Boehner Balks at Moving Bills Without Strong GOP Support

House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday he doesn’t plan to keep passing bills in the House without majority support from the Republican Conference.

“It’s not a practice I would expect to continue long-term,” he told reporters after a closed-door GOP Conference meeting, The Hill reports.

Just last week, a Democratic-supported bill passed the House without majority GOP support for the third time this year. The latest bill was the Violence Against Women Act. House Republican leaders tried to steer through a bill of their own on the issue, but 60 of their conference members failed to support it, and Democrats were united in opposition.

“We tried everything we could to get the differences in our conference resolved,” Boehner said. “And the fact is they couldn’t resolve their differences. It was time to deal with this issue, and we did.”

In January, the House also passed the fiscal-cliff agreement and a Superstorm Sandy relief bill without majority Republican support.

Boehner has never pledged to follow the "Hastert Rule," named after former Speaker Dennis Hastert, the Illinois Republican who would only bring bills to the floor supported by “a majority of the majority.”

Instead, Boehner has promised to let the House “work its will.” But Boehner’s conservative critics, some of whom have openly talked about challenging his speakership, aren’t too happy with the Democratic-backed bill that have been moving through the House.