Eric Cantor is leading a reimagining, of sorts, of GOP economic policy. | John Shinkle/POLITICO House GOP 2014 agenda: Blank slate

Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.”

The blank slate just about sums up where Republicans find themselves after a year marked by the first government shutdown in 17 years, futile efforts to repeal Obamacare and the inability to pass spending bills at the levels set by Republican leaders.


Cantor, a Virginia Republican who is in charge of the House floor and the legislation that reaches it, is beginning to lead a reimagining, of sorts, of GOP economic policy. The agenda could help show that the GOP can solve problems instead of only serve only as perpetual combatants with President Barack Obama.

Without much fanfare, House Republicans are crafting an election-year agenda that’s meant to target what they believe are the real economic issues facing middle-class Americans — and thereby attract the kind of voters that the GOP and Mitt Romney alienated in 2012. They hope the initiatives will help them hang onto the majority in 2014 and paint a more positive image of the party.

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It’s abundantly clear that a new approach is needed. The 16-day government shutdown was a political disaster for Republicans and drove the party’s poll numbers to new lows. With a dismal legislative record this year, Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. Most Americans vehemently disagree with shutting down the government and placing the nation on the brink of an unprecedented debt default.

Issues discussed at sessions with Cantor and his policy chief, Neil Bradley, include a spike in energy costs, job training programs and education reform.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were not involved in Thursday’s session but have been part of other discussions.

In these private gatherings, House Republicans aren’t talking about the policies they want to enact, but instead, the problems they’re trying to solve.

Instead of focusing on an increase in oil drilling — standard Republican fare — participants considered how the spike in home energy costs has outpaced the rise in take-home pay. Cantor talked about charter schools and education woes — a hobbyhorse of his. There are discussions about presenting conservative solutions to issues such as poverty and anemically slow job growth. Other lawmakers talked about driving college costs down by getting more schools accredited, encouraging students to enter professions that are hiring and encouraging private companies to start job-training programs.

“The beginning should always be what are the problems we’re trying to fix,” said Republican Policy Chairman James Lankford (Okla.), who attended the meeting. “What are the real solutions that fix that? That was a lot of the conversation. I don’t want to get into details, I’ll let Cantor run that. The focus is really solving the problems that we face as a nation, that families face. So we started with some big picture stuff. Look at the big level, and figure out how to fix it.”

Details, at this point, are scant, and senior Republican aides say this meeting follows smaller meetings with chairmen and other key House Republican figures.

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Rory Cooper, a Cantor spokesman, said the majority leader’s office doesn’t “comment on private meetings between members.”

House Republicans have spent much of their nearly three-year old majority focusing on fixing the nation’s massive debt and deficit problems, in between futile votes to get rid of Obamacare. Republican aides say that fiscal focus is not disappearing, but there’s also an increasing recognition that most Americans don’t think the nation’s $17 trillion debt affects them on a day-to-day basis.

This line of planning is also a recognition that any kind of large-scale fiscal deal is unlikely with Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in power.

“There’s too much difference between the groups,” Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) said. “A tax-reform policy we might craft is not something the president is going to accept. We need to accept the reality of the political dynamics that we’re facing. While simultaneously saying both parties — Republicans and Democrats alike — recognize the need to help drive the middle class forward.”

Attendees at the Thursday meeting included Reps. Virginia Foxx and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, Lankford, Mike Conaway and Kay Granger of Texas, Larry Bucshon of Indiana, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Ribble, as well as about a dozen other lawmakers.

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Of course, all this effort is heavily poll-tested, and Cantor even presented fresh data to support the agenda. This Republican leadership is so attuned to polling that an energy bill uses the word “fracturing” instead of “fracking,” mostly because it polls better.

This meeting comes as Cantor, Boehner and other top Republicans have been handed a huge political windfall thanks to the disastrous Obamacare rollout that started Oct. 1. On Friday, the House approved a bill that would allow health insurers to continue selling through 2014 plans that had been canceled under the Affordable Care Act. In a blow to the White House and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 39 Democrats backed the legislation, a sign of just how scared rank-and-file Democrats are of the Obamacare fallout heading into an election year where they had hoped to win back the House.

Yet Cantor and other party leaders know that opposition to Obamacare is not enough to keep their majority or win more seats. If Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) cannot hash out a budget deal over the next few weeks, there will be another government funding fight in January. Then in March or April, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling. Both votes will be tough for the House GOP, and they may once again need to call on Pelosi and Democrats to bail them out.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) has been pushing a major tax-reform bill as an economic growth package. Yet Boehner and his top lieutenants balked at the Camp plan when they met with him last week. A markup for that legislation — if it happens — may slip by weeks or months.

Put this all together, and it appears like those big-ticket items like tax reform may not happen in 2014.

“I think it was difficult in 2013,” Lankford said of tax reform. “I’m going to have to let [Ways and Means Chairman] Dave [Camp] answer that one, and the speaker and leader. It’s tough, obviously.”

A Republican aide put it more bluntly.

“What we have done so far this year clearly hasn’t worked,” said the GOP aide involved in the planning sessions. “Cantor wants to take us in a new direction, which is good. The problem is we don’t know where we are headed, and we don’t know what we can sell to our members.”