Kevin Brady is the best person to lead the House Ways and Means Committee.
The U.S. representative from The Woodlands would make a fine chair of Ways and Means.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Congressman Kevin Brady ought to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
We said it first back in 2013, when The Woodlands Republican launched a bid to succeed thenChairman Dave Camp of Michigan. Congressman Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential candidate got the job instead. Now, with Ryan on his way to bigger if not necessarily better things as speaker, the affable Brady is again the best person to lead Congress’ oldest committee.
The reasons we liked Brady two years ago are the reasons we like him now: During his two decades in the House he’s built a well-earned reputation as a knowledgeable and experienced lawmaker. Although he’s deeply conservative, he’s a policy-oriented lawmaker who has shown a willingness to work with colleagues across the aisle and with Republicans of all stripes. Even more now than a couple of years ago, the deeply dysfunctional House needs pragmatists like Brady in key positions, not zealots of the Freedom Caucus variety.
“I’m going to take that same approach into the chairmanship, which is, let’s find the principles that unite us, listen and respect each other, and then find common ground so that we can turn this country around,” Brady told the Chronicle.
With its authority to help set tax policy, Ways and Means is one of the most powerful committees on Capitol Hill. Brady is an expert on tax policy, tax reform, trade agreements and budget matters. He’ll team with the new speaker to formulate the GOP’s version of tax reform in the upcoming 2016 election year.
Brady, who led The Woodlands Chamber of Commerce for 18 years before being elected to Congress, also will be good for the Houston area. He knows policy areas important to this region, including health care. As the health subcommittee chairman, he helped craft legislation reforming the way government pays Medicare doctors and has been an advocate for more generous research and development tax credits.
He voted this week to reauthorize the beleaguered ExportImport Bank, bete noire of many of his ultra-conservative GOP colleagues, although he expressed strong reservations about the bank. “This is first and foremost a trade issue,” he said in a statement. “Ending export financing here in the United States isn’t enough. It needs to be phased out around the globe just as we reduce tariffs, quotas and other trade concerns.”
The self-described free trader has yet to take a position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, although he notes that he has “pushed hard to open up the AsiaPacific market to U.S. companies, on our terms, rather than China’s.”
Brady’s competitors for the job are thought to be Pat Tiberi of Ohio and David Nunes of California, both with less seniority than the Texan. The ranking GOP member on the committee, Sam Johnson of Plano, has not expressed interest in the job. Given the competition, the choice of Brady ought to be simple, although we realize that nothing in the U.S. Congress is as simple as it ought to be.