“Shared sacrifice is very important if we’re all going to get some of these difficult things done.”
WASHINGTON, DC – Three of the newest members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee appeared before a meeting of The Ripon Society Tuesday evening to discuss the ongoing effort on Capitol Hill to reach an agreement on a budget reconciliation package and some of the other top priorities they are working on this year.
The members were Congressman Derek Schmidt (KS-02), Congressman Brad Knott (NC-13), and Congressman Michael Baumgartner (WA-05).
Schmidt – who already has 22 years of public service under his belt from his time in the Kansas State Legislature and as Kansas’ 44th Attorney General – started the conversation by reflecting on his transition back into public service.
“I’m still in the phase, and I hope I’ll never lose this, where I think of most policy issues, especially in the Judiciary Committee, from a state perspective. It’s just how my brain works after all of those years. We all bring our own experience, and that’s helpful when the system actually works, and you can exchange ideas, and talk about things, and hopefully shape policy based on that. It’s really healthy when we all come from a different perspective and we can kind of blend that together.”
The fifth-generation Kansan then delved into the hard work that comes along with the reconciliation process – which he believes needs to be Congress’ top priority.
“We’re here at a special time. It is not very often that there is a trifecta. Not that everything is partisan, but there are tools that you can use when you have partisan control that as a practical matter, simply are not available to you when you don’t have it. The reality is, things like reconciliation are simply not as a practical matter available if you don’t have tripartite control.
“Everything probably needs to take a back seat until we give reconciliation its shot. I believe we’ll get passed and then we can move along to other things. But if we don’t do that, then we will have abandoned functionally or risked undercutting the use in a very narrowly divided pair of bodies a rarely available tool to a Republican majority. So I bear that in mind all the time. And as we’re looking at reconciliation pieces, we all have our own constituencies that we represent. I said to a member of our leadership the other day — and I said it with great affection and love, and in all fairness, I said it on the floor in front of a member of the New York delegation – but I did point out that our friends in New York have been very effective in driving pieces of the conversation.
“Shared sacrifice is very important if we’re all going to get some of these difficult things done. And the rest of us do have opinions on some of these issues, we just perhaps don’t express them as loudly or with as many hardly drawn lines. I say all of that just to make this point: the moment is special. We will either look back on this two-year period, or maybe four-year period, or who knows, but we will look back on this period, and we will say one of several things. We’ll either say we were there in a moment America made great progress on big difficult issues that were kicked down the road for a very long time and not addressed.”
Knott, an undefeated federal prosecutor hailing from the Tar Heel State, added that it was his time as a federal prosecutor that shaped the foundation that he is “hoping to launch from in Congress.”
“From my job, what I saw as something that must be tackled quickly is – it’s not a recent problem, it’s really a problem that’s been cultivated my entire life – the open border. All I saw all day, every day, was horrible, graphic, grotesque crime that was in large part promulgated and certainly made worse by illegal immigration. I see that as a real threat to the country. There’s been very little appetite to address it in a comprehensive, all-encompassing way. I certainly have ideas as to how to do that. That’s one of the reasons why I came to Congress.”
Knott then shared his second reason for joining Congress – the need to protect Americans from an overbearing administrative state that creates rules with criminal penalties without congressional approval.
“The second reason I came to Congress is the entrenchment of the administrative state. As a federal prosecutor, I was very familiar with how the Department of Justice works, how it can absolutely destroy somebody with just a blink of an eye. … That’s absolutely frightening. … It restricts the freedom that we take for granted, and it’s something that we have got to flip quickly if we’re going to continue to innovate, to grow, to move and to operate as America, as Americans typically have.”
“And then third,” Knott continued, “the reason why I came to Congress is the deficit and the debt. Taking $2 trillion away from my children every year as a federal government, is something that is just flatly untenable. Reconciliation is taking up all the oxygen. No question about it. And if we don’t get that fixed, there will be some event in the future to what Derek alluded to. We will look back and say, ‘I wish we had tried harder. I wish we had had a more creative approach. I wish we had been more serious with the problem.’ That was no surprise to anybody, and that’s why I’m here.”
The final speaker of the night was Baumgartner, who had previously worked in the State Department overseas, the Washington State Senate, and in local government as a county treasurer.
“What a special time to come in with the tripartite situation that we have here. My only regret is that … I wish I was a little more seasoned, had a little more experience on the ground for this moment in time, because there’s a lot of big things going on, and some of it, quite frankly, as a freshman, you’re kind of watching and wish you had a little bit bigger, impact on.”
The Evergreen State lawmaker then shared his unique perspective as an effective legislator who was able to champion major Republicans wins – such as reduce the state’s college tuition by twenty percent – in a state that is largely dominated by the Democratic party.
“We had the majority in the state senate for six to eight years. I said, ‘Look, we can’t meet the Democrats in the K-12 spending war. We should go fight on another hill.’ And that’s why we did that tuition reduction strategy.
“Reagan said color in bright, bold lines. And so, I think about the asymmetric opportunities here, that we can look for in this fascinating, multi-part, conversation going on with the White House and the other folks.”
To view the remarks of Schmidt, Knott, and Baumgartner before The Ripon Society Tuesday evening, please click the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.