Congressman Jim Jordan, the outspoken chairman of the Republican Study Committee, says the GOP must find the discipline to fix America’s fiscal crisis before time runs out.
“I think our leadership has a tough job,” said Jordan at a breakfast with reporters this morning. “And [Speaker] John Boehner, I mean let’s just be honest, he has the toughest job in this stinking town. Maybe the toughest job in the world right now.”
Jordan clashed with Boehner, a fellow Ohioan, during this summer’s debt ceiling fight. He criticized a compromise deal offered up by Boehner and the House leadership. At one point, there were reports that Jordan’s seat would be redistricted out of existence by Ohio Republicans looking to punish him for crossing the Speaker.
“I respect what the speaker is trying to get done,” Jordan said. “It’s tough when he’s got a conference with Jim Jordan types and others who might not have quite the same perspective. I don’t try to be the enemy at all, I try to be helpful and help our team do what we told the voters we were going to do.”
Still, Jordan says that time is running out to deal with America’s debt and that he’s committed to doing something about it as soon as possible. “It’s like any problem,” said Jordan, a proponent of the “Cut, Cap and Balance” approach to controlling spending. “The sooner you can get about fixing it, the easier it is to get it done. The longer you wait, the tougher it is.”
His experience as a champion wrestler in high school and college still informs Jordan’s outlook. Wrestling taught Jordan discipline, and discipline is what he says his party needs now. “I had a coach in high school,” he said. “He was the chemistry and physics teacher at the school. The toughest teacher in the school. The toughest wrestling coach in the state. Every day, and this is no exaggeration, every day he’d talk about discipline.” His coach, said Jordan, defined it better than anyone in his life ever has: “Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it.”
“That meant doing it his way when you wanted to do it your way,” Jordan explains. “And it meant doing it the right way, when you wanted to do it the convenient way. And in this town, the simplest thing to do it is the convenient thing: get a deal together, kick the can down the road, and we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
For Jordan, the Washington way of doing this, the way of compromise and easy deals, isn’t working.
“The tough thing is the right thing,” Jordan said before leaving to attend a funeral in Arlington, “and we’re at a point now with the fiscal situation where we got to have some discipline.”
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