A group of Republican legislators made waves last month when they announced the formation of the House Freedom Caucus–a conservative group created to take on “sacred cows” and “special interests,” as founding member Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) explained.
But if progressives were hoping that the right-wing caucus would bolster a lefty-libertarian coalition against the Washington Consensus on national security issues, as Labrador intoned it could, the group’s first chair should give them pause. This week, it was revealed that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), would lead the House Freedom Caucus.
Jordan has consistently supported extreme right-wing positions on US militarism. During the 112th Congress, his voting record received a 100 percent rating from the American Security Council Foundation, an organization described by the Institute for Policy Studies as a champion of “hardline foreign policy figures like John Bolton.”
During last Congress, the Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by renown Islamophobe hawk Frank Gaffney, gave Jordan’s voting record a 93 percent score. He only clashed with Gaffney’s organization on the Amash-Conyers amendment to stop security agencies’ domestic telephone metadata collection and a bill that would explicitly shield journalists from having to disclose sources in courtroom testimony.
And despite touting himself as a “fiscal conservative,” Jordan has backed pork barrel defense spending, including one notorious program that the Pentagon itself has described as unnecessary—production for the Abrams tank at a facility that employs Jordan’s constituents. While Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno told the Associated Press in 2013 that he would allocate the money differently “if we had our choice,” Jordan staunchly defended the white elephant.
“Look, [the plant] is in the fourth Congressional District and my job is to represent the fourth Congressional District, so I understand that,” he said. “But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do.”
Last month, Jordan claimed the military reversed course, and appealed to Americans to not place “national defense at risk” in “reducing our massive national debt…one of our nation’s highest priorities.” But weeks later, while testifying in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Odierno again decried “excess tanks.”
“We are still having to procure systems we don’t need,” he said, lamenting “hundreds of millions of dollars spent on tanks that we simply don’t have the structure for anymore.”
On other matters of Pentagon excess, Jordan has been a reliable ally of hawks and defense contractors. He opposed a reduction in the statutory minimum number of aircraft carriers the navy is required to maintain and a bill that would end War on Terror indefinite detention practices. The two positions helped Jordan earn a 90 percent rating from the Heritage Foundation.
The litany of distinctions from the far-right indicate that the Freedom Caucus will not find common cause with the dovish left, despite Labrador’s insistence that it will look askance at militaristic enthusiasm.
“We need to be reconsidering our foreign policy and some of the things that we’re doing,” he said last week, as The Sentinel reported. “I don’t want to be here to just make contractors more money.”
But if its any consolation to progressives, Jordan’s legislative record makes it unlikely that he will get anything done for the Freedom Caucus. Of the 42 bills, resolutions and amendments he has proposed since he was elected to Congress in 2007, only two have been passed by the House. None have been signed into law.
One insider said that he expects the Freedom Caucus, as a whole, to do much of the same.
“They’re not legislators, they’re just assholes,” an anonymous “senior GOP aide” told the Capitol Hill daily Roll Call. “These guys have such a minority mindset that the prospect of getting something done just scares them away, or pisses them off.”
