Washington Post article on Greg Walden

Below is an excerpt from the Washington Post on Oregon Congressman Greg Walden called “Oregon Rep. Greg Walden: A handy man working to implement goals of GOP leaders” By Philip Rucker.

In BoehnerLand, the constellation of loyalists and associates surrounding the soon-to-be House speaker, Rep. Greg Walden has become the indispensable jack-of-all-trades.A former radio station owner from the high desert plateau of eastern Oregon, the six-term Republican tackles every thankless task assigned by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner with the precision that he learned as an Eagle Scout. Walden’s latest assignