GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Representative Hillary Scholten (D – MI) was looking forward to hitting the ground running on her freshman term in Congress. But first, the U.S. House had to choose a speaker, and that proved to be historically difficult and painfully longer than expected.
“Historic is the word for it,” she said. “I have now taken more votes for speaker than my past two predecessors combined, who served this district for well over a decade.”
Watch Scholten's swearing-in ceremony here:
Scholten cast her support for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D – NY) in each of the 15 rounds it took to elect a speaker, which turned out to eventually be Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R – CA). The lengthy process held up the inauguration of elected House members.
“We couldn’t get sworn in right away and not being sworn in as a member of Congress means you can’t get certain security clearances to start activating your email, to start answering your phones, constituent services were pushed back by days,” said Scholten. “I understand the importance of healthy dialogue and debate but Republicans had months where they knew they would be in the majority and that is precious time that they should’ve used to figure out who was going to be the Speaker.”
Now that members have been sworn in, the next task is assigning representatives to committees. Democrats and Republicans have only agreed on committee ratios.
“Transportation and Infrastructure and Small Business are my top two committee choices, and emphasize the areas in which I want to work,” said Scholten.
While Michigan as a whole has experienced population loss in the past few years – contributing to the state losing a congressional seat prior to the most recent election cycle – parts of the third district like Muskegon and Grand Rapids are actually growing. Scholten wants to nurture that growth with improvements to the state’s airport system, public transit, and interstate travel infrastructure.
“Transportation is a determinate of social status, economic status, and health status when we’re talking about people getting to appointments,” said Scholten. “So, it’s a top priority of mine.”
In November, Scholten defeated Republican challenger John Gibbs, a member of former President Donald Trump’s Housing and Urban Development department. At the beginning of the year, a conservative slate of newly-elected Ottawa County commissioners named Gibbs the new county administrator – a surprise replacement that shocked even some commissioners on the board and triggered an emotional round of public comment at the subsequent board meeting.
Since the decision to replace the acting county administrator with Gibbs – as well as the county’s health officer, legal counsel, and even county motto – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has launched an investigation into any dealings the slate of conservative commissioners may have had outside the public eye, and whether those meetings violated state laws.
“There certainly are open questions of whether the Open Meetings Act was violated,” said Scholten. “There’s not a role for the federal government to play in stepping in and deciding how that all shakes out, but it certainly…is of concern to me when it concerns the constituents in Michigan’s third congressional district.”
While Scholten spends her first week back in West Michigan meeting with small businesses and health leaders, looming back in Washington, D.C. is the catastrophic threat of U.S. debt default. The nation has never defaulted on its loans, and if Congress can’t find a fix or agree to raise the borrowing ceiling, the results could be wildly impactful on the American economy.
With Republicans holding a slim majority in Congress, Scholten said she’ll work across the aisle, but hopes the GOP can be in better lock-step on debt default than they were on the vote for Speaker of the House.
“I’m hopeful that Republicans will take that seriously, will get themselves organized,” she said. “This is the time, now, for them to start having that conversation about the resolutions that they’re willing to come to the table with.”
