George Weeks: Camp may get key role

George Weeks

August 7, 2011

By George Weeks, Syndicated columnist ---- The Record Eagle Mon Mar 26, 2012, 10:31 AM EDT

Northern Michigan's three Republican congressmen joined the majority of the state's House delegation and Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow last week in voting to raise the debt limit by at least $2.1 trillion, thus preventing a U.S. default.

One of them, Rep. Dave Camp of Midland, could be a pivotal player in the next step -- figuring out where to make the $2.4 trillion or more in cuts called for in the agreement.

First District freshman Rep. Dan Benishek, of Crystal Falls, despite being backed by tea-party activists who objected to the bill, voted for it. He well summarized the bill as being "by no means perfect, but it begins changing the way Washington borrows and spends money.

"There is plenty to dislike in this bill from all sides, but this compromise will put the brakes on America's exploding debt problem," Benishek said.

Second District freshman Rep. Bill Huizenga, of Zeeland, said: "While this bill is not ideal by any means, the consequences of failing to move ahead to control spending are too high for America.

"The House has managed to pull President Obama and Senate Democrats a long way from the start of this spending debate, when they asked for and we rejected a blank check for more of their out-of-control government spending," Huizenga said. "How long did they think we could go on like this, spending money we don't have before a greater crisis hits? We need real reforms, and now. That's why this new majority in the House and I were elected."

Fourth District 11-term Rep. Camp, chairman of the powerful (as powerful as they come) House Ways and Means Committee, said that while the bill was not the ideal, it "makes an important first step in getting our fiscal house in order."

As of this writing, it remained to be seen whether House Speaker John Boehner would appoint Camp to the 12-member special "super Congress" House-Senate committee of six Republicans and six Democrats that is charged to craft a bill by Thanksgiving for reducing deficits by another $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

Camp would be well suited to the task. He's worked effectively on a bipartisan basis over the years across the aisle in the House and the Senate. But he would go in firmly committed against tax increases. As he said on the floor: "Tax rates will not go up."

Camp, who earlier was on a bipartisan economic committee that held public hearings at the White House, will by virtue of his committee chairmanship be influential in resolution of the debt showdown.

On Friday, Camp said this about the mild improvement in the unemployment rate to 9.1 percent:

"While any private sector job growth is preferred to job loss, today's undersized increase demonstrates that the economic recovery has not taken hold. For too long, too many in Washington have professed that the best way to boost confidence and job creation is to spend money that we don't have. An unemployment rate exceeding 8 percent for 30 consecutive months and a national debt that equals 100 percent of America's gross domestic product clearly shows that Washington can't afford to keep 'spending' its way to job creation. It is time for Washington to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem. "

Good moves

Years ago, when state Reps. Kwame Kilpatrick, D-Detroit, and Rick Johnson, R-LeRoy, were party leaders in the state House, they exchanged visits to their districts.

Now freshmen U.S. Reps. Benishek and Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit, plan to visit each other's congressional districts.

"We are one state and one economy," said Clarke, who had planned a July visit to the Upper Peninsula but delayed it because of House deliberations on the debt.

"Representative Benishek and I can reach across the aisle and work together to bring jobs to Michigan," Clarke said.

Benishek, who graduated from Wayne State University's School of Medicine that is in Clarke's 13th Congressional District, said:

"I don't think sticking to one's principles requires making an enemy of those on the other side of the aisle. I greatly enjoyed meeting Hansen for the first time at freshman orientation and I'm convinced we can find ways to work together. We are both focused on creating jobs in our districts and I think this joint visit will be informative for both us."

Clarke, a former state representative and senator, upset seven-term Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit, in the 2010 Democratic primary in large part because of scandal involving her son. She's the mother of Kwame Kilpatrick, the former state representative and Detroit mayor who last week was released from prison after 14 months for violating probation and hiding assets in a text scandal that drove him from office.