Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will huddle with House conservatives to discuss a strategy on government funding and how to address Planned Parenthood, according to CNN.
The 2016 presidential candidate, considered the architect of the defund ObamaCare campaign that led to the 2013 government shutdown, sent out invites for a meeting that would take place as soon as Wednesday, according to the report.
“I am meeting with Ted Cruz later today. It’s a free-flowing conversation,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala) told CNN. “I like rapping with him.”
A Cruz aide, however, told CNN the meeting might be delayed until early next week.
{mosads}Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) also told CNN he received an invite to Cruz’s office.
“The establishment would like the House conservatives never to talk,” Huelskamp told CNN. “Because we always hear that our leadership said this and that are impossible to do. How do we get around the reluctance of our establishment in Washington to get done what we all said we were going to do in August?”
Huelskamp is among a growing list of lawmakers who have signed a letter pledging to oppose any government funding measure that continues to fund Planned Parenthood. On Wednesday, the number of signatures grew to 31.
In the fall of 2013, Cruz also huddled with conservatives in the House to hash out an ObamaCare defunding plan.
Nearly two years later, House Republicans emerged from a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday morning saying that leadership is leaving all options open for government funding and Planned Parenthood.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters he had not made decisions on when leadership would move a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through Oct. 1 and avoid a government shutdown.
In the upper chamber, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has promised to avoid a government shutdown, said in a TV interview last week that the “defund Planned Parenthood” effort would have to wait for a new president.