The Hill News

A freshman House Republican says he's lost faith in John Boehner (R-Ohio) after the House Speaker's agreement with Democrats on a 2011 spending measure.

Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) said that there was a great deal of "frustration" toward Boehner among House Republicans after Boehner negotiated an agreement with President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that funded the government through the end of the fiscal year, while cutting nearly $40 billion in spending.

"You know, I would say yes," Tipton said on the syndicated "Cari and Rob" radio show when asked if his trust in Boehner had been shaken in the spending fight resolved last week in Congress, "but I will give him the caveat as I always give somebody an opportunity to explain."
Tipton echnoed frustration by other conservatives about the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) numbers indicating that the resolution cut much less money than Republican leaders had first claimed.

"I’m not trying to stick up for him at all in this sense," he said in the interview, which aired Thursday, and came to light on Monday. "They are dealing with some different sides, but you get a sense of the politics as usual that are going on."

In a sense, though, the frustration by conservatives is water under the bridge; Boehner and the GOP leadership team made an aggressive push to defend the deal, and ultimately successfully passed the legislation through the House last week despite the objections of Tipton and other House conservatives.

But the sense of an emerging rift between Boehner and the conservative freshman class, many of whom are allied with the Tea Party movement, has become a storyline that Democrats are anxious to exp! loit in their fight with House Republicans.

Sen. C! harles S chumer (D-N.Y.), for instance, has consistent in demanding that Boehner divorce himself from the Tea Party in negotiations with Democrats, a drumbeat the New York Democrat's repeated ahead of an impending fight over raising the debt ceiling.