push ahead with the farm bill vote amid omens they shouldn’t have. This was a political cross-up. A miscommunication between battery mates. Calling for a change-up and firing an Aroldis Chapman fastball instead.

This doesn’t portend well for other big topics. Funding the government. The future of a higher education bill. Actually addressing immigration. Revamping the farm bill.

The leadership isn’t on the same page as the members. They need to get the signs down. If this isn’t corrected, the next pitch will skip wildly behind the catcher and roll all the way to the backstop.

 

 

 

Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who led House conservatives’ successful effort Friday to nix the GOP-controlled chamber’s farm bill, thinks detractors will eventually come around to supporting the measure.

“I think we’ll reconsider this bill,” the North Carolina Republican and leader of the House Freedom Caucus said minutes after the bill failed 213-198 on the House floor.

Members of the influential roughly 35-member caucus voted against the bill as leverage to try to force House Speaker Paul Ryan to hold a vote on a hard line immigration bill that they support.

“I think if we get a vote on immigration we reconsider this bill,” Meadows told reporters. “We’ll vote for it, yeah.”

GOP leaders thought they had found a way by Friday morning to make the party's warring conservative and moderate wings happy on an issue that has bedeviled them for years.

Conservatives would get a vote by late June on an immigration bill that parrots many of President Trump's hard-right immigration views, including reductions on legal immigration and opening the door to his proposed wall with Mexico. And centrists would have a chance to craft a more moderate alternative with the White House and Democrats and get a vote on that.

But it all blew up as conservatives decided they didn't like that offer and rebelled. By lunchtime Friday, many were among the 30 Republicans who joined Democrats and scuttled the sweeping farm and food bill, a setback for Ryan, R-Wis., and other GOP House leaders.

Meadows described his conversation with Ryan as "professional,” saying, “He understands we all got different districts.”

He also acknowledged pressure to back the farm bill after Trump tweeted his support.

“There’s always pressure when the president weighs in on one side or the other,” Meadows said.

Still, Meadows, who represents an agricultural district, suggested that delaying the passage of a new bill, which included work requirements for Americans on food-assistance programs, was not going to hurt farmers.

“Honestly, having a farm bill is critical, [but] you know an extension of the current farm bill is probably just as good for my farmers as this one," he said. 

“Tomorrow, the House will vote on a strong Farm Bill, which includes work requirements. We must support our Nation’s great farmers!,” Trump tweeted.

The conservatives essentially took the agriculture bill hostage, saying they were unwilling to let the farm measure pass unless they first got assurances that when the House addresses immigration in coming weeks, leaders would not help an overly permissive version pass.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., a leader of the moderates, said his group would try to write a bill that would let young "Dreamer" immigrants in the U.S. illegally stay permanently -- a position anathema to conservatives -- and toughen border security.

A moderate immigration package "disavows what the last election was about and what the majority of the American people want, and the people in this body know it," said Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Scott Perry, one of the many Freedom Caucus members who opposed the bill. "It's all about timing unfortunately and leverage, and the farm bill was just a casualty."

Denham and his allies were also unwilling to back down. He told reporters that the conservatives "broke that agreement," and his group would pursue bipartisan legislation.

"I'm disappointed in some colleagues who asked for a concession, got the concession and then took down a bill anyway," Denham said in a slap at the Freedom Caucus. He also said the concession was a promised vote on the conservative immigration bill by June, though conservatives said they never agreed to that.

Such internal bickering is the opposite of what the GOP needs as the party struggles to fend off Democratic efforts to capture control of the House in November.

Republican leaders and strategists think their winning formula is to focus on an economy that has been gaining strength and tax cuts the GOP says is putting more money in people's wallets. And immigration is a distraction from that message.

On one side are conservatives from Republican strongholds, where many voters consider helping immigrants stay in the U.S. to be amnesty. On the other are GOP moderates, often representing districts with many constituents who are Hispanic, moderate suburbanites or are tied to the agriculture industry, which relies heavily on migrant workers.

