Scott Garrett U.S. Representative for New Jersey’s 5th congressional district, senior member of the House Budget Committee
Republicans take the reins in Congress with Commanding Majorities
By Alexander Bolton – 01/05/15 06:00 AM EST
It’s game time for Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
For the first time since 2006, Congress is convening this week under full GOP control, with McConnell (Ky.) reaching the pinnacle of Senate majority leader and Boehner (Ohio) poised to win a third term as Speaker.
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With a 54-46 majority in the Senate, and an expanded majority in the House, Republicans are under pressure to deliver on their promises and move a raft of legislation to President Obama’s desk in the first few months of the year.
But in order to achieve that goal, McConnell and Boehner will need to unify their troops around a shared agenda — a task that will begin in earnest later this month, when House and Senate Republicans will hold a joint retreat in Hershey, Pa., to prepare for what one GOP aide described as the “frictions that will inevitably arise.”
Right off the bat, Boehner will have to deal with the political fallout from the revelation that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002, which has cast a cloud over the new session. The Chicago Tribune and conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer have called on Scalise, the No. 3 ranking House Republican, to step down.
Boehner has stood behind Scalise, putting his clout on the line ahead of Tuesday’s vote for Speaker. Defections are expected, but Boehner can afford to lose up to 28 Republicans before the Speaker vote would go to a second ballot.
Once the pageantry of Congress’s opening days is through, Republican leaders are hoping to get off to a fast start.
McConnell and Boehner, who consult weekly, set the tone after the midterm elections with an agenda that emphasizes jobs and the economy.
“That means a renewed effort to debate and vote on the many bills that passed the Republican-led House in recent years with bipartisan support, but were never even brought to a vote by the Democratic Senate majority,” Boehner and McConnell wrote in a joint op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
The bicameral retreat, meanwhile, will give House and Senate Republicans an opportunity to coordinate their strategy for 114th Congress, which is likely to be dominated as time goes on by the politics of the 2016 presidential race.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/228410-republicans-take-the-reins
Boehner has no clout worst speaker ever from either party cannot control his own troops.
I’m guessing that you must be about 15. Every single member of the House and Senate works for his constituents. They each wheel and deal based upon a basic political ideal, but also upon what they can trade on. It’s basically a barter system. This is how it has always been. No House or Senate leader has EVER been able to “control his troops” whereby they vote lock-step with the party.
May be a majority but not enough to over ride a veto.
#2 you only have to go back to Newt Gingrich whose party was in the minority to see how effective one can be.
Gingrich certainly did come close to what he saw as a (British) Westminster-style system of majority rule. However, that still required a lot of trade-offs within his own party. Every single vote in Congress is made based upon a system of barter.
I wish newt would run for president
if #1 is 15, #2 must be about 7
Wrong again!
Garrett just voted for someone other than John Boehner for Speaker.
Scott Garrett , “With a new Republican majority in the Senate, a large number of my constituents have called on me to demand new leadership in the House. I hear you, and I agree. Accordingly, I support Representative Daniel Webster for the role of Speaker of the House.”
The only way Boehner could have been dislodged from the Speaker’s chair would have been for thirty GOP-affiliated members to hold a press conference to demand that Boehner withdraw his name from consideration for Speaker, and assert a non-negotiable intention to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker if Boehner refused to withdraw. This was not done, and now we have the crying Cheeto as Speaker once again. FOOLS!
It’s all over but for the crying