One cannot buy Shutdowns for Dummies, but for House Republicans, Rep. Tom Price may be the next best thing. In recent days, the mild-mannered Georgia congressman has become a behind-the-scenes policy maestro for numerous members – especially freshmen — who hope to avoid being caught flat-footed by the budget impasse.
As chairman of the GOP Policy Committee, Price is the fifth-ranking Republican in the lower chamber, but his role this week has been low-key educator, operating as a conduit to the backbenches. Sitting in his Capitol Hill office, with his rolled-up sleeves and wire-rimmed glasses, the former orthopedic surgeon looks every bit the part. Price’s preternatural calm and smooth-as-bourbon voice serve as a reassuring presence within the conference, especially as the Beltway catches shutdown fever.
“Our role is to be another set of eyes and ears out there in the conference, talking particularly with the freshmen,” Price says. “We also make sure we are touching base with the people on the committees — so that, whatever the strategy, we are consistent with what the vast majority of the conference wants.”
As the shutdown looms, Price acknowledges that tensions are running high, so keeping everyone on the same page and singing from the same policy hymnal as the political pressure ratchets up by the hour has been a challenge.
Price, as the policy librarian of sorts, has helped to fill in the gaps. “I think that they have the knowledge base they need,” he says, reflecting on the readiness of Republicans to respond to shutdown questions. Should the federal government go dark, “you never know how people are going to respond, you don’t know what kind of misery [Democrats] are going to try and put in folks’ way out there.” But you can, he says, be ready to tangle with Democrats.
The House Policy Committee functions as a supplement to other committees, he notes, helping members to better understand the “nuts and bolts” of the unfolding debates, without messing up the “sandbox” of others. “Sometimes it is also about the strategy: Are we being as smart as we can be in getting our message out, in moving in the right direction?”
In such a large, geographically diverse conference, the range of questions about how to respond to a shutdown has forced Price to grapple with how policy ideas will be received regionally. “Some folks are from districts where, if they got up in front of a crowd, they’d hear ‘go ahead and shut it down, that’s what we sent you there to do.’” For others, a tad more nuance is required, and it becomes important to convey the “real-life consequences of what a shutdown means.”
“A lot of this is one-on-one,” he says. “It’s sitting down with people, it is asking about how they are doing, what they are thinking about. Everyone is at a different place. And there is no foolish question.”
Framing broader talking points is another file in Price’s portfolio — sending out information, as he puts it, about the debate from “30,000 feet,” so that members can have a variety of policy answers in their rhetorical quiver. On the shutdown, one of the main points he is stressing is how the federal government has been “quote, shut down, unquote, ten times in the last 30 years. Most people don’t remember that; most people don’t know that.”
“It is hard to remember that we are the minority party here in Washington,” Price says. “We run one-sixth of the federal government, and the person with the ace of spades, who can trump everything, is the president. If he wants it shut down, he’ll shut it down. My gut sense tells me that’s what he wants, and so we’ll have a shutdown, since the president wants to shut it down.”
Price believes that the GOP is ready to win the fight. “I think people understand that House Republicans have been the responsible body in all of this; that we are ones who have passed a bill to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year; that we are the ones who came up with a solution to keep this thing rolling, to keep our troops funded; and that our greatest ally in the Middle East has the resources it needs,” he says. “We are doing the right thing by standing out ground; that’s what we got elected to do.”