Mark Walker, one of the leading conservatives in Congress, appreciates President Trump’s approach to governing. Thinking like a CEO is healthy and provides a welcome change to business as usual in Washington, Rep. Walker, R-N.C., told the Washington Examiner in a lengthy interview at our offices.
“But there’s always a board of directors,” Walker insists, “and in this case, that’s members of Congress.” At least, that’s supposed to be the business model.
Just two weeks into the Trump administration, GOP leadership has largely let Trump have his way while the GOP base has cheered. The Republican Study Committee, 170-member conservative caucus in the House, of which Walker is the chairman, may be the only board members still capable of checking the large ambitions of the new executive.
With the competing visions of crusading economic populism and free-enterprise small-government conservatism, the administration and the RSC seem like they’re set on a collision course. Trump needs Congress to underwrite his big, bold agenda while Walker doesn’t plan on signing blank checks.
“We have foreseeable challenges and great opportunities that lie ahead,” Walker told a recent meeting of the Washington Examiner’s editorial board. “But we are ready. If we are smart and forward looking, we will prevail.”
There’s reason for Walker’s optimism. The RSC is designed for the job. Founded as a counterweight to President Nixon, the committee has served as the conservative conscience of Congress since 1973. With around 170 members, it’s the biggest caucus on Capitol HIll. And while the RSC doesn’t always throw its weight around, when it does, the political landscape shifts.
In recent years, President Barack Obama and House Speaker Paul Ryan know this better than most.
When Ryan and the White House agreed last year to advance a $1.07 trillion budget, the RSC scuttled the plan. For ten months they demanded GOP brass trim the fat from the Democratic spending package. The clash brought the House to a halt, spilled over into the presidential election, and even fueled rumors of a leadership coup. In the end, the RSC killed the budget because of $30 billion in increased spending.
In retrospect, that budget fight seems quaint. Compared to what Trump is planning, the cuts the RSC fought over last year are a rounding error.
Will the next eight years see the RSC wage the same budget fights, just against a new president? Or will Trump change the RSC?
For the past eight years, the RSC has railed against growing deficits and ballooning debt. Walker’s group today demands that the next budget will balance. “It’s a line we’re drawing in the sand,” he explains. But the new administration doesn’t seem to care.
Trump promised to put the nation back to work, beginning with a massive infrastructure overhaul that could cost as much as $1 trillion. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon described it as a centerpiece of his “economic nationalist movement,” one that he acknowledged would make conservatives “go crazy.” Should the plan materialize, it would rival FDR’s New Deal and require borrowing that would make Obama blush.
Walker says Trump won’t easily get RSC members on board for a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. “It would be difficult to get there, it really would.” Walker said. “I mean, what was it? Schumer, they wanted, what, $600-$650 [billion]? And we said no to that.”
Without details of Trump’s plan, Walker wouldn’t make any firm stances. Still, it seems a clash is coming. “We’re not just gonna pass everything that either comes out of the Senate or this administration if it’s irresponsible,” he insists. As proof, Walker points to the budget his committee is busy writing.
If past versions of that document are any indication, the RSC and administration will soon find themselves crossways. Last year’s RSC budget prescribed deep spending cuts to the tune of $100 billion. What’s more, they called for increasing the eligibility requirements for both Social Security and Medicare, an idea that Trump attacked on the campaign trail.
On other issues, the RSC already seems to be moving from Reaganism to Trumpism. Look at Walker’s talk on trade. Trump ran against the long-time conservative position of low tariffs and freer trade. Conservatives, including much of the RSC, had already shown resistance to trade pacts under Obama. Walker suggests this trade skepticism will continue.
Walker said the Trans-Pacific Partnership worried him because it didn’t equalize regulatory standards. “What I don’t want us to do is continue that mindset where we are putting one set of standards of regulatory and compliance issues on our own manufacturers” while “we allow them to do free reign of whatever it might be.”
Demanding our trading partners have the same labor and environmental standards before we take down tariffs, is, in practice, pledging to keep up the tariffs. Walker also suggested he wants trade policy to equalize trade flows: “a $60 billion [trade] deficit a year with Mexico, that’s something to take a look at.”
These sorts of qualifications on “free trade,” make the trade no longer “free trade.” Perhaps it’s just Walker’s roots in historically protectionist North Carolina. But the protectionist murmurs have been growing among House Republicans for eight years.
President Trump may be more reviled than ever among the media class and among Democrats, but his big-government nationalism seems at the instant to have broader appeal than the RSC’s limited-government conservatism. RSC members know this, and so they are looking at two years of potential Trumpian pressure from both 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and from voters back home.
As Trump possibly remakes the GOP, the RSC will be a key force to watch. Will this army of House conservatives, with its central pillars of smaller government and free enterprise, clash with Trump’s big-government populism? Or will they follow the example of Speaker Ryan, who has found ways to cheer on Trump’s market meddling?
As the chairman of the largest caucus in the House, Walker has a prime seat in that proverbial board room, and Trump can’t fire the RSC. What will Walker and his conservative crew do with their position?
This story has been updated.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
