House Republicans blast 'cry wolf' conservatives who tanked FISA renewal bill

House Republican lawmakers left a closed-door meeting late on Wednesday afternoon furious at their 19 GOP colleagues who blocked the chamber from advancing a bill to renew a key surveillance tool of the federal government.

"When you have a majority, where members in the majority will not support the rules and the procedures set forth by the majority, you effectively are turning control over to the minority party. And that's what these members are doing," Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital.

It comes after a normally sleepy procedural vote, known as a rule vote, on a bill to reform and renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act failed 193 to 228 Wednesday afternoon — the seventh time a rule vote failed this Congress. Prior to that, a rule vote had not failed in two decades.

"Here's what frustrates me — is that the same members who are taking down this rule are vociferously advocating for reforming FISA. There are 56 major reforms of FISA 702 that are embedded in the base bill. I understand they don't think those 56 reforms go far enough...But by taking down the rule and by making it impossible to pass this reform base bill, they're gonna get nothing," Barr said.

Conservative privacy hawks who tanked the bill were angry over how it was handled, including the exclusion of an amendment mandating warrants for the purchase of U.S. citizens’ data from third-party data brokers.

But Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., suggested that the group's tactics on House floor votes take away from their actual goals.

"I think people make good, salient arguments. The problem is in the delivery — if all you do is scream, no one listens to you anymore," he said. "And I think there can be merits on lots of good arguments, but when