House GOP struggles with how to legislate
Challenges set within, outside majority party
WASHINGTON — Republicans worked last year to change the debate in Washington from one about spending money to one about cutting spending, but as the GOP enters the second year of its House majority, it is grappling with how to legislate in the face of Democratic opposition and division within their own ranks.
President Obama intends to run for re-election against “do nothing” Republicans in Congress with the tacit support of congressional Democrats. “It is very important for the president to make it clear to the public what the choices have been and will be for the future. And I completely subscribe to his approach,” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., told CNN in a Sunday interview.
According to data compiled by the House clerk, Republicans introduced fewer bills and enacted fewer laws than in the first year of the Democratic majority in 2007. In 2011, 4,468 measures were introduced in the Gop-controlled House, 384 were passed, and 56 measures became law. In 2007, when Democrats took control of the chamber and also controlled the Senate, 6,194 measures were introduced, 516 were passed, and 135 became law.
Speaker John Boehner, R-ohio, defended the GOP majority’s year in an interview with USA TODAY before Congress adjourned in December, citing achievements including $2.1 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years, a ban on earmarking, and the success in focusing the national debate on the problems facing the nation’s fiscal future.
“This is the first time in the 20 years I’ve been here that there’s been a real conversation about our entitlements,” Boehner said. “And while we’ve been unable to come to agreement on how these programs are sustainable for the long term, at least an honest conversation has started.”
Republicans are still reeling from the backlash over the payroll tax deal in December that resulted in the GOP ultimately siding with Democrats on a short two-month extension. In the weeks that have followed, the party has yet to coalesce around a counterstrategy to Obama’s message, or a legislative agenda that goes beyond the basic todo list.
“I’m not sure that they (party leaders) have the plan, but I think they will have the plan,” said Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-idaho, adding that he would like Republicans to hyperfocus on job creation and energy independence — two areas where Republicans can draw policy distinctions with the White House.
The House returns Jan. 17 to Washington, and the Senate returns Jan. 23, a day before Obama’s State of the Union Address. The 242 House Republicans will travel to Baltimore next week for their annual three-day conference in which they will try to map out both legislative and political strategy for 2012 to combat Obama’s message that Republican obstruction is why compromise was elusive in last year’s efforts to address the debt, revamp entitlement programs including Medicare, and enacting a deficit-reduction package through the “supercommittee.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA., has mapped out an initial legislative program for the first quarter of the year. The initial focus of Congress will be a full-year extension through 2012 of a payroll tax break and unemployment benefits before the current extension expires at the end of February.
Congress is also working on a Federal Aviation Authority bill that would implement new technologies for the nation’s air-traffic-control system, and House Republicans will move a bill to fund the nation’s highway and infrastructure projects, but that bill is a non-starter in the Democratic Senate because it pays for the bill by authorizing expanding energy production by drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Additionally, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-wis., is expected to unveil his budget outlining Republican priorities before Easter, and the House is expected to move legislation in the spring to overhaul how Congress handles the annual budget process.
In terms of sweeping proposals, Republicans are coming up short. Boehner told USA TODAY that he would like the House this year to focus on overhauling the federal tax code.
“I think you’ll see us spend an awful lot of time and effort on the issue of tax reform,” Boehner said, but leadership aides, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record about strategy, concede that the House is unlikely to move an overhaul of the tax code because it is politically unwise to put their members on the line to vote for a package that stands no chance of becoming law with Democrats in control in the White House and Senate. The parties remain so starkly divided on taxes that compromise before Election Day appears unfeasible.
While 2012 will focus heavily on the presidential election, House Republicans — particularly those elected in the 2010 wave fueled by the Tea Party movement — are not content to take a backseat role to keep the spotlight on Obama. Some even believe it is politically dangerous to do so.
“I hear that (idea) every single day at every single Republican meeting, and I think that’s the biggest mistake we could make,” said freshman Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., who conceded that 2012 is unlikely to be a productive year in terms of legislative output, but that Republicans need to use the year to build public support to bolster their agenda.
“If we don’t take the election process as an opportunity to build a mandate for our agenda, how do we expect the public to buy it in 2013?” he said.