Joe Scarborough: “I don’t expect to be cheering House Republicans anytime soon”

Remember a time…

“The opening days of the 105th Congress in January 1997 show how little interest Gingrich had in fighting Big Government. Upon being re-elected as Speaker, Newt Gingrich gave an acceptance speech based on promoting on what he envisioned as the new “great mission” for Republicans: Saving poverty-stricken children from hopelessness, violence, ignorance, racism, and drugs. Gone were the calls for a smaller government. Gone were the acknowledgements that the federal welfare state with its barracks-like public housing projects and top-heavy education bureaucracy was the biggest impediment to economic and social advancement for inner-city youth.

The lack of a conservative agenda led Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal to wonder if the Republican centerpiece for the next two years was a “Contract with Ambivalence.” Joe Scarborough of Florida, then a sophomore congressman, summed up the feelings of the hard-charging freshman class of 1994: “Quite a few members are obviously concerned over the direction that the leadership has taken in these first three months. We have a concern that our leadership remains shell-shocked from the government shutdown a year and a half ago. Most of us are ready for them to start leading again rather than sitting back and reading from Clinton’s song sheet.”

The first of many battles between Gingrich and the budget-cutters was over the funding for House committees. A bill the Speaker was pushing would have reversed the hard-won cuts of the previous year. In fact, the legislation would have trashed a key element of the Contract with America: in 1995, when the House cut congressional committee funding by a third, House leaders touted it as one of the first Contract promises kept.

Resist We Much on February 13, 2013 at 10:09 AM