E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSFour House Republicans have been stripped of their committee seats after it was determined by the Republican conference that they were "not team players," a GOP leadership aide told NBC News.
The decision made Monday during a meeting of the Republican Steering Committee strips Reps. David Schweikert (R-AZ) and Walter Jones (R-NC) of their seats on the Financial Services Committee, and Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) of their seats on the House Budget Committee.
The decision to take the committee seats away from Schweikert, Amash and Huelskamp has transformed into a mini-battle between conservatives and the Republican leadership establishment, with Schweikert's office saying his removal was a result of his "voting based on principle."
"This morning Congressman Schweikert learned there was a price to be paid for voting based on principle. That price was the removal from the House Financial Services Committee," Schweikert's Communications Director Rachel Semmel told NBC News in a statement, "We are obviously disappointed that Leadership chose to take this course, but Rep. Schweikert remains committed to fighting for the conservative principles that brought him here."
Reps Amash and Huelskamp caught flak from Republican leadership after they voted against the Republican budget during a vote to move the bill from the Budget Committee to a full vote of the House. As a result the bill made it through committee by only one vote.
When the Republican budget was voted on by the full House, Amash, Huelskamp and Jones were among a small group of Republicans who voted against it, saying it did not go far enough to cut the federal deficit.
House Republican leadership aides say the assertion by Schweikert's office that the move is a reflection of his voting record is "absurd."
"These guys are clearly not team players. This isn't about ideology; this is about how you treat the people on your team," a GOP leadership aide told NBC News, "Paul Ryan is one of the most conservative-principled members of our conference, and he kept his committee assignment."
Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), responded by saying, "The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors."
Schweikert is known for ruffling feathers within the Republican conference. In July, Schweikert was removed from the GOP "Whip team," which is responsible for gathering votes to pass bills, because he voted against a bill he was telling members to vote for, according to a Politico report.
The fight has spilled outside of Capitol Hill, with the conservative group Club for Growth calling the move "a consequence of their principled stands on behalf of pro-growth policies, often bringing them in conflict with the leadership of their own party."
"Congressmen Schweikert, Huelskamp, and Amash are now free of the last remnants of establishment leverage against them," Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement. "We expect that these three defenders of economic freedom will become even bolder in their efforts to defend the taxpayers against the big spenders in both parties."
Click here to sign up for First Read emails.
Text FIRST to 622639 to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter.
Leave a Comment:
No accident at all that two out of four of these mountebanks are from AZ and KS respectively! Oh, that's right, Mr Whoever-You-Are-Bagger is voting based on his personal "principles". Translation - what you really mean is that you espouse the basic tenets of the Baggers faction - hatred, bigotry, exclusionism, etc. Need I go on?
Looks like the party of NO is attacking itself! Buh bye Obstructionists.
This is so funny... Liberals making fun of House Committee leadership changes.... while Pelosi has been Speaker of the House and House Minority leader even after her lobotomy....
A lobotomy for Pelosi still makes her smarter than the collective IQ of the Reichwing Bagger caucus.
Diane, nice comeback...
Chip - ditto
I'll believe this is a real "refudiation" (Palin-speak) of extremist tea-bagging reichwing fiscal theology when Michele Bachmann is demoted to the Toilet Cleaning Committee.
"Congressmen Schweikert, Huelskamp, and Amash are now free of the last remnants of establishment leverage against them," Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement. "We expect that these three defenders of economic freedom will become even bolder in their efforts to defend the taxpayers against the big spenders in both parties."...BS! And you can add Jones from NC to that. All four of these "defenders of Freedom" are ALEC members. To me that means that they don't even represent their constituents they represent ALEC and the Corporations.
They aren't even conservatives their corporate stooges!
What a dysfunctional party the Gop has become, demoting members for voting their conscious and not following Grover Norquist's orders
Not a "team player".
Eating their young.
I agree!!!
Republican or Democrat we will go down together!
Best example of the RICH GREED and Wall Street Greed!!
I love to see Republicans fight each other!! This is what Greed gets you!!
Has the Republican middle class learned anything yet??????????
Has the Republican middle class learned anything yet??????????
NO,NO, and HELL No!
And they never will, even when they're standing abandoned behind the Capitol Building in the cold they will still think they are right!
The problem is they are constantly being told that they are right, they don't get it.
Paul Craig Roberts served in Reagan Treasury Dept, and also worked as editor at the Wall Street Journal. He knows about what he speaks. He described the horrendous economic situation for the US Economy. He puts blame on Wall Street and US Corporate executives who use Asian labor in outsourcing, rendering the US nation of workers poor.
Americans don’t support their own country they want to shop at WAL-MART!!!
America’s problems started August 1971!!
These are things Republicans don't want you to remember!!
With inflation unresolved by August 1971, and an election year looming, Nixon convened a summit of his economic advisers at Camp David. Nixon then announced temporary wage and price controls, allowed the dollar to float against other currencies, and ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. This meant our money was now worthless!!! Inflationary dollars!!
The first signs of impending trouble are the exploding budget deficits themselves. They began, of course, under the parlous economic stewardship of Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest of Americans from 70% to 38%. He promised it would spur an orgy of investment and rocket the economy to new levels of production and prosperity. Instead, his supply side economics did the exact opposite. It produced the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
During Reagan's administration, the unemployment rate declined from 7.5% to 5.4%, with the rate reaching highs of 10.8% in 1982 and 10.4% in 1983. Reagan also earned the nickname "the Teflon President", in that public perceptions of him were not tarnished by the controversies that arose during his administration.
