By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A veteran Congressman and a fairly new Congressman who serve our area disagree on what might be the impact of the trouble House Republicans had in finding a new Speaker.
Northern Missouri Congressman Sam Graves, the dean of the Missouri delegation in his 12th term, believes if the new Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, concentrates on the budget, the Farm Bill, and reauthorizing the FAA, the impact will be minimal.
“His priorities align with the majority of the Republican conference,” Graves tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “And so, I don’t think it’s going to have any real impact.”
Eight staunch conservatives broke with the Republican Caucus and joined with Democrats to get rid of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. It took three weeks and four candidates to replace him with Mike Johnson.
Though the selection process drug on and left the House without leadership, Graves doesn’t see much of an impact if the House gets back to work.
“Oh, I think that if we get our work done and we get the appropriations bills completed and completed on time I think the public…they’re going to be happy with that,” Graves says. “I’m not too terribly worried about that.”
Graves places a lot of faith in Johnson.
“Mike’s going to make a great Speaker and I’m very happy to have supported him,” Graves says “He’s a friend. So, I’m looking forward to working with him.”
While supporting Johnson, eastern Kansas Congressman Jake LaTurner is less dismissive of the impact Republican infighting exposed during the outset of McCarthy and the messy process to choose Johnson will have on the party. LaTurner, a Republican in his second term says if the infighting doesn’t end, Republicans will be punished at the polls.
“You can’t act like a school kid. You can’t take your ball and go home just because you don’t like something about a person,” LaTurner tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “You have to keep your eye on the prize and realize why you were hired and it was to come here to do a job.”
LaTurner says the narrow majority Republicans hold in the House of Representatives gives individual members outsized power in pushing their own agendas. LaTurner says Republicans must learn from this.
“You can dislike something about the Speaker personally. You can dislike something about his agenda. And you have every right to voice that. But you should not be willing to bring the government to a standstill,” according to LaTurner.
LaTurner says no single Republican has the right to assert a personal agenda over the good of the country.
“People were frustrated, because we weren’t working," LaTurner says. "The world is on fire and we were not doing our jobs here in the House, because of a few people.”
LaTurner says each Republican should be willing to support the person who receives majority support in the Republican Conference.