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Posted on 01/09/2011 12:08:31 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
For the 112th Congress, the swear-in today couldn't have been more dramatic as new Speaker of the House John Boehnor took the oversize gavel from Nancy Pelosi, ending 4 years of far-left Democratic rule that had led to an expansion of government and ballooning of deficits beyond anything amassed by predecessors.
Enter the new crop of Republicans, voted in on November 2, 2010 conservative resurgence from the American people: out of the 94 new House members who took the Oath-of-Office, 85 were Republican, and 2 of them were from Wisconsin - freshman legislators who won monstrous victories in game-changing Districts; out of the 7th District, Sean Duffy took Dave Obey's old seat and in the nearby 8th District Reid Ribble unseated veteran Democrat Steven Kagen.
“It’s a lot of work,” Duffy said on Wispolitics.com in late November. “You don’t realize this when you’re on the campaign trail -- but when you then get to this phase and go, OK, here’s a sum of money, and you have to set up your offices, and really, here’s some guidelines, but go make it happen.
“And I think a great indicator of success is the kind of team that you hire, and so we’re putting a great deal of influence on it,” Duffy continued. “We want to have a team that’s for the most part based in Wisconsin and has good Wisconsin roots. Will we have some folks that are not exclusively based with their roots in Wisconsin? Sure we will. But I want to make sure that what we’re doing in Washington is best for...Wisconsin as whole.”
Duffy has staked his claim on House Financial Services Committee, being a freshman member who has landed a privileged gig. Typically the newbies in Congress have a hard time landing on committees, due primarily to their lack of experience, as well as the fact that there are so few committees compared to the ratio of members.
Reid Ribble hasn't been able to land a spot on a committee. He was interested in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Agriculture Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee, and Duffy's Financial Services Committee but the 54-year-old former Roofing contractor still has had plenty on his plate to keep him busy.
“I’ve experienced a full range of emotions,” Ribble told Wispoltics after his whirlwind tour of the Capitol in November. “From frustration, too much information coming at me too fast — it’s been a little bit too difficult to absorb — to exhilaration, to just a profound sense of responsibility.
“We went out on the House floor for the first time the other night,” Ribble continued. “It begins to weigh on you when you realize that, when you put that card in to vote, you’re speaking for 600,000 Americans, and that matters. There was this profundity of the whole thing that kind of captured your emotions there and this whole sense, ‘Wow, I’m really here.’”
Ribble can already be described as a seasoned campaigner, having won in a 3-way Republican primary before defeating the aforementioned Kagen. The proximity of 7th and 8th Districts to each other have given Ribble and Duffy the definite ability to bond as freshmen congressmen.
In the Senate, out of 6 new Republican seats that were gained, one that gained perhaps the biggest victory for the Wisconsin contingent was Ron Johnson defeating the stalwart 18-year incumbent Russ Feingold. Johnson had been keeping up with the Senate lame duck session during his orientation to the Senate. He expressed his displeasure to Wispolitics over the ratification of the START nuclear arms reduction treaty in December and told them also that he was concerned about the passage of the further extension of unemployment benefits tied to an extension of the Bush tax cuts. The concern, of course, being that the extension of benefits would directly add to the deficit.
“I’m concerned about anything in this lame-duck session that is just being rammed through without adequate debate, without proper hearings,” Johnson said. “It’s a real shame that in the bargain, what you had to negotiate, the compromise not to raise taxes on the American people, we had to increase deficit spending,” Johnson said.
Johnson maintains that his first priorities continue to be the repeal of Government-run health care reform, reduction of the budget deficit, and the removal of the earmark culture from Washington. He's already had to endure one criticism for his hiring of a lobbyist, Don Kent, to become his chief of staff; however, he says the hiring has nothing at all to do with lobbying in any form.
“I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not that familiar with Washington,” Johnson explained. “In order to be effective, I needed to put people in the Senate office that were very familiar with Washington. That’s not going to corrupt me in any way, shape or form. I’m going to go there with my values and my principles. I just need people in DC that really understand that city to help me develop those relationships so I can be effective."
Ditto that.
It was not “Dave Obeys” seat. He did not own it. It belongs to the people of the State of Wisconsin.
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