Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) said there has been an erosion of trust between him and some members of the House Republican Conference who have vocally opposed and attacked the debt ceiling bill he helped negotiate.
Talking to reporters, Graves, who was the lead debt ceiling negotiator for the House, said there has been some trust lost, especially with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), whom he candidly described as someone he went from “kind of disliking to really liking a lot and having a tremendous amount of respect for,” but he said the relationship has eroded a little over the past week.
BIDEN WORKS TO PUSH DEBT CEILING DEAL OVER THE FINISH LINE
“I think there was some trust was lost," Graves said, speaking about Roy and his comments. "I'm not gonna lie, I'm really offended."
Roy has been a leading voice opposing the debt ceiling bill. He has said that if it passes, there will be a “reckoning” for Republican leaders, that no Republican should vote for this bill, and that it doesn’t actually cut spending and would make the country’s fiscal state worse.
He and Roy have talked a little bit about it, Graves said, but once the debt ceiling bill is through, they will need to have a longer conversation.
“We've discussed how we're going to need to sit down and talk, probably over several bottles of something initially, because there's some pretty raw feelings, I think, on both sides right now,” Graves said.
In a tweet in response to Graves's comments, Roy said he thinks Graves is a "good man" and knows Graves worked hard to get a deal but that he still thinks it's a bad bill.
While Graves said he couldn’t agree more with the belief that Congress needs to cut more government spending, members such as Roy, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) made a “tactical flaw” in opposing the bill before negotiations were ever complete.
The members who were bad-mouthing the deal before its release had no knowledge of what would be in the deal, nor did they know it was going to be “the largest savings in history,” Graves said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“There were a group of people who started saying things that were absolutely inaccurate about this deal, started bad-mouthing it and defining it before it was done,” he said. “Now they put themselves in a situation to where these historic wins, they boxed themselves into a 'no' vote on the most substantial progress that we've ever made, ever made.”
Over 30 Republicans have said they plan on voting against the debt ceiling bill when it comes to the floor Wednesday evening, leaving House Republicans to rely on help from House Democrats to get the bill over the finish line and send it to the Senate.