Rep. Lamborn: GOP members blocking bills from floor being ’emotional and reactive’
Reese Gorman
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DENVER — Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) expressed his displeasure with members of the House Republican Conference who are blocking legislation from being brought to the floor for a vote because they’re upset — in part — about the debt ceiling deal.
On Tuesday, a group of members on the right flank of the Republican Conference prevented a bill to block a ban on gas stoves from coming to the floor. The House has since been in limbo because the group has pledged to block any legislation that comes to the floor.
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“All of the conservative initiatives will die because of the Freedom Caucus,” Lamborn told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “I view that as totally wrongheaded. And they don’t have an end game. They haven’t thought this through. It’s emotional and reactive.”
Lamborn said the group’s protests are “not coherent or consistent” because the people rebelling against House Leadership have different sets of grievances.
Included in the group of people preventing bills from coming to the floor are the two other Republicans House members from Colorado, Lauren Boebert and Ken Buck, who have both been outspoken against Speaker Kevin McCarthy and are helping lead the rebellion.
“The reality is we’ve got to deal with spending and force the Senate and the president to deal with spending,” Buck said at the Western Conservative Conference. “So, we will keep the house floor shut down until we start getting answers from our leadership, Republican leadership, to take spending seriously, and we started dealing with this.”
If the right flank members of the party continue to block bills, then it will ruin the opportunity Republicans have to pass legislation in the majority, Lamborn said.
And, while he didn’t think the debt ceiling deal the House passed was perfect, he said it was a good compromise in a divided government and included some conservative wins.
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Lamborn said members of the Republican Conference who are upset about the bill passing and are holding the House hostage because of that need to move on and allow the House to get back to passing Republican priorities.
“Sometimes you lose a vote, and you just have to move on, and they’re not doing it,” Lamborn said. “So, they’re working at cross purposes to the conservative values that they stand on because they’re keeping from consideration very excellent conservative legislation.”