Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders by Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page B

government spending is the best way to spur job creation and economic growth, much less whether the $787 billion Democratic stimulus bill did much to help our economy. But sometimes saying “No” is what’s right for this country—and all 178 Republican members said just that to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid’s pork-laden stimulus package. At the same time, we did so after offering our own, better alternative, which was central to creating a sense of purpose and unity among House Republicans—we were going to be the party of principled opposition.
    Still, back in January 2009, we knew we were taking a gamble when we decided, as a group of House Republicans, to oppose the stimulus bill. We knew the Democrats had the votes in the House to pass the legislation without us. But if they were able to gain the support of just two or three Republican members, they would be able to put a phony “bipartisan” label on the bill and claim it was passed, not on behalf of favored Democratic special interest groups, but on behalf of the American people. And as for business groups who misguidedly supported the bill, our positionwas clear cut: our obligation was, first and foremost, to the people. Our job was to be prudent guardians of the taxpayers’ money, not to line up like robots behind self-proclaimed business interests.
    In the end, the stimulus bill passed the House of Representatives on January 28, 2009, without a single Republican vote. In the Senate, just three Republicans—Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and then-Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania—supported the bill.
    As the Republican Whip, my job was to try to convince my colleagues in the House that it was in the nation’s interest—as well as their own interest—to oppose the bill. However, the Whip Team didn’t take the old-style approach—breaking arms and cutting deals—to bring us all together. Instead, we came together by developing sound, principled, commonsense solutions and alternatives that resulted in a better way that was a credible alternative to the Democrats’ plan. This model would become the hallmark of how we would engage the Democrat majority going forward—saying no to bad policies by offering a credible alternative.
    The Democratic majority hadn’t produced a stimulus bill; it had produced a spending bill. In contrast, we had worked hard to produce a serious, forward-looking, smarter, and simpler plan to create real, sustainable jobs. We gave our members what they needed to go home to their Rotary Clubs and their chambers of commerce andneighborhood meetings and say, “Here’s the Democratic bill, it costs more than the entire Iraq War, will give us budget deficits not seen since World War II, and most of the spending won’t even reach the economy for over a year. But here’s our bill, and it’s a better way.” We gave our members what they needed to be viewed as leaders, as sensible, responsible legislators trying to address problems and fight back against this notion that if we didn’t just accept the Democratic plan than we were the party of “no.”
    So in a sense, President Obama had been correct when he identified the stimulus vote as a turning point—he was just wrong about what message it sent to the American people. Far from revealing us as the party of “no,” our solidarity in the face of the majority party’s bullying tactics revealed us to be an awakening movement of responsible leaders; the adults in the room at a reckless liberal blowout on the taxpayers’ dime. The mainstream media didn’t like it one bit, of course. The snarky New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd complained that “somehow the most well-known person on the planet lost control of the economic message to someone named Eric Cantor.”
    Getting under the skin of certain New York Times columnists is a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. But there was no cause for celebration for anyone after the