Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has some words of wisdom for House leaders as they prepare to govern with a reduced GOP majority in January: “Include everybody.”
Few politicians understand how to wrangle a small majority like DeLay, R-Texas, who ran the House whip operation in the number-three leadership position during the 107th Congress (2001-2003), when Republicans held a tiny advantage.
“We were down to a five-vote margin,” DeLay recalled in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Despite a reputation for arm-twisting that earned him the nickname “The Hammer,” DeLay insists that isn’t how he helped keep the party in line. “People think I broke arms and threatened the members, but I didn’t,” DeLay said.
The smaller margin in the 107th Congress, which at one point dropped to a one-seat advantage because of vacancies, meant House Republicans needed the backing of nearly every party lawmaker to pass GOP legislation that Democrats unanimously opposed.
DeLay said despite the smaller majority, Republicans were still able to pass significant legislation by bringing bill proposals to the floor and receiving input from the rank and file before introducing the legislation.
Major legislation included a massive tax cut bill, the No Child Left Behind education bill, the original Patriot Act antiterrorism bill and the Sarbanes-Oxley business reform act, among many other measures.
“We’d do a whip check and work with them from writing the bill all the way through the committees and to the floor, taking care of their problems along the way,” DeLay said. “By the time you got to the floor, the members had ownership.”
The House GOP now operates with a 28 seat cushion above the bare minimum they need to keep the majority, so they can lose dozens of Republican votes and still pass a bill without much support from Democrats.
That will change in January, when a slightly smaller majority could become an obstacle to passing GOP bills that do not appeal to the approximately three-dozen conservative lawmakers who belong to the House Freedom Caucus. With six fewer seats projected, the HFC will easily have the numbers to block any bill unless it wins Democratic votes as well, which means DeLay’s advice on how to keep the GOP united could come in handy.
DeLay told the Examiner the House GOP leadership can get ahead of infighting by using the fall and early winter to develop a very specific agenda that includes the ideas and input from everybody in the GOP conference, including the Freedom Caucus.
“We had our factions, too,” DeLay said. “The troublemakers were the moderates. But you bring everybody together and you talk to them, you listen to them and you get a feel for what can be accomplished and what cannot be accomplished.”
DeLay, who served as majority leader from 2003-2005, advised House GOP leaders “set some ground rules,” with the White House, “to let them know the Congress is an equal but separate branch of government and has separate authorities and they are going to exercise them.” But he also said the GOP needs to get specific.
House Republicans earlier this year produced a six-part “Better Way” agenda on healthcare, taxes, foreign policy and the economy. DeLay said the GOP, to avoid party infighting, must now work out more specific legislative goals with the conference to ensure buy-in from everyone.
“The Better Way agenda is a goal,” DeLay said. “We had an agenda and actual bills.”
