The House Freedom Caucus has apparently changed its rules

The House Freedom Caucus has certainly received a good bit of attention during the 118th Congress. Not all of that attention has been fair. And none of it has apparently touched on how the group has veered from its founding.

As to fairness, reports, during the election for Speaker of the House in January, that the Freedom Caucus was leading the charge against Kevin McCarthy ignored simple math: While the caucus doesn’t advertise its membership, it is generally accepted that it counts about 40 members of Congress in its ranks. At most, roughly 15 of those voted against Kevin McCarthy at any time during the Speaker’s race. And the “Never Kevin” group was probably closer to five people. 

The Freedom Caucus has rules. Some are unwritten, but most exist in writing.  I know because I wrote them. I’m also not aware of any official changes to them.

One of those rules is that it takes 80 percent of the membership of the caucus to adopt a formal HFC position on a given matter. The last time I checked, five, or even 15, doesn’t come close to 80 percent of 40. Indeed, nothing less than 20 even comprises a simple majority. Thus, it would be false to say the effort against McCarthy was a Freedom Caucus initiative.

That rule regarding formal caucus positions, and another rule, albeit unwritten, have now come into focus as part of the discussion regarding government funding and the looming government shutdown.

That’s because some members of the Freedom Caucus recently came to an agreement with members of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership on a deal that would temporarily fund the government as part of a deal to reduce spending levels and also adopt certain policy initiatives, such as on border security. 

Still, despite that members of the Freedom Caucus cut that deal, and members of the Freedom Caucus such as Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) are actively whipping support for it, some media outlets are still claiming that the House Freedom Caucus is itself pushing a government shutdown.

And this brings us to one unwritten rule of the HFC. When we started the group in 2015, we had an informal test of prospective membership. We were looking, after all, for conservatives who could be counted on to fight when that was necessary, but also to compromise when we thought doing so advanced a conservative agenda. (This approach gave rise to our own short-lived working title for the group: “The Reasonable Nutjob Caucus.”)

To screen potential members, we had a two-part test. We were looking for members of Congress who could both vote against a procedural motion (known commonly as a “rule”) and vote for a short-term continuing funding resolution or CR. The former was among the most mutinous maneuvers we could contemplate at the time; the latter was the most obsequious. But doing either had to be conditioned, again, on our belief that doing so would ultimately advance a conservative agenda.

We created that test because we knew there were so-called conservatives who would roll over and vote for any short-term CR that leadership offered, but we also knew that there were others who, while they talked a good game, would never have the spine to vote against a rule.

At the same time, we knew there were some anarchists who would vote against any rule because they wanted to see the world burn. We were looking for solid conservatives who could discern the proper moment to play either one card or the other, and who had the backbone to play whichever one was necessary.

To that end, we excluded some people from the caucus who wanted to join.

But apparently the HFC has changed since 2015 — or at least, its screening process has changed. There are now folks who claim caucus membership who say that they will never vote for a short-term CR, under any conditions. 

That’s a shame, as it seemed that Freedom Caucus members had been working with moderates in the party to arrive at something that cuts spending and improves border security. Last I checked, those were supposed to be conservative priorities. And it is the exact sort of compromise and progress that the HFC was established to promote.

I’m not saying the compromise is perfect. No piece of viable legislation likely is. What I’m saying is that, if anything out there right now seems to be more true to the spirit of the founding of the Freedom Caucus, it is the effort to join with moderates to pass something that reflects solid conservative principles.

Yes, it has a short-term CR, but that was always envisioned by the caucus founders as being acceptable under certain circumstances.

At the same time, and for much the same reason, it is wrong to call opposition to the spending proposal, and in turn, opposition to the Speaker, a House Freedom Caucus initiative.  

The truth seems to be the never-CR-never-Kevin-burn-the-place-down effort isn’t really coming from an organized group at all. Someone this week called it a collection of “caucuses of one.” Some seem to be using the effort to raise their public profiles on Fox News and social media; others are looking to leverage the newfound attention to run for higher office.

Some really might just want to burn the place down, and some certainly have honest motivations.

But to describe the current situation as something driven by the Freedom Caucus is lazy, inaccurate and unfair. 

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.