GOP Leader Blog

Still Outnumbered in DC, GOP Governors-Elect & Hill Leaders to Unify in Support of Spending Cuts, Job Creation
Posted by Kevin Boland on November 30, 2010
Tomorrow, House Speaker-designate John Boehner (R-OH) will host a summit with the nation’s newly-elected Republican governors to discuss jobs, cutting spending, and repealing the job-killing health care law.  As the New York Times noted yesterday, “They’ll chat about jobs (everyone wants more), the health care law (everyone wants less) and other reforms that Mr. Boehner says could just as easily come from [sic] the states as from Washington, where he is about to enjoy a Republican majority in the House.”

Leader Boehner and Congressional Republicans understand that the best ideas often don’t come from Washington, as NPR reported recently:
If the phrase ‘inside the beltway’ has ever been more of a way to disparage a Washington out-of-touch with the rest of the country, it's hard to remember when.  Which helps to explain why Republicans have made it a point to consistently emphasize that they're getting their ideas not from within the political hothouse of Washington, but from the grassroots, including the Tea Party movement.  They know voters don't like it when they think their politicians are ignoring them which in American history happens with regularity.  In that vein, House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) is scheduled to host on Wednesday what his office is calling a summit for new Republican governors.
This is not the first time congressional Republicans and GOP governors have collaborated.  In 2009, Boehner started the State Solutions project to bring reform-minded Republicans across America together to promote beyond-the-Beltway solutions to the challenges facing families and small businesses.  As The Hill noted yesterday: “Boehner's made efforts to bring GOP governors together with congressional Republicans… When Boehner hosted a press conference on Capitol Hill following the election, both McConnell and Republican Governors Association Chairman Haley Barbour (Miss.) were on hand.”  

And a report in National Journal noted that:
Boehner wants to harness ideas and reformist passions from GOP governors to reduce spending, weed out earmarks, and pick apart the health care law, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of stimulus spending and find ways to block or return obligated stimulus funds that haven't been spent.

Boehner's office says he envisions a collaborative effort with the Republican governors that will be similar to one that resulted in pushing through the 1996 welfare reforms. GOP governors played a big role in the Newt Gingrich-led 1995 Congress, fashioning a welfare reform compromise that President Clinton eventually signed….Of the governors who will attend, two were part of the GOP-led Congress that pressed a center-right reformist agenda in 1995-96 – Kasich and Brownback. Branstad was governor of Iowa at the time and also contributed to Republican reforms enacted by the 104th Congress.
Leader Boehner, a former state legislator, understands that “Washington doesn’t have all the answers, and the best solutions usually come from outside the Beltway,” as he put it in a statement yesterday.

Governors-elect expected to attend tomorrow’s summit include Robert Bentley (AL), Rick Scott (FL), Terry Branstad (IA), Sam Brownback (KS), Paul LePage (ME), Rick Snyder (MI), Brian Sandoval (NV), Susana Martinez (NM), John Kasich (OH), Mary Fallin (OK), Tom Corbett (PA), Nikki Haley (SC), Dennis Daugaard (SD), Bill Haslam (TN) and Matt Mead (WY).  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Majority Leader-elect Eric Cantor (R-VA), and other congressional Republicans are also expected to participate.
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