The Ripon Society and the Franklin Center recently held a breakfast discussion featuring a bipartisan working group of house members focused on putting politics aside to find common ground.
The group included Reps. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), John Delaney (R-Md.) and Andy Barr (R-Ky.).
“I’ve been a businessman for 28 years and always thought that’s what you normally do,” Renacci said about bipartisanship and the importance of talking with those on the other side of the aisle. “I never knew if there was a Democrat or Republican in my business. You just had a common goal and you got it done.
“When I got here, I went to my first Financial Services Committee hearing, and I remember the opening statements started by throwing a hand grenade over to the other side, and the other got a hand grenade and threw it across the aisle, and back and forth. It finally got to me and I said I’m not throwing any hand grenades. I thought it was a committee meeting. And people kind of looked at me like, ‘What’s this guy talking about?’ But it actually worked out because a member from the other side, John Carney, walked over to me and said, ‘One thing we notice about you is that you don’t throw any hand grenades, you don’t talk about the other party, you want to get the facts, you want to get the information, you want to get something done.’
“So John said, ‘Why don’t we have breakfast one day?’ And that was the start of the breakfast group. I went out and grabbed a few of my colleagues, John did the same, and we started having meetings about every two or three weeks…In the first two years, we introduced five pieces of legislation and actually got something through last year, which was reforming the unemployment insurance part of the big payroll tax extension. So we were able to work together, and we’re still meeting. We’ve added, of course, some people. We went from six to 10 to 12, and now we have a group of about 20 members. It’s ultimately where we need to go. And I’ll tell you – not only are we colleagues, but many of the members have become my closest friends.”
Kelly, the owner of a car dealership that employs more than 100 people in Western Pennsylvania, said that the spirit of their bipartisan effort is common in the private sector but that politics have become very polarized.
“I think that we’re not really Democrats versus Republicans, or vice versa. We’re two parties doing the best thing for this country,” Kelly said.
Delaney, a businessman who founded two New York Stock Exchange-listed companies before he turned 40, agreed, adding that those who come from a business background are more naturally able to reach across the aisle.
“”I think that we have moved from a world where principles used to matter to a world where ideology matters. One of the problems with ideology is that people go to the answer before they look at the facts,” Delaney said. “And I think that’s a really troubling trend, because we all have high principles – things we really care about – and traditionally speaking, great things have always been done at the intersection of principle and compromise. The problem is when you move from principle to ideology, you almost definitionally lose the ability to compromise because it’s never a fact-based discussion.”
Barr, a Lexington attorney elected in November, concurred.
“We don’t really have as much interactions in the office as we should, but I give John so much credit for reaching out to members like me – freshmen colleagues who are new members, who are still trying to find our way around,” Barr said. “And when he presented his idea to me, I was struck by his intelligence, I was struck by his thoughtfulness, and when you strip away any preconceived notions about political party affiliation and you just look at the ideas on the merits, I recognize what a powerful argument and how persuasive he was at presenting the idea. So I give great credit to him and it taught me an important lesson in my Congressional career, and that is that you’ve got to have an open mind. You’ve got to listen to one another and you’ve got to recognize that there are a lot of bright people up here who have really good ideas. Don’t come to these things with partisan glasses on. Take a look at the idea.”