Trump's willingness to sign immigration legislation also remains in question after a year that has seen his stance on the issue veer unpredictably.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A group of seven pro-DACA House Republicans on Wednesday started a process to go over the head of the House Republican leadership and force debates and votes later this year on a series of bills related to immigration and the Obama-era program affecting young illegal immigrants.

The Republican brass, and many rank-and-file GOPers, are reluctant to descend into a debate about immigration just before the midterm elections in November. But this process could very well trigger that.

Reps. Carlos Curbelo, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; Jeff Denham and David Valadao of California; Will Hurd of Texas; and Mia Love of Utah initiated a “discharge petition” on the floor on Wednesday.

If 218 members sign the petition, the House will be forced to consider a set of four immigration bills on the floor. It’s likely that most, if not all, 193 House Democrats will sign on, meaning just 25 Republicans are needed to initiate this rare maneuver.

The gambit would compel the House to consider a conservative immigration plan drafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte; the Democrats’ DREAM Act, backed by California Democratic Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard; a plan from the House Republican leadership; and a bill by California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar and Hurd that grants legal status to many recipients of DACA.

DACA is short for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that provides a level of amnesty to young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. 

Under the discharge petition, the House would debate and vote on each proposal. The one securing the most votes would be designated “queen of the hill.” The House would later take an additional vote on the “queen” bill. If the House approves the measure a second time, it will truly emerge as “king of the hill,” thus earning passage by the House.

That said, just because a measure succeeds at the “queen” level doesn’t mean it will win at the “king” one, too. In other words, passage of anything is far from guaranteed under this process.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has resisted this process and had an animated conversation on the floor earlier this week with Curbelo.

“I don’t think that’s the right way to go,” Ryan said when asked about the strategy a few weeks ago. “I don’t want to bring up legislation that won’t get signed into law. I don’t think it makes any sense to bring a bill through a process that would produce a bill that will get a presidential veto. I just don’t think that’s in anyone’s interest.”

Discharge petitions aren't typically  successful in the House. A bipartisan group of lawmakers circumvented the leadership in October 2015 to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. Before that, the last successful discharge petition involved a campaign finance law in 2001.

The president could veto something that emerges from the “queen of the hill” approach. There’s also no guarantee that the Senate would consider any bill. The problem for some Republicans is that Denham’s approach puts them on the record as voting for or against a nettlesome issue like immigration and DACA policy months before the midterm.

There’s also another problem with discharge petitions. The House will only consider discharge petitions on the second and fourth Mondays of every month.

The current House schedule only has the body meeting on a second or fourth Monday of a month five times through the rest of the year: May 21, June 11, June 25, July 23 and Dec. 10. It’s unclear if any of those dates would be politically advantageous to the push, though some might make the case that there's a clear benefit in the date that falls after the elections.

But it’s also close to the end of Congress' business for the year. Such a plan would have to get through the Senate, too, and so it could run out of time.

Rev. Patrick Conroy delivered his first prayer Monday to open the House of Representatives since rescinding his resignation as House chaplain last week following outrage over House Speaker Paul Ryan’s attempt to oust him from the role.

“We give you thanks, O God, for giving us another day. As the Members return to Washington, may they be empowered and encouraged by their constituents to be their best selves in serving in the people’s House,” Conroy said in his delivery. “May the disagreements... give way to good faith efforts to find solutions to the issues facing our nation in a manner consistent with the great traditions of our republican form of government. May that is done in the people’s House this day be for your greater honor and glory.”

Conroy on Thursday wrote in a two-page letter to Ryan, the retiring Wisconsin Republican, that he has never “heard a complaint about my ministry” as House chaplain and was rescinding his resignation.

Conroy said top Ryan aide Jonathan Burks told him the speaker wanted his resignation, and cited a prayer last year that was potentially critical of the GOP tax bill that upset many Republicans.

Conroy prayed for lawmakers to make sure that “there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

Burks, in a statement released by Ryan’s office, said: “I strongly disagree with Father Conroy’s recollection of our conversation.”

