CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 29, 2012 – 9:42 p.m.
Activists Find GOP Agenda Lacking
By Richard E. Cohen, CQ Staff
Some conservative activists are unhappy with the House Republican leadership’s summer floor agenda, finding it short on opportunities to draw sharp contrasts with President Obama and congressional Democrats.
The groups say the plan detailed last week by Majority Leader
Andy Roth, the Club for Growth’s vice president for government affairs, called Cantor’s agenda “disappointing . . . and not conservative enough.”
Groups including Roth’s have held the feet of the new Republican majority to the fire during the 112th Congress, particularly on fiscal issues, and they have made life difficult for House GOP leaders by rejecting any suggestion of compromise with the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in the Senate. They charge that GOP leaders have been too willing to compromise on high-priority issues including taxes and health care.
House GOP leaders have had to try to strike a delicate balance between emphasizing conservative economic themes and showing voters that the majority can run a functional legislative body.
Cantor, R-Va., unveiled a to-do list on May 25 that he said demonstrates the GOP’s focus on job creation and the economy. It includes issues important to conservatives, including repeal of the 2010 health care law and extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.
But representatives of leading conservative groups said they want the House GOP to spend more time spotlighting differences between the two parties in advance of the November elections.
“The House needs to show the American people what the Republican Party stands for and remind them that the Senate hasn’t acted on House-passed legislation,” said Michael A. Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. “The American people must decide what they prefer.”
Needham said Republicans need an agenda that shows they stand for extending the 2001 and 2003 tax rates to avert “Taxmaggeddon” at year’s end. “Focusing on the usual business that fails to show a fundamental contrast [between the two parties] steps on the narrative that Republicans have learned from their past mistakes,” he said.
Roth said Republicans should not be debating “status quo measures” such as extension of surface transportation programs (
Even the GOP’s “message” bills — such as Cantor’s vow to take steps to repeal the health care law — are raising conservative fears that party leaders will compromise and try to retain what some view as popular features of the law.
Roth and other conservatives want House Republicans to hold firmly to repealing the entire heath care overhaul (PL 111-148, PL 111-152) after the Supreme Court’s expected ruling on the measure next month, and to advancing a comprehensive tax overhaul.
The hard line posture of the conservative advocacy groups could pose challenges for party leaders if they are forced to try to balance conflicting objectives, particularly if the powerful contingent of House conservative lawmakers sides with the organizations as they have at pivotal moments over the past 17 months.
Activists Find GOP Agenda Lacking
The leadership’s summer agenda is meant to show that the House can advance legislation without a showdown with the White House and the Senate even as leaders are under pressure from conservatives to draw clear lines between the two parties as the campaigns intensify.
Some conservatives have even objected that the House-passed budget resolution (
Limited Time
Driving conservative activists’ concerns is the lack of time before the elections.
Both chambers will be on vacation the first week of July, and then for five weeks in August and early September before breaking for campaigning sometime in early October.
This week, the House will commemorate Memorial Day by considering the $71.9 billion Military Construction-VA spending bill (
Also on the House schedule are two measures approved unanimously by House committees: an intelligence authorization bill (
As early as next week, the House is likely to consider a more controversial bill (
The House also plans to consider two bills from the Energy and Commerce Committee next month that Republicans have written in response to gasoline price increases early this spring. The Gasoline Regulations Act (
Additional appropriations bills will move to the House floor during June, Cantor wrote to GOP members. He listed the Energy-Water (
When the House returns from its July Fourth recess, the floor agenda will turn more partisan and take up some of the initiatives conservatives are clamoring for, even if none has a chance of becoming law before the elections.
Cantor said that however the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the health care law, the GOP majority will be “prepared to move forward to ensure that the whole unworkable law is fully repealed.”
Another summer showdown is expected when House Republicans move a proposal to extend the expiring 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (PL 107-16, PL 108-27).
Activists Find GOP Agenda Lacking
Obama and many Democratic lawmakers want to allow the tax rate to increase for upper-income taxpayers, which House Minority Leader
Republicans also might move legislation from the Ways and Means Committee designed to show voters their ideas for overhauling the tax code.
Cantor also plans floor action on a “red tape” initiative, which includes a prohibition against “midnight regulations” by agencies at the end of a presidential term.
Cantor said the House may act in July on a version of postal legislation (