The GOP in the United States House of Representatives are getting ready to reveal plans this week to support these initiatives: U.S. energy industry, fighting crimes and combating illegal immigration. They are working to build a case for winning the November midterm elections.
Their focus is called a “Commitment to America” agenda, and they hope it will be a prescription for economic and social ills which have been caused by the White House administration and the Democratic Party.
The most prominent Republican leading the charge is Kevin McCarthy, who hopes that this will be a unifying message for his party in the closing weeks of the campaign.
The GOP leadership also hopes that this platform will aid in keeping the candidates running for election focused on criticizing Democrats rather than former President Donald Trump’s claims about election fraud in 2020.
The legislation proposes increasing U.S. energy production so that gas prices can come down, they want to hire more police to decrease crime, and they want to reimpose Trump-era border restrictions to ease the flow of migrants coming from Mexico. This will all be revealed on Friday in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a small city in a very Republican congressional district outside Pittsburgh.
“There’s a plan for a new direction for America, one that will curb inflation, give us lower gas prices, make your streets safer again, but also give parents a say on their kids’ education and bring accountability back to this government,” McCarthy told the press.
Nonpartisan election analysts believe that Republicans are favored to erase the Democratic majority which sits at 221-212. If they can do this, they will have power to block Biden’s legislative agenda and also launch politically damaging investigations into his administration.
“If Republicans are fortunate enough to take the House of Representatives, we will have policies ready to go – day one,” said Representative Yvette Herrell of New Mexico. She is in a campaign that could go either way and she is focusing on her own bills that would prevent Biden from relenting on COVID-19 border restrictions and also require the president’s administration to have congressional approval for any lessening of energy leases on federal lands.
Right now, Democrats are dismissive of her agenda and say that it ignores serious voter concerns about abortion rights and democracy.
“I don’t think they have an agenda that the American people will … want. Kansas showed that to be the case. I think New York showed it to be the case – and Alaska, which hasn’t had a Democratic congressperson for a long time. We’re doing what the public thinks is for them, for the people,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said in an interview.
The new GOP “Commitment to America” is shaped like the 1994 “Contract with America.” This helped the Republicans gain control of the House and the Senate at that time by identifying the priorities the party would go after if given the majority back.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters that they were going to show the country “how to do this.” He promised that if they got the majority, they would have a “mandate” to get them done.
The Democratic Party will have a hard time getting over the dismal approval rating of the president which has stayed below 50% since August of 2021.
There are increasing hopes among the GOP that this renewed focus on an agenda will turn the heat up on Democrats. And governors from states like Florida, Texas and Arizona have worked to shift U.S. media attention from abortion to immigration by sending migrants to cities around the country.
Although hopes are not high, Republicans believe that is still an outside chance to get the majority back in the Senate as well.
