Long a thorn in the side of House GOP leadership, Rep. Jeff Flake found himself on the receiving end of some payback last week as top congressional Republicans stripped the fourth-term lawmaker of his post on the prestigious House Judiciary Committee.
Flake claimed the move was retribution, while leadership aides suggested the reshuffle was a result of the party’s poor performance in November’s midterm elections.
Flake made headlines during the recently concluded 109th Congress for several issues on which he worked closely with committee Democrats, bucking Judiciary Republicans. But Flake thinks two issues — his high-profile crusade against earmarks and his support for a temporary guest-worker program — cost him his prime position.
The Mesa congressman has long been something of an outsider in his own party. Having sponsored measures to lift travel bans to Cuba, attempted to rid federal spending bills of projects aimed at other members’ districts and supported a temporary visa program for migrant workers, Flake has found himself alone among his caucus on a number of occasions.
Immigration stand
For his stand on immigration, Flake incurred the wrath of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the powerful Wisconsin Republican who, until Democrats took control of Congress, held the gavel as Judiciary Committee chairman. Sensenbrenner and Flake also clashed over government surveillance of citizens without obtaining a court order. Sensenbrenner and the Bush administration believed in the executive branch’s power to order the so-called warrantless wiretapping, while Flake disagreed.
Term limits on chairmanships forced Sensenbrenner to give up his post at the end of the last Congress. He was replaced by Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, who now serves as the ranking minority member under Democratic Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.
When Republicans lost their majority last November, they lost precious committee slots as well. And somewhere along the way, in the post-election reshuffling of committee assignments, Flake lost what he called his priority committee, though he retained seats on the House Resources Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The process by which a party selects members of Congress to serve on committees is tightly controlled by each party’s top leaders. After receiving input from the party’s top member on a panel, the so-called Steering Committee — a group of senior lawmakers — assigns members to the 19 standing committees. Thanks to their losses in November, Republican leadership spokesman Brian Kennedy said the party had to surrender more than 90 committee seats.
The steering committee “had to make a large number of difficult decisions,” Kennedy said, including Flake’s ouster. Incoming ranking member Smith echoed the comments in his own statement.
Flake points out that several members of the GOP Steering Committee are also members of the House Appropriations Committee. The power members of that committee hold, and the bond they form while doling out federal money, led to a common Beltway adage that says there are three parties in Congress — Democrats, Republicans and appropriators.
If Republican leaders did punish Flake for his maverick stands, it wouldn’t be the first time: At the beginning of the 109th Congress, New Jersey Rep. Christopher Smith lost his chairmanship of the House Veterans Affairs Committee after he opposed an administration-backed budget resolution and funding proposals.
This time, Flake may have stepped on the wrong toes. Flake spokesman Matthew Specht says when the congressman’s name came up before the Steering Committee, Flake’s high-profile battle with appropriators over so-called earmarks — the direction of federal funds for specific projects mainly used by members of Congress to bring money back to their districts — “didn’t make them so inclined to help Mr. Flake.”
Committee systems on Capitol Hill are heavily influenced by seniority, and Specht notes that six members of the Judiciary Committee with less experience than Flake all retained their seats. That includes Rep. Trent Franks, who sat five places behind Flake on the seniority list in the 109th Congress. In the new session, Franks will serve as the top Republican on the Subcommittee on the Constitution.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, who heads the Steering Committee, told The Hill, a Capitol newspaper, that the move was made to accommodate as many members as he could. “The Steering Committee needed to find a slot for a freshman who at the end of the day didn’t have much,” he said. Flake’s spot wound up in the hands of newly-elected Rep. Jim Jordan who, like Boehner, is from Ohio.
Beth Frigola, a spokeswoman for Lamar Smith, denied Flake had been removed for disagreements with Republican leaders over immigration, earmarks or other issues. She noted that, though many Republicans held three committee assignments while they served in the majority, with the minority comes fewer seats. She said many members are being removed from their third committee assignments.
The latest press release on Lamar Smith’s Web site, though, boasts that the top Judiciary Committee Republican will also serve on the House Homeland Security and Science Committees.
The battle between those who engage in earmarking and those who offer amendments to strip them from bills reached a low last year when Flake targeted earmarks by Rep. Jerry Lewis, a California Republican who headed the Appropriations Committee. Flake didn’t hesitate to spar with other top leaders of his own party, including former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
And skirmishes are only likely get worse. Flake has offered 19 amendments stripping major spending bills of their earmarks, and while none have succeeded in passing, their vote totals are edging upward.
With a new chairman, a Steering Committee full of angry appropriators and Flake’s past maverick stands, his office doesn’t believe the incident was a simple matter of reshuffling. “It was pretty clearly a chance for the committee to do some house cleaning,” Specht said.