McCarthy huddles with House Freedom Caucus and urges consensus and compromise ahead of major spending fights

By Morgan Rimmer, Lauren Fox and Haley Talbot, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies met with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus ahead of a two-week recess to discuss their strategy for funding the government, as negotiations over appropriations bills loom large over the next month.

The meeting came after members of the Freedom Caucus have upended the speaker’s agenda over the last few weeks, and ahead of a series of critical votes this summer and fall to keep the government funded. McCarthy is trying to keep his conference in line amid a disagreement over spending levels within his own party and with the Senate.

“We got to start at the beginning. So it’s walking people through what’s an appropriate amount as the other ones get marked up,” McCarthy said. “Greater input, greater conversations, the more knowledge the better off we are, the better chance we have of passing it. So that’s what the meeting is today too.”

The California Republican noted that they also planned several meetings for recess.

“We’re going to break here from being in DC for two weeks,” he said. “So I didn’t want people to just go away. So we were setting up different meetings that we have in those two weeks talking about more approps and laying them out, what’s in it right now.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, said the focus of the meeting Friday was on figuring out how Republicans can work together to vote the six appropriations bills that have already passed in committee on the floor. Scalise predicted there could be hundreds of amendments as part of this process and there will have to be an effort made by Republicans to come together.

Leadership is hoping to move the bills as soon as July when they return. It’s crucial to start sooner rather than later because it could take weeks to pass the bills on the floor. McCarthy has just a narrow majority and likely no Democratic votes for these bills.

“So each of these bills takes days on the floor. And we’re gonna go one at a time and work with our members every step of the way included during this break,” Scalise said.

Rep. Garret Graves, also a Republican from Louisiana, told reporters leadership plans to meet with members over the break to hash more of this strategy out. He warned they’ll move the bills as soon as they are able.

Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins told CNN that the members in the room understood that they would have to compromise in order to get their bills passed.

“The common message was that we recognize that the challenge before us, the devil being in the details of the appropriations bills, that we recognize that we must get to 218, and it’s gonna require men and women of principle to make some adjustments in order to accommodate the principles of the man sitting next to us,” he said. “So I’m quite confident that the Republican majority, we’ll get to 218 on our appropriations bills.”

He added that they want to get ahead of potential issues, rather than wait until the last minute.

“This was a meeting that convened based upon a mutual interest to agree that we must accomplish a common goal,” Higgins said. “We’re not being compelled to do anything other than dive into the paperwork before we’re on the one yard line with this thing. Sometimes that’s the most difficult yard.”

Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida said that the meeting was meant to tell members to buckle in for appropriations negotiations.

“Honestly, I think what the speaker really asked for is for us to work. This is what you want to see, we’ve got this two-week period, let’s roll up our sleeves, let’s really dig in, let’s work with staff, let’s work with each other, and figure out areas where we – everybody can be comfortable and be in a good spot,” he said.

Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas added, “There is general consensus on what needs to be done to get our country back on the right fiscal path, and a lot of it is just a hard elbow grease, work of crunching numbers and finding those things.”

“It just takes a good bit of work and people working together to get it done,” he said.

Rep. Dan Bishop said, “It was a good discussion, I’ll put it that way. Constructive.” Asked if he has confidence in McCarthy, the North Carolina Republican replied, “I appreciate the way he’s entertaining constructive discussion.”

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CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.