80% Solutions and 20% Investigations
The four current scandals -- Benghazi, IRS, the Justice Department’s secret grab of AP phone records, and Secretary Sebelius pressuring companies for money to implement Obamacare -- are dominating the news.
They are growing, becoming more disturbing and showing more and more layers of Obama Administration dishonesty.
When the IRS is asking about the Tea Party activities of an 83 year old Grandmother who spent four years of her childhood in a Japanese internment camp, there is something profoundly wrong.
With all these scandals breaking out, House Republicans are faced with a great opportunity and a serious danger.
The opportunity is to show that Republicans are committed to a better future.
The danger is that the scandals will absorb all the political energy.
Both Speaker John Boehner and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus have warned the GOP to remain steady and balanced in its response to the scandals which seem to be unfolding on multiple fronts.
“Our focus has been and remains finding solutions that will help our economy grow and create American jobs,” Speaker Boehner said. “We must press for the accountability the American people demand and deserve on matters such as Benghazi and the arrogance of power displayed by the IRS -- while constantly reminding our constituents that our oversight efforts are part of a broader plan for removing government barriers to economic growth, a plan Americans can see online at GOP.gov/jobs.”
A number of House Republicans have rejected calls by outside groups to stop legislating and focus solely on the scandals.
They are right and the outside groups are wrong.
There is a simple formula for House Republicans going forward: Spend 80% of your time on hearings and legislation about creating a better future. Spend 20% of your time investigating and passing reform legislation.
To oversimplify for implementation planning purposes: there are 234 house Republicans. If 20% of them focused full time on the scandals, that would be 47 members investigating the Obama administration’s abuses of power. That would leave 187 members available to work on passing solutions-oriented legislation.
You could do the same exercise by committee and subcommittee and come up with a similar distribution of effort.
The key is for House Republicans to remember that outside Washington, America is making enormous progress.
In energy America is breaking through to become the number one oil and gas producer in the world (creating over a million new jobs).
The declining cost of American energy, the rise of advanced techniques like 3-D printing, and the further development of efficient, customized manufacturing is leading to a dramatic rebirth of manufacturing jobs in America.
Where government isn't blocking them, doctors are making amazing breakthroughs in health care.
In education, a number of Republican governors have bold initiatives to reform schools. In the private sector Kaplan, Udacity, Coursera, Kahn Academy, Rosetta Stone, Duolingo and a host of other pioneers are bringing 24/7 learning to your handheld device.
At Newt University we are posting regular reports on these kind of breakthroughs.
House Republicans have a much greater opportunity than just being the anti-scandal party.
They have an opportunity to become the pro-breakthrough, pro-solutions party, and that should be their primary effort.
They should focus their energies on that positive future while allocating enough talent and resources to expose and clean up the scandals as an important accompanying effort.
Your Friend,
Newt
