Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan was trailed by a phalanx of unfamiliar faces as he stepped up to the podium to open the debate on repealing health care reform on Tuesday.
Among the parade of Republicans coming forward to deliver one-minute speeches in support of HR 2, a repeal of health care reform, were several freshmen members, including Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, all of whom ran on an anti-health care reform platform this fall and now sit on the budget committee.
In the beginning, it seemed that freshmen members were leading the debate. Spokesmen for Ryan’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but the presence of so many new members, at least eight, on the House floor for repeal was an purposeful attempt to keep the focus on the freshmen, whose opposition to the bill became a clarion call for conservatives and Tea Party activists this year.
For the new members it wasn’t just an important milestone of speaking on the House floor for the first time, but an early and visible opportunity to check off a key promise they made on the campaign trail.
For others it was more prosaic.
“My nine year old was listening and he said I was good, though he didn’t know what I was talking about,” Huelskamp said.
Mulvaney, who used his 90 seconds to taunt Democrats about fiscal conservatism, said he was largely riffing in his first floor speech. The presence of so many new members speaking out against health care gave each an opportunity to take a different tack in their arguments—Huelskamp talked about business and labor unions seeking waivers from the law, for example, while Lankford discussed the costs for small businesses.
Other freshmen members not on the budget committee spoke in the first few hours of debate, including Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash), Jeff Landry (R-La), and Scott Tipton (R-Col.) Two of the freshmen speakers—Nan Hayworth of New York and Renee Ellmers of North Carolina—are political newcomers from medical professions. Hayworth is an ophthalmologist and Ellmers is a nurse.
But new Republicans weren’t the only ones who took part in the debate. Rep. Terri Sewell, one of nine freshman Democrats, was among the first in her party to defend the Democrats’ health care law from repeal.