By now, I imagine most of you have probably seen the news – I voted against giving my colleague John Boehner another term as Speaker of the House. As a consequence, I was removed from the House Rules Committee. A lot of people have asked if I was surprised by that. In truth, I wasn’t. The conventional wisdom (going back a couple hundred years) is that you just don’t vote against a sitting speaker. The person in that job is one of the most powerful people in the country and it’s generally not advisable to pick a fight you won’t win.
Nevertheless, that conventional wisdom kind of depends on what kind of legislator you want to be in Congress. In other words, do you want to be the ‘cooperate to graduate’ type or are you willing to make some sacrifices to give yourself the freedom to speak your mind? It’s not an easy question for a lot of people, I suppose. But at the end of the day, it is a question that has to be answered by each and every one of us.
As I said to him privately this week, I don’t believe that John Boehner is the best man for the job. This may surprise some people (including the Speaker) but it has far more to do with his leadership abilities than it does with his conservatism. What I mean by that is that if you can’t lead and you can’t deliver, then your own personal political philosophy is pretty much irrelevant. I’ve gone into far more detail about this criticism with him privately than I will here, but suffice it to say that there have been far too many occasions over the last four years where the House has been ineffective and America just can’t wait any longer. America needs vision, a sense of purpose, and an ability to follow through. We aren’t getting those things.
As much as you’ve heard me rail against the Senate for failing to pass a budget and corresponding appropriations bills, I couldn’t tell you, as of today, what the Speaker’s expectation is for budgeting in Congress this year. Are we going to do the hard work we’ve been calling on the Democrats in the Senate to do? Or are we going to hide from tough votes just as they have? I don’t know the answer to that question and that’s a real problem for me. I don’t know what the Speaker plans to do about the devastating automatic cuts to our military. I don’t know if he’ll push forward with reforming our tax code as we’ve promised to do. I don’t know and I suspect he doesn’t know. That’s a problem for me.
There is also a real problem with follow-through when decisions are made. Last year, the Speaker announced that we would be taking the President to court over his executive overreach. The House promptly passed legislation authorizing that lawsuit. Months later, it became clear that the lawsuit was never actually filed. No explanation was given.
And what’s worse than not following through on a decision? Failing to make a decision in the first place. It shouldn’t take a year and a half to decide whether or not to appoint a “select committee” to investigate Benghazi. Do it or don’t do it. But don’t sit there dithering for eighteen months talking about how “we’re going to get to the bottom of this”.
And although they rarely make national news, there are basic (and repeated) tactical failures as well. Just this week, on one of the very first pieces of legislation, the Speaker was duped by Democrats who had pledged to support a jobs bill and then pulled that support at the last minute. Without getting too “inside baseball” about it, this sort of thing just shouldn’t happen. Once every couple of years, sure, even the best vote counters can get the count wrong. But this happens regularly to the Speaker and no matter how many times it does, they don’t seem to learn the lessons. Far too often, they just throw things on the floor and assume the support is there for their work product to pass it. There’s precious little input that gets taken ahead of time.
Like a lot of my colleagues, I want to see legislation passed. If you don’t pass anything, then you can’t change the policies you have problems with. So when we vote against something, it’s usually for a pretty good reason. Those reasons, on far too many occasions, aren’t considered ahead of time. We share them, but they don’t take it seriously. The bill fails on the floor (usually before a critical deadline) and they have to scramble to figure it out. It’s sloppy and it doesn’t yield a very good work product.
I could go on and on about this, but frankly I’ve stayed pretty quiet this week and there’s a reason why I didn’t do interviews and TV appearances. This newsletter, in fact, is really the first time I’m spelling it all out for the public.
In short, (and not all of my colleagues feel this way) you don’t run to the newspapers and talk disparagingly about a colleague without first having the decency to say it to his face. It took a few days to have that opportunity, but in the end, we sat privately and I let him know exactly why I voted against him. What you’ve seen here is an “executive summary” of those criticisms. The rest, Speaker Boehner has heard I hope he takes it to heart. I really do.
Regardless of the policy disagreements I may have with my colleagues from time to time, I think most of them genuinely have their heart in the right place. Even the most staunchly liberal colleagues of mine I think push the views they do because they genuinely think their policies are best for America. Clearly they’re wrong, but that doesn’t make them bad people. In other words, I don’t doubt people’s character or their intentions just because I disagree with them. But I also don’t follow people aimlessly just because they have a title over their office door. Respect has to be earned and it has to be continually earned. I can respect the man and certainly the office he holds, but I would be lying if I said I respected his leadership. He simply hasn’t earned it. And if I feel that way and I don’t do anything about it, then who am I to talk, really?
U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent represents The Villages in Congress.
