Senate leaders said Monday that they are nearing a deal to reopen the government and increase the debt limit, but at least one House Republican is down on the measure’s prospects in the lower chamber.
“We’ve got a name for it in the House: it’s called the Senate surrender caucus,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) said, as quoted by the New York Times. “Anybody who would vote for that in the House as Republican would virtually guarantee a primary challenger.”
Because Huelskamp and other House conservatives remain determined to strike at some part of the Affordable Care Act, the pending deal in the Senate is anything but a slam dunk.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose effort to defund the health care law helped trigger the shutdown, reportedly met Monday with a group of some of the House’s most ardent conservatives in the basement of a Capitol Hill restaurant.
Huelskamp’s sentiment underscores a growing schism on the right that’s been exposed during the shutdown. RedState.com editor Erick Erickson, a vocal advocate of the defunding effort, predicted last week that the GOP will be split by a “real third party movement.”
