By Randy Krehbiel
Oddballs: OK, Fourth District Congressman Tom Cole did not refer to his colleagues as odd, but he did say the current congress sets the standard for “most unusual.”
“You have to remember this started with something that we had not done in 100 years — multiple speaker ballot votes,” Cole told The Ripon Society . "And if you look at the length of time and number of votes, you have to go back to 1856 — pre-Civil War — to find anything remotely comparable. And then less than a year into it, we do something that we have never done in the history of the United States House of Representatives. We vacate the chair.
“We were without a Speaker for three weeks. You look at our membership, and we have a pretty new majority — 50 percent of our members had never served in the majority until this Congress,” Cole continued. “So I’m not surprised we’re seeing unusual things, for that reason alone. We’re also operating — looking at the Senate and the House — with the most narrow majority that anybody’s had since 1884.”
All of that has added up to some unmet, and probably unrealistic, expectations.
“Part of our problem is our ambition is greater than our numbers in this Congress,” Cole said. “When you have a majority this small and the other party controls the Senate and the presidency, your accomplishments are mostly going to be negative — that is, you’re going to deny the other side and serve as, let’s say, a blocking majority.”
SOURCE: https://tulsaworld.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/d-c-digest-lucas-locks-horns-with-ag-secretary/article_3a1371c6-ccef-11ee-a433-fb8c12c195d7.html
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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.
