Boehner, House GOP getting things done

Ohio native Orville Wright once described how he and his brother Wilbur pioneered human flight by saying, “If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.”  That same approach is critical to get things done in Washington when conventional wisdom says nothing can get done.

House Speaker John Boehner, another leading Ohioan, and the House Republican leadership have shown what can happen when you refuse to accept the myth that Washington can’t work for working Americans.  In just six months they’ve achieved successes that even recently would have been considered impossible – and their approach is laying the groundwork for even more.

{mosads}The new Congress began work on January 6 with an enhanced Republican majority in the House and a partner Republican majority in the Senate.  Just over two months later, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, a House-led effort to strengthen Medicare.  Even the New York Times hailed it as “a rare chance to solve a long-festering problem.”  In two months Boehner and House Republicans led the most significant entitlement reform in two decades.

Just a month later, with the ink on historic entitlement reform barely dry, the House passed a budget that put the nation on a path to eliminate the deficit in a decade.  That vote led the way for the passage of the first concurrent budget resolution in six years.  Under House Republican leadership, Congress was once again performing its most basic duty – and doing it in a fiscally responsible way.

Most recently House GOP leadership was on display in the debate over Trade Promotion Authority.  Empowering any president with additional authority is a sensitive issue for Congress and it is particularly difficult with a sitting president who has often abused his executive power.  What made it an even bigger challenge this time was this particular president’s inability to lead his own party to support this pro-jobs bill.

Not only did Democrats fail to respond to the president’s calls for their votes, they actively worked to sink the legislation and it looked like they were going to succeed.  Once again, House Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team stepped up and led the way when many thought it couldn’t be done.

By growing support among House Republicans and developing a creative strategy to overcome Democrat opposition – and with no effective support from the White House — Speaker Boehner delivered one of the most significant pieces of jobs legislation in recent memory.

Of course the House also has a new and energetic partner in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his colleagues in the Republican majority.  McConnell has shown that under the right leadership the Senate can work as well and the GOP majority there has joined with the House to get things done.

These two leaders have produced real, significant accomplishments.  All of them took place within the first six months of an enhanced Republican majority and in a town that had largely given up on the idea that meaningful legislation could be enacted into law.

For their part, Boehner and his leadership team produced these results by actively choosing to avoid that cynicism.  They sought ways to take conservative policy solutions and build bipartisan support to get them passed.  They supported debate across the spectrum in the House but they have also made clear that Republican majority will set the rules to ensure the House can function properly.  That leadership approach has succeeded and shows why there’s hope for more progress.

The Wright brothers achieved great things by refusing to accept that the way things are is the way they must be.  Under Speaker Boehner and his leadership team, the House of Representatives has taken the same approach to legislating and is producing results once thought next to impossible – with much more yet to come.

Pryce served in the House from 1993-2008.   As the House Republican Conference Chairman (2003-2006), she was the fourth-highest ranking member of Congress and the highest-ranking Republican woman in the history of the House.