As vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state is the highest ranking Republican woman in Congress’ lower chamber. She also happens to be among the most diligent and bold lawmakers in Congress, working directly with House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California.
“CMR” — the shorthand title her top staff uses — is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, with the broadest jurisdiction in Congress and one of only two committees with oversight jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency (the other being the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee).
So she has double leverage as a member of both the House leadership and one of the committees responsible for reining in the EPA, perhaps the most visible of Obama’s out-of-control “bad-boy bureaucracies.”
McMorris Rodgers is known as the champion of the “more-of-everything energy strategy,” much like the economists’ slogan, “the Mix is the Fix”. She favors increasing domestic production of traditional fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, while also increasing production of alternative energies like solar, wind and nuclear power.
She’s also founder of the Congressional Hydropower Caucus, reinvigorating the status of hydroelectric dams in an environmentally romanticized age of “dam busting.”
Last week, during a congressional break known as a “District work week,” I tracked this tough legislator’s meetings with constituents back home in eastern Washington’s 5th Congressional District.
What I saw — through a dizzying succession of cell phone calls, emails, personal interviews and her staff — was McMorris Rodgers charging into a days-long “Jobs and Energy Tour,” a local showcase for her favorite message: The EPA and other federal government agencies are harming America’s economy through agenda-driven, burdensome regulations. She believes we need to get the government out of the way and let our job creators do their jobs.
Her tour stopped first in the little forest town of Colville at the factory of Hearth & Home Technologies, maker of biomass pellets as a form of green technology. She told the gathered businessmen about her battle with the EPA that recently won a decision to take biomass off its list of regulated energy sources for the next three years, and her continuing fight to make the exemption permanent.
In session after session, McMorris Rodgers displayed a phenomenal knowledge of arcane rules such as EPA’s proposed MACT (maximum attainable control technology) on cement, which is so strict that not one cement plant in the nation can comply. If the rule becomes final as proposed, it would spell the end of major construction activities in America.
Her alternative is the Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act, a bill she co-sponsored and that passed the full House Wednesday, which requires regulators to consider compliance costs, the feasibility of implementation, the availability of equipment, suppliers, and labor, and potential net employment effects, among other practical factors the EPA rarely thinks about.
Her last district workday featured a Regulatory Roundtable in Spokane, where she mostly listened and took notes.
McMorris Rodgers wears the mantle of power lightly. She is considerate when discussing issues she clearly regards as more than just politics, things she holds more dearly, like a moral imperative, but without self-righteousness or dogmatism. When she says, “It’s simple, really. I’m a fighter for jobs and the economy,” it’s easy to believe her.
She also knows how to work in a bipartisan fashion. Earlier this week, President Obama submitted three proposed free-trade agreements to Congress and asked for quick action to approve them.
While other Republicans sat on their hands, McMorris Rodgers said, “In Washington state, one out of every three jobs is tied to international trade. Free trade is a fundamental component of the House Republicans’ Plan for America’s Job Creators, which, if enacted, will create nearly 250,000 new jobs at a time when our country needs it most.”
Her attitude is much the same when the focus is on projects in a Democrat-held district. McMorris Rodgers supports construction of a multimillion-dollar, multicommodity terminal — the Gateway Pacific Terminal, funded with private money — near Bellingham, Wash. The political benefits will go to a Democratic colleague, Rep. Rick Larsen.
But she supports the project solidly. Like she said: “It’s simple, really. I’m a fighter for jobs and the economy.”
Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