In response to the letter, Ryan announced that Conroy would keep his job, after all.

“I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as Chaplain of the House,” Ryan said. “My original decision was made in what I believed to be the best interest of this institution. To be clear, that decision was based on my duty to ensure that the House has the kind of pastoral services that it deserves.”

Ryan added that he planned to sit down with Conroy “so that we can move forward for the good of the whole House.”

Ryan has told fellow Republicans that he wanted to oust the House chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest from the Jesuit order, after complaints from members that he wasn’t doing a very good job.

“He had a number of complaints that the chaplain was not meeting the pastoral needs of the members in general,” said Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo.

Democrats had expressed outrage over Ryan’s decision to push Conroy out of the job.

“I have expressed my forceful disagreement with this decision to the speaker,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement on Friday. “It is truly sad that he made this decision, and it is especially bewildering that he did so only a matter of months before the end of his term.”

Conroy’s firing would have been the first forced ouster in the history of the House.

Conroy has served as the chamber’s chaplain since 2011.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A bipartisan group of House freshmen is reviving the idea of congressional term limits and now has the support of President Trump, who campaigned on the issue in 2016.

The move is being led by Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Marine Corps veteran who on Sunday said the group’s recent White House meeting with the president was a success, while acknowledging long odds for such a change.

“I feel the meeting went extremely well,” Gallagher told Fox News' "America's News HQ" on Sunday. “The president seemed highly supportive. … And he said he was genuinely impressed with the enthusiasm of the group.”  

Gallagher and four other House freshmen were invited to the White House to talk about their idea, each having supported various term-limit proposals in the past, a Gallagher spokeswoman told Fox News on Monday.

Gallagher says he drew inspiration for the proposal -- which essentially keeps elected officials from becoming career politicians -- from his time in the military, “where people worked together to get a difficult job done.”

“Here it’s careers ahead of country,” he said. “This would force everyone in Congress to treat their time here like a deployment, not a career.”

Trump made ridding Washington of career politicians a major part of his winning campaign, rallying crowds with the chant of “drain the swamp.”

While Trump wanted a six-year limit for House members and 12-year limit for senators, Gallagher and his group are considering 12 years for members of both chambers.

And they’ve proposed that the change begin with their freshman class, to avoid resistance from sitting members who want to remain in Congress.

Trump purportedly told the group members to return to Capitol Hill to agree on a final plan, which Gallagher expects to have ready by this week.  

“I recently had a terrific meeting with a bipartisan group of freshman lawmakers who feel very strongly in favor of Congressional term limits,” the president tweeted after the meeting. “I gave them my full support and endorsement for their efforts. #DrainTheSwamp.”

Beyond resistance from members of Congress, the group would also face uphill legal and legislative challenges. The Supreme Court has ruled against congressional term limits before. Any change would require an amendment to the Constitution, which would require a two-thirds super-majority vote in both chambers, then ratification from three-fourths of the states.

Still, the plan is getting some support on this year’s campaign trail and in the House Freedom Caucus, the chamber’s influential conservative wing.

Rick Scott, Florida's Republican governor, has made term limits part of his platform in his bid for a Senate seat.

“The only place that doesn’t want term limits on Congress is right here, Washington,” Scott says in a 30-second TV ad. “That’s where all of the career politicians are. … In Washington, they say term limits cannot be done. That’s nonsense. They work for us. We don’t work for them.”

North Carolina GOP Rep. Mark Meadows, who leads the Freedom Caucus, recently tweeted: “Our founders never intended Congress to be a career--part of why Washington has become so dysfunctional is the shift away from this principle. Congressional term limits would do wonders toward addressing the problem. I'm 100% on board Mr. President.”

Gallagher argues that polling shows 80 percent of Americans support term limits, despite what Congress might say.

“It may seem like a lost cause,” he said. ”But the history of the country is filled with seemingly lost causes that now seem like self-evident truths.”