"You suck": Emmer unloads on Senate Republicans
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House Majority Whip Tom Emmer speaks a news conference with GOP leadership Thursday. Photo: Finn Gomez / Getty Images
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) is saying out loud what House Republicans have been grumbling about for much of the year: They're fed up with the Senate.
Why it matters You won't ever hear Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) or Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) talk about their Senate counterparts like this.
- "There are no Democrats. There are no Republicans. They are just senators," Emmer told donors last week at a closed-door fundraiser Axios attended for Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.).
- Emmer said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) "is doing the job that he thinks he's supposed to do. There's a certain fraternity sorority that is the U.S. Senate."
The intrigue: Emmer had a blunt message for senators who repeatedly say they can't pass House GOP priorities: "Don't just keep telling me 'Don't have the votes. Don't have the votes.' You suck."
- Emmer said he once thought as a House member that he should stay out of the filibuster debate. Now, he thinks his colleagues should "get rid of the darn filibuster."
- A Senate GOP aide retorted that what would "suck" would be losing the majority and that Republicans should be targeting Democrats instead of attacking their own side.
Driving the news: Emmer's comments are the most critical yet from a House GOP leader, but sum up the mood inside the conference.
- More than a dozen Republicans paralyzed the House floor this summer in an effort to force Senate action on the SAVE America Act, the GOP's signature election bill that's become a major source of tension between the two chambers.
- "We're frustrated with the Senate," Emmer told Axios in an interview after the fundraiser. "We feel like we've been doing everything we were hired to do, and a lot of it goes over to the Senate and it just sits there."
- House Republicans put their votes "up on the board," Emmer argued, while senators "try to avoid" taking tough votes.
The big picture: House GOP leaders often say they've "done their job" when asked about unfinished business. But there's a clear implication in that phrase: The Senate hasn't.
- Johnson has pointed to the backlog across the Capitol — including when he defended sending the House home early last month by noting that hundreds of House-passed bills were awaiting Senate action.
- The speaker blames Democrats for that, but his complaints have put the spotlight on Senate GOP leadership.
Zoom in: Congressional Republicans spent much of the summer on completely different wavelengths over reconciliation 3.0, which doesn't require any Democratic votes.
- Johnson pushed the Senate to take up the House's reconciliation framework, declaring in July that the Senate would pass it before leaving for August recess.
- "That'd be news to me," Thune said at the time about Johnson's floated timeline. The Senate left town without any action on reconciliation 3.0.
- "They can say all day long, you know, 'It's going to be hard.' Everything's hard. Give me a lecture about how hard things are. That's what I do every day. They've got to figure out a way to get it done," Scalise told Axios of his colleagues in the Senate in July.
The bottom line: Emmer stopped short of saying Senate Republicans have been a bigger obstacle to the GOP agenda than Democrats.
- But he said two things frustrate lawmakers in the House when it comes to Senate Republicans: 1) They don't say what changes would get them to yes; and 2) they don't put themselves on the record when the answer is no.
- "Put your money where your mouth is. Put your vote up on the board, and let's see where you really are," Emmer told Axios.
