House

Meadows gets heated with Ryan on House floor

by Juliegrace Brufke - 06/20/18 5:11 PM ET

Tempers are flaring among House Republicans amid tensions over immigration.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who is frequently a thorn in the side of leaders, could be seen having a heated discussion on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.

Following the discussion, Meadows threatened to sign a discharge petition backed by Democrats and GOP centrists who had demanded a series of votes on immigration members.

{mosads}

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Meadows told Ryan on the floor during the confrontation in comments that could be heard from the press gallery.

The North Carolina Republican then turned to Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) — who introduced a measure that would circumvent leadership and force votes of four immigration proposals and said, “I’ll sign the dang discharge petition. I don’t care anymore.”

Meadows later told reporters that he wasn’t serious about signing the petition, but he did acknowledge his frustrations with GOP leaders.

The Freedom Caucus leader is furious with Ryan because he claims two provisions were left out of a compromise immigration bill that all sides had agreed to include during the negotiations, though Meadows declined to say what those provisions are.

“There were things that were supposed to be in the compromise bill that we had all agreed to,” Meadows told reporters. “I finished reading it today. And I was told there were two things in there that are not in there.”

Meadows said the compromise bill is not ready for “prime time,” adding that he’s working to “get some changes” before Thursday’s vote.

The House is expected to vote on two broad immigration bills on Thursday — a hard-line measure and a compromise bill. GOP leaders are trying to win enough votes to get passage of the compromise measure, but are facing opposition from conservatives.

The bill would end the separation of children from their families at the border, which has sparked a political crisis for the GOP.

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that will end the separations, but he said he still wanted legislation to do so as well. If the House fails to pass its two bills on Thursday, Republicans are likely to be in store for more negative headlines.

There’s also tension over the version of the hard-line immigration measure from Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that leadership decided to bring to the House floor.

Conservatives are upset that the original version, which authorizes funding for Trump’s border wall but doesn’t appropriate the money, is slated to receive a vote. They wanted a vote on a modified version that actually appropriates wall funding and was designed to win more support.

Meadows pushed back on the idea that the HFC requested a vote on the original Goodlatte bill.

“Absolutely not,” Meadows told reporters on Tuesday. “I can tell you that I talked to Chairman Goodlatte earlier today. I told him to make it as reasonable as we possibly can make it with the changes that we’ve all agreed to to make the bill better. And we would vote for the modified Goodlatte bill and we would prefer that, because we think it has a better chance of getting a higher vote count.”

Tags Bob Goodlatte Carlos Curbelo DACA Donald Trump Immigration Mark Meadows Paul Ryan