A leading conservative House member says there’s no move afoot to oust Speaker John Boehner.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, said Sunday that Boehner’s decision to advance a one-week measure to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded without including the attack on President Barack Obama’s immigration actions that the right wanted — but that the Senate couldn’t pass — won’t cost the speaker his job.
“That’s not gonna happen,” Jordan told CNN’s Dana Bash Sunday on “State of the Union.”
Jordan said he hasn’t had conversations with any conservative House colleagues about overthrowing Boehner.
Asked whether Boehner could be ousted over the issue, Jordan responded: “No, that’s not the point.”
Jordan’s comments come amid reports that Boehner’s allies are afraid he’ll face a challenge from his party’s right flank after he agreed to drop the attack on Obama’s move to forestall some deportations in order to forestall a looming DHS shutdown.
He said he wants to see the House’s GOP leadership do well because “that helps the country succeed.”
House Republicans blame minority Senate Democrats for the deadlock, Jordan said, because they haven’t allowed a House-passed bill that funds the department at the level Democrats requested to move forward. That bill, though, includes the attack on Obama’s immigration moves that Democrats have sought to block.
“We understand how serious the terrorist threat is out there. We passed a bill at the levels that the Democrat wanted,” Jordan said. “What we did say was, we don’t want to fund something that everyone knows is unconstitutional, legal scholars on the right and the left have said is unconstitutional, and a federal judge, a federal judge has said is unlawful.”