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Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20510
October 5, 2023
Members of the GOP Conference
549 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Republican Colleagues:
Earlier this week, eight Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined in an alliance with 208 Democrats to adopt a motion to vacate the Speaker of the House. That translates to less than 4 percent of our Republican Conference joining with all Democrats to override the will of the remaining 96 percent of House Republicans on one of the most consequential votes the House has taken in over a century.
Worse still, just last Friday, seven of these eight individuals also joined with Democrats to defeat the most conservative funding and border security package in history.
Despite just a four-seat majority and both a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House, Speaker McCarthy has been one of the most accomplished Republican leaders in modern history. He has tirelessly worked with all factions of our Conference to restore regular order, decentralize decision making, reopen the People’s House, and achieve real results in a divided government on issues ranging from energy independence and combatting crime to cutting out-of-control spending and securing our border.
Ashamed and embarrassed by what happened on the Floor this week, we refuse to allow the eight members who abandoned and undermined our Conference to dictate every outcome in policy and personnel for the remainder of this Congress, including the upcoming selection of the Speaker of the House.
As such, we, the undersigned, remain committed to the conservative and transparent objectives Speaker McCarthy outlined at the outset of the 118th Congress. It is our responsibility to identify the right person at this moment to lead us into the future to achieve the conservative policy objectives that we and the American people all share. We cannot allow our majority to be dictated to by the alliance between the chaos caucus and the minority party that will do nothing more than guarantee the failure of our next Speaker.
The injustice we all witnessed cannot go unaddressed—lest we bear responsibility for the consequences that follow. Our Conference must address fundamental changes to the structure of our majority to ensure success for the American people.
Sincerely,