Bush blew through Clinton's surplus in his first year. The 2004 deficit reached $415 billion, a record. Still, its real size is masked by the fact that Bush has shifted $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund in order to make the shortfall look smaller. It's like pretending you're richer when you move money from one pocket to another. Both sums have to be repaid, so the real amount borrowed is the $415 billion nominal deficit plus the $150 billion from Social Security or $565,000,000,000 billion.
This is why Social Security will go broke!!!!
America has lost its competitive edge to CHINA!! Americans don’t support their own country they want to shop at WAL-MART!!!
Very thorough historical recounting of how we got to where we are - keep up this kind of analysis. To make progress, the American people need to know what hasn't worked in the past and something about real world economics.
Republicans want to cut a lot of benefits. How is that a deal? What ever they cut the people will have to pay for. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Sure. You all laugh at the GOP, including that laughing whore 'Feisty in Crooked Illinois'.
But wait & watch, as your healthcare goes quality goes down the @!$%#tuh and as YOUR own lower & middle class taxes RISE. Watch as your age of retirement continues to creep upward to 70, watch as prices on food, gas & other necessities continue to rise.
You'll soon see what the Dems will eff you over with...
Homie, you mean our health care quality will sink far lower than Morrocco?
It's the right that's driving both Medicare eligibility and retirement increases in age eligibility.
You need to look to Wall Street to understand why gas and food prices fluctuate.
And your name calling is crass and gives us insight into your intellect, or lack there of....
Grow up...
sorry but that was starting to happen before 2008, you must have been sleeping.
To: Homie D Clown :
I don't understand the logic of your comment. Retirement age will rise under Republicans, because they want social security and Medicare recipients to shoulder the cost of reducing the deficit. All the hollering from the right about the quality of healthcare going down just simply doesn't make sense. If more people are on affordable healthcare, they will go to the doctor much sooner if they start having health issues, rather than as it is now where their health declines until they are even too disabled to work. Better healthcare coverage keeps seniors out of expensive long term care longer. The driver behind trashing the Affordable Care Act is that insurance companies profits from outrageous premiums will go down since the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) puts a limit on how much profit and overhead insurance companies can get from insurance premiums. You always need to look behind the curtain as to the real reason certain accusations are touted by those who have an investment in keeping the American healthcare system as it is - it is about their (or their contributors) pocketbooks, not about the country's healthcare well-being.
Homie -
Healthcare in the US ranks 37th behind Costa Rica. We should do better than that! Switzerland has one of the best systems in the world and it's very much like Obamacare except a private payer system.
Homie, I read in reader's digest that banging your face into a brick wall is a cure for the disease that plagues you.
Reply
should be poll workers, as Governor Rick Perry said, "Opps" ,my error-
As Republicans continue to claw out their own eyes.
Now the do-nothing congress and do nothing without regret.
Fall in line GOP congressmen, independent ideas will not be tolerated.
Democracy has no place here.
If the job of a Representative on a Committee is to gather facts, deliberate and recommend legislation, then removal of persons who are so dogmatic that they cannot listen o facts and information, cannot deliberate and cannot participate in reasoned debate makes a lot of sense. Boehner already knows their position and how they will vote, why bother to put them on ANY committee?
Did these people not sign their pledges to Boehner and Grover?
Then they get what they deserve, this is a dictatorship, not a democracy.
How could these people not know this?
Shocking.
To sum up: just a case of a-holes treating other a-holes like the a-holes they are.
That said. Bachmann/Cain 2016!! Let the Republickers roll out their best and brightest!
Ha ha ,what about Texas? IF THEY STILL ARE IN THE UNION IN 2016?
Well, it is better than the Dems voting to spend and spend.. At least the Reps have some balls to do something.. Dems just vote whatever way the party does.. they dont have brains of their own.
Paul Ryan? Conservative-PRINCIPLED? He was shown during the presidential campaign to be an out-and-out liar (not soliciting stimulus money, finishing high up in a certain marathon race, etc., etc.). But I guess principles in the Republican party nowadays are more reclusive than Howard Hughes ever was. And, gee, if I remember correctly, it was the Republicans that voted to get us into this Middle East fiasco -- for which we had no means to pay -- and which has cost us $4.5 trillion so far. (And when the then-Treasury Secretary told the American people that it would cost alot more time, money, and lives than what the Cheney/Bush administration was claiming, he was promptly fired.)
The Republicans of 2012 have so very few characteristics of the successful iterations of Republicanism that compromised and lead America's views often from the offices of the Pres.and reliable House seats.Today,those that seem to claim leadership remain so far from the realities of this America that their responses can only be viewed as inconsequential at best,absolute failures at their worsts,and there's lots of those scattered throughout their party history.Failure to find reasonable compromises in this session of congress will effectively eliminate their electibility for years.As a Dem,I'm happy to see America can vote for leaders in spite of race and money ,thereby disproving the bubble of thought that we're subjected to by Fox heads. In this election America said ,"ditto for you Mr. President",imagine that Carl,Lush,Becker?
I agree w/ the dems. Let's take the millionaires money and re-distribute it to poor people. Yeah, and let mr. obama's money be re-distributed first. It worked for a place called China.
The BORG kills their own.
I like when GOP's cannabalize their own Its a sad reflection on the turmoil in the party, but Boehner did the right thing in my estimation. Get rid of the too rigid /stiff entities, let them stew in their own sauce
"This isn't about ideology; this is about how you treat the people on your team," a GOP leadership aide told NBC News." I don't know anything about the individuals who lost their committee seats, but the statement by this aide sounds like the Republican leadership is still hell-bent on putting party above the people they are supposed to represent, a my-way-or-the-highway mentality that doesn't bode well for their constituents. Why can't these people deal with diversity at any level?