Chip Roy Won’t Rule Out Ousting Mike Johnson as Speaker If He Moves Ahead with Spending Deal: ‘We’ll See What Happens’

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) made clear on Monday that he is not a fan of the spending deal being hammered out by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

The leaders of their respective houses have agreed on the broader spending totals this weekend, though the details need to be hashed out. Under the terms, Pentagon spending would rise to $886 billion for the current fiscal year while non-defense spending would weigh in at $773 billion. Unless spending legislation is passed and signed into law by the president within the next 11 days, the government will partially shut down.

Not surprisingly, there have been grumblings from the more conservative quarters of the House Republican Conference.

Appearing on Monday’s edition of The Source on CNN, Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, expressed his displeasure.

“We’re spending more money we don’t have,” he told host Kaitlan Collins. “It’s just more of the same and, you know, I wish Speaker Johnson [wasn’t] doing this. I’m very disappointed and hopefully we can try to figure out what we can do to change it in the next few days.”

“Well, who do you hold responsible for it?” Collins asked. “Is it Speaker Johnson?”

“Well, I mean, his office is doing the negotiating, so that’s the deal,” Roy responded.

Collins pointed to the fate of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was ousted after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a motion to vacate the chair. In a subsequent vote on the measure, eight Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to remove McCarthy. After several failed speaker nominations, the House selected Johnson, who said he was “not afraid” of the rule that led to McCarthy’s ouster – the vote on which was triggered by a single member of the House.

“A lot of what this looks like is the same situation that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy found himself in not long ago,” she observed. “Is Mike Johnson, Speaker Johnson, going to potentially face the same fate? Are Republicans going try to oust him?”

Roy reiterated that Johnson should not agree to the framework in place.

“Does that include potentially moving to oust him from his job?” Collins asked.

“Again, that’s not the road I prefer,” Roy responded. “You know, we’ve gone down that road. I didn’t prefer to go down that road with Speaker McCarthy. We need to figure out how to get this all done together. But it isn’t good and there’s a lot of my colleagues who are pretty frustrated about it. So, we’ll see what happens this week”

“Ok, you said you don’t prefer it, but you did not say ‘No’ to that, I should note,”  Collins said.

Watch above via CNN.