Do New Committee Posts for Iowa's US House Members Matter?
No, not really, when kabuki theatre is the order of the day.
Iowa’s new US House delegation received their committee assignments for the new Congress. In any normal year, those new appointments would be worth celebrating. This year, however, they are worth maybe a yawn or two, but not much more.
All members of the House are appointed to multiple committees, but Iowa’s all Republican delegation now has what would normally be plum committee assignments in the new Congress.
1st District Mariannette Miller Meeks (R) joins the House Energy and Commerce Committee which drafts public health, energy and telecommunications law, and charts the federal strategy on global warming.
2nd District - Ashley Hinson (R) keeps her Appropriations Committee assignment, the committee that funds federal programs and projects.
3rd District - Zack Nunn (R) join the Agriculture Committee, where a new Farm Bill will be drafted.
4th District - Randy Feenstra (R) now serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax laws, Social Security, Medicare, and the bonded debt of the United States.
In a normal Congress these would be blockbuster assignments for Iowans. In this Congress they don’t amount to much. The focus of this Republican controlled House will be elsewhere. This US House isn’t interested in solving problems for the American people. What the Republicans who run the place now are interested in is putting on a show.
In order for new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s to win his razor thin victory in the Speaker’s race, which took him fifteen ballots to win, he had to make multiple, secret, backroom deals with members of his party’s “crazy caucus” that ensure that little will come from any legislation the House actually manages to pass over the next two years.
He turned the keys over to the House’s most extreme members which makes it impossible for the House to do any meaningful work. Anything it is likely to pass will almost certainly fail in the US Senate.
For example, the first bill the US House passed in this Congress (on January 9) would repeal new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to modernize its technology and hire some more auditors to go after very wealthy tax cheats. Legislation repealing that much needed update is simply not going to pass the Senate. President Biden has already said he’ll veto it if it somehow does reaches his desk.
It was all an exercise in Republican kabuki theater. A show. House Republicans knew it was going nowhere when they passed it.
Look for the next two years to be years of legislative stalemate as extremists in the House cough up red meat agenda item, after red meat agenda item, for their base and little else.
What they will work to do is neuter the Biden Administration, investigate all sorts of made up scandals, work to cut taxes even more for the wealthy, cut Social Security and Medicare, and generally seek revenge on behalf of their twice impeached and likely soon to be indicted former President Donald Trump.
If you see anything good for Iowa coming out of that extremist agenda, you have a very strong imagination.
By the way, when you hear Republicans talking about how they want to cut “entitlements,” what they are talking about is cutting Social Security and Medicare. Entitlements? Somebody needs to tell them that each of us paid for both Social Security and Medicare. Those are benefits we paid for and earned.
What is most troubling about all this is that Iowa’s all Republican delegation helped make this policy nightmare happen.
They voted for Kevin McCarthy to be Speaker, knowing he made a bundle of secret and dangerous backroom deals to win.
They voted for the rules package that incorporated all of McCarthy’s swampy deals that makes this dystopian outcome inevitable. Less than a handful of Republicans could have stopped it. Iowa’s delegation, had it voted against it, could have stopped it by itself. But it passed with unanimous Republican support - and with the votes of every single one of Iowa’s Republican delegation.
That package promised that the first order of business would be a potentially disastrous stand off over raising the federal debt limit. If the game of chicken Republicans are playing as they hold the debt limit hostage - Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s description of this game, not mine - plays out into a default, it would cost every individual, every family farmer, every factory worker, every small business owner, every corporation, every state government and the federal government trillions of dollars in higher interest rates.
Yet, Iowa’s Republicans voted for the package that sets up this dangerous game of chicken.
That same package set up a committee that will investigate on-going criminal investigations. What could possibly go wrong with that, right?
Iowa’s Republicans voted for it.
McCarthy’s rules package shackled the Office of Congressional Ethics. Most Americans would agree that is an office that needs to be stronger, not weaker, especially those Americans who live in the New York district of Congressman and serial liar George Santos.
Again, Iowa’s Republicans voted for it.
None of Iowa’s US House Republicans objected to Santos being seated in Congress. They have not filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee about him, about neither his lies or his very curious finances. Nor have they objected to Reps. Majorie Taylor Green (R-GA), Scott Perry (R-PA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) being appointed to the House Oversight Committee. All are election denying conspiracy theory pushers and have been linked to key actors and actions in the January 6 insurrection. Three of them, according to the January 6 Committee, sought presidential pardons from Trump for their actions with regard to the attempted coup before he left office: Greene, Perry, and Biggs.
Nothing to see here folks, seems to be the view of Iowa’s all Republican congressional delegation. No wonder they don’t care what happens to the Office of Congressional Ethics.
The new House can’t pass legislation that will be enacted into law, and doesn’t even seem interested in doing that. Iowa’s all Republican delegation seems equally disinterested.
It’s all kabuki theater from here on for the next two years. That and dangerous games that threaten the economy and government’s ability to take action on real problems facing millions of Americans.
Committee assignments don’t amount to much in that environment.
“Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains” is part of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. He began covering politics for his local newspaper when he was 14 and went on to work nearly 40 years in the US House and Senate, in presidential, gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and U.S. House campaigns.
His column features consistently ahead of the curve political analysis, commentary and opinion, as well as colorful stories from his extensive career as a political observer and active participant in America’s political process and government.
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Kabuki Theatre?? And what happens if ( when?) they do something particularly egregious, and we have grown so tired of watching that we fail to make an outcry??