By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (above) has taken to praising Sen. Rand Paul’s brand of conservatism in public speeches.
After years of strained cordiality in the Kentucky Senate delegation, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) has forged an unlikely but good rapport with Sen. Rand Paul (R).
At the time that Sen. Jim Bunning (R) retired, he and McConnell hardly spoke, and it looked like Paul might fare no better. The blistering Republican primary for Senate last year saw Paul topple Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, whom McConnell feverishly worked to elect.
But so far, the bitterness of that contest seems not to have spread to Washington, D.C. Continue reading ‘McConnell’s Bond With Paul Untested’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
With the budget, trade and jobs high on Congress’ priority list this year, freshman Sen. Rob Portman’s return to Washington appears almost too well-timed.
The Ohio Republican’s credentials are particularly unusual, and a rundown of the top issues in the House and Senate reads like a list of the problems Portman has spent his career tackling.
As both the former head of the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. trade representative in the Bush administration, Portman frequently worked as a liaison between the legislative and executive branches.
Those who have worked with Portman — whether it was during his tenure in the House or in the administration — expect he will reprise that role in some way in the Senate. Continue reading ‘Portman’s Bio Makes for a Unique Player’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
A year ago, then-candidate Marco Rubio received a megastar welcome when he was introduced by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as a keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference annual gathering in Washington, D.C.
But when CPAC kicks off next week, Florida’s freshman Senator plans to be miles away from the gathering — with Lincoln Day dinners in Miami-Dade and Pinellas counties as the top priorities on his February calendar.
The invitation to address the widely covered conservative meeting is far from the first request Rubio has turned down; it is part of a calculated effort to stay out of the national spotlight as much as possible. Continue reading ‘Rubio’s Strategy: No Spotlight, Yet’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
House Republicans will cut 84 committee slots in the 112th Congress, but most will come from the majority side, GOP leadership sources said Tuesday.
Eight existing minority positions will be eliminated in the 112th Congress, while 76 will be cut from the majority. Although the cuts are relatively small for Democrats, they still pose a problem for outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who already must slice dozens of Members from top committees as Democrats transition into their reduced role as the minority party.
Retirements and re-election losses will do some of the paring for the California Democrat, but she will still be forced to disappoint many junior Members who supported her bid to remain as the top House Democrat, despite losing the majority in the November elections.
Because both parties will have to cut back on the size of the panels, Republicans said the majority-minority ratios will remain about the same as they were in the past two Congresses. Continue reading ‘House GOP Sacrifices 76 Panel Seats, Democrats Lose Eight’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
In the House Republican Conference, Rep. Ron Paul is untouchable.
For a Member who operates as a loner and has ignored his leadership’s directives for years, the Texas Republican is given an amount of leeway rarely allocated to rank-and-file Members, let alone those who stand to hold positions of power in the House.
But most Members don’t have the massive Libertarian following Paul has maintained since his unsuccessful bid for president in 2008.
The most recent evidence of his unusual status came last week, when he was appointed chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. The subcommittee oversees Paul’s nemesis, the Federal Reserve, among other things. Continue reading ‘Grass-Roots Love Protects Ron Paul’
By Jackie Kucinich and Anna Palmer
Roll Call Staff
In anticipation of major GOP gains in next week’s elections, House Republican leaders have put together a list of experienced Washington hands to help fill top staff positions for the surge of newly elected outsiders.
Leading the effort are Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The leaders have put together a list of about 75 to 80 potential chiefs of staff, including current and former Capitol Hill staffers and lobbyists who have been recommended or have inquired about working for an incoming Member, according to several Republicans familiar with the document. Continue reading ‘GOP Wants Insiders To Staff Outsiders; Leaders Recruiting Top Aides for New Members’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Few Congressional candidates get the chance for a rematch less than six months after a loss.
That makes Republican Tim Burns’ strategy of employing the same campaign playbook he used during his unsuccessful bid to replace the late Rep. John Murtha (D) all the more curious.
It has been almost five months since Burns lost the special election to Mark Critz (D), a former Murtha aide. And despite losing by a surprisingly healthy margin, Burns is by and large running the same race all over again. Continue reading ‘For Murtha’s Old Seat, A Surprising Sameness’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
The Republican National Committee has decided against sending Congressional staffers out on the campaign trail for traditional get-out-the-vote efforts, focusing its resources instead on mailings and other last-minute pre-election efforts, the committee confirmed Tuesday.
The RNC traditionally runs the GOTV operation for Capitol Hill, which includes recruiting and registering staff that want to help the GOP at the state level.
But this year the committee canceled the deployment program to cut costs ahead of the midterm elections. Continue reading ‘RNC Kills Program to Deploy Hill Staffers; Traditional Last-Minute Travel to Get Out the Vote Is Deemed Too Costly’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
Republican leaders launched in May an Internet-based initiative to collect public opinion on key issues, saying the effort would lead to a new governing agenda from the party. But when the agenda was revealed last week, only one provision appears to have come solely from that effort.
The rest of the proposals that became part of “A Pledge to America” already existed as a part of other House Republican initiatives or as bills offered by individual Members months before the website was launched.
Only one provision – a proposal to advance major bills one at a time and avoid omnibus legislation Â- seems to have emerged directly from the America Speaking Out website, according to a Roll Call analysis of the agenda.
Continue reading ‘GOP Web Project Contributed Little to Pledge; Most Agenda Ideas Had Already Been Offered’
By Jackie Kucinich
Roll Call Staff
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday his decision to ask former Rep. Mark Souder to resign is an example of his philosophy that Members must be held to a high standard of ethical behavior and can be punished even without breaking a law or House rule.
The Indiana Republican resigned earlier this month after admitting to Boehner that he had an extramarital affair with a staff member.
Boehner told Roll Call that he has spoken to several Members over the last year and a half who, he believed, had done something or came close to doing something unethical.
“I’ve had Members in here where I thought they crossed the line,” such as former Reps. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) and Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), Boehner said during an interview Thursday. “I have had others I thought were approaching the line.” Doolittle and Renzi stepped aside from their committee positions in 2007 after each of them came under federal investigation for unrelated incidents. Renzi faces corruption charges in federal court in Arizona; Doolittle has not been charged.
Continue reading ‘Boehner: Members May Face Penalty Even Without Breaking Rules’