Rep. Jason Smith, 42, is the youngest chairman ever of the oldest congressional panel, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Missouri Republican plans to use his powerful perch to lead oversight of President Joe Biden’s administration while trying to bolster GOP ties to working-class America.
Smith, who has represented the southeastern Missouri 8th Congressional District since winning a June 2013 special election, helms a committee that was founded in 1789 during the first Congress and remains the go-to panel for legislation covering tax, trade, healthcare, and other issues. As chairman, Smith assumes a role once held on the Republican side by future President William McKinley and future House Speaker Paul Ryan (WI) — and Democratic “old bulls” who helped rule the House for decades, such as the late Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (IL) and retired Rep. Charles Rangel (NY).
Smith succeeds Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) as chairman of House Ways and Means. Neal, who, over the past two years, led committee Democrats in making public some of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, will be the ranking member on Ways and Means and a likely foil against Smith and committee Republicans, who plan to push bills long favored by Republicans, even though anything passed through the narrow, 222-213 GOP House majority is virtually certain to face a buzzsaw of opposition in the Democratic-majority Senate and by Biden.
Smith’s overarching goal is to make the committee and its policymaking more accessible to workers across the country. That includes overseeing investigations and holding a litany of hearings, including what Republicans call abuses by the Internal Revenue Service.
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Then, there’s the daunting battle between Republicans and the White House and Democrats over the federal debt limit, which will start in the Ways and Means Committee. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says her department will, within months, run out of accounting tricks to prevent the United States from bumping up against the debt ceiling — effectively the nation’s credit card to finance the national debt, now more than $31 trillion. Biden has said he won’t negotiate with House Republicans on their sought spending cuts, raising questions about a first-ever U.S. default on its debt, which could have catastrophic global financial consequences.
Tough chairmanship fight
Smith faced some tough competition when he expressed his desire to lead the Ways and Means Committee. While most of the House’s committee chairs were clear well before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) earned the gavel in the early morning hours of Jan. 7 after 15 rounds of voting by lawmakers, Ways and Means was still in contention. The race pitted Smith against GOP Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida and Adrian Smith of Nebraska. After no candidate received a majority vote on the Republican Steering Committee’s first ballot, Adrian Smith was cut, and Jason Smith bested Buchanan on the second ballot.
The former House Budget Committee ranking member told the Washington Examiner in an interview that he and his team are ready to hit the ground running and have several goals for Ways and Means this year.
“Usually, you can plan and work to set a committee up in eight weeks. We did it in 16 hours,” he said.
Smith emphasized his blue-collar upbringing and desire to use his role to relate to the country’s working class. He said his own life experiences lend credence to his goals.
“I grew up my entire life in a working-class background. I lived in a single-wide trailer for most of my life, and then we upgraded to a double-wide,” Smith said. “My dad was an auto mechanic, and my mother was a factory worker, so I am a product of the working class, and I represent, by definition, a working-class community.”
Smith’s district is one of the poorest in the nation but is also one of the most conservative. The late broadcaster and entertainer Rush Limbaugh was born and raised in Cape Girardeau, now with a population of about 40,000.
Smith’s vision for economic policy is embracing the notion that the Republican Party is the party of the working class. That’s a major change from decades past, one accelerated by Trump’s campaigns.
“The top priorities are delivering for working-class families, farmers, and small businesses. And we need to do that within the tax code. We need to make sure that we address issues that affect all of them,” Smith said.
Among the items for Republicans to help the working class be more prosperous? Smith cited energy independence, food security, and healthcare security. He said the tax code and trade policies should be used to protect strategic supply chains for energy, food, and healthcare.
Smith said he also thinks that a priority of any welfare program should be incentivizing work. There should be work requirements for able-bodied adults, he said.
Smith will undoubtedly use his position to conduct aggressive oversight of the Biden administration and federal agencies. One perk of being in the House majority when the president is of the opposing party is that congressional committees can hold up a magnifying glass to the White House. And such aggressive oversight is something that will be on the menu for Ways and Means, Smith said.
“I want answers. I want to know about the fraud that is in the unemployment in the pandemic relief,” Smith said, promising to call officials up to the panel on a litany of different points of inquiry.
“I want to know why there were thousands of taxpayers’ information that was leaked over a year ago, the same week this administration so [happened to be] trying to push a tax policy to increase taxes on those same people that had their tax info released,” Smith said.
Smith was referring to the now-infamous ProPublica leak in 2021, when the investigative nonprofit organization released details about the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, a leak so expansive it covered some 15 years. The leak, the source of which hasn’t yet been released, has bolstered the GOP’s resolve against giving more money to the IRS.
Republicans have actively worked to limit IRS funding, especially in the fallout of the controversy over the tax agency’s admission in 2013 that it had targeted conservative nonprofit organizations for added scrutiny. So, in a sense, the leak reopened old wounds and mistrust for the agency.
And the IRS is also top of mind for Smith as he adjusts to his new office and title.
Broadening the committee agenda
One new concept that Smith hopes to champion is holding field hearings. That is, having lawmakers leave the confines of Capitol Hill and hear from “real Americans” in different locations across the country. He hopes the committee will glean information about what does and doesn’t work with the tax code and trade policy. Smith also recently announced the launch of an online portal for IRS employees to report malfeasance directly to Congress.
“Protecting the American worker is a priority of mine, and it’s a priority of this conference,” Smith said. “I want the solutions to come from real America, not from ivory towers.”
With Democrats in control of both the White House and the Senate, there is a limited amount of legislation that will be able to be turned into law until at least 2025, though Smith said that he is ready and willing to work with members on the other side of the aisle to get some things done.
“I’ve had great conversations with my counterparts over in the U.S. Senate, both on the Republican and Democratic sides. I’ve had great conversations with Democratic colleagues of mine in the House,” he said. “I think that when we’re looking at tax policy like what I outlined — that is, going to help working-class families and small businesses — I think we can find some common ground.”
He specifically cited tax policies that ensure the U.S. has food and healthcare security. He said he even thinks that some Democrats will be able to work with his party on energy security.
“Whether it’s [research and development], whether it’s the child tax credit — there are numerous things where I think we can find common ground,” Smith said.
The topic du jour as the new session of Congress began was the federal debt limit. The U.S. has never defaulted on its obligations in the history of these fiscal showdowns. Republicans see the deadline as an opportunity to exact concessions from the Biden administration and Democrats.
“I do not want a default, Republicans do not want a default, and surely Democrats do not want a default,” Smith said. He accused Biden of using the opportunity to attack his political opponents and said, rather, Biden should be spending his time working with House Republicans to “address the debt ceiling in a way that imposes some fiscal sanity.”
Smith asserted this is a prime opportunity because some of the best fiscal reforms since 1985 have come tied to the debt limit. “I am welcoming and asking for him to work with us,” said Smith of Biden. The congressman said he has already had some “very constructive” conversations with House Democrats about the debt limit.
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Smith said that Republicans on the committee are ready and eager to take control and start addressing the debt ceiling and all of the other matters at hand.
“Everyone is excited, we’re glad to have the majority, and we’re glad to help deliver for working-class Americans,” Smith said.
