Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) will be Speaker of the House for the next two years, but one of the Republicans who challenged him for the post says it’s only because a number of GOP members failed to come through in their promised opposition to Boehner.
On Tuesday, Boehner secured 216 Republican votes on the first ballot, easily receiving more than half of the votes from House members present for the election despite the insurgent candidacies by fellow Republicans Daniel Webster (R-Florida), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Ted Yoho (R-Florida). Webster, who announced his candidacy just hours before the vote, received the most GOP votes other than Boehner.
Yoho was the first Republican to announce his challenge to Boehner on Saturday. He says the hastily assembled effort to defeat Boehner couldn’t accomplish its goal.
“Obviously, things didn’t turn out the way we had planned, but we put forth the effort and people spoke up and said what was on their mind. They elected Mr. Boehner as out next speaker. I look forward to working with him for the next two years to make this the best Congress ever,” said Yoho.
While being quick to admit the fight for the direction of the party is over for the moment in the House, he’s disappointed in how we got to the results in Tuesday’s House vote.
“A lot of people talk, but when it’s time to show up, their tune changes and I think that was evident today, but I am very proud of the people that did stand up, the 24 that went in public and stated where they stood on the leadership,” said Yoho, who says an unidentified number of Republicans failed to follow through on their word during the vote.
“I don’t want to talk about any specific members but there are members that said, ‘Well, if you hit 20 votes, we’ll jump on and vote with you but if you don’t have that many we’re not going to.’ When we hit [20 votes], you can’t find them,” he said.
Yoho says Republicans who are frustrated with the present leadership but unwilling to oppose it have little grounds to complain over the next two years.
“A lot of people like to complain, gripe and moan about how bad things are. If you’re going to complain about it, do something about it. So the people that have been complaining and griping about Mr. Boehner and the lack of leadership and all that, they had a chance today to change that. They didn’t. So from this point forward for the next two years, this should be a moot point. nobody should complain. We just need to get down to pass the best legislation we can,” said Yoho.
Despite the disappointment and frustration of Tuesday’s vote, Yoho believes Republicans can get a lot of good legislation passed in the 114th Congress.
“This is a new Congress. We’ve got a speaker in place. We just need to get to work solving problems for the American people. Our goal is to work and bring up that legislation that we can have input on and move forward on that,” he said.
For Yoho, the new legislative calendar starts with major legislative efforts to derail President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration. In December, Yoho sponsored legislation declaring Obama’s actions unconstitutional and non-binding. It passed in the House but was never voted upon in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. The congressman says it will be introduced again in the coming days and Se. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) will lead the effort in the Senate.
“That’s a good bill for America and it reins the president back into the boundaries of the Constitution,” said Yoho. “It’s going to go to the president and the president is going to have to make a decision in front of the American people, ‘I side with the Constitution or I’m going to vote against it.'”
The funding for immigration enforcement and the rest of the Department of Homeland Security must be resolved before the end of February. Yoho says conservatives are ready for that fight too.
“We’re introducing a companion bill that strips all funding from any government agency and we’re going to do what we can to block it from private agencies to process any work permits to people here illegally that come from the president’s November 2oth executive movement that he did. No money from the federal government will be used to process any of those. I feel very sure that you’ll see that pass,” said Yoho.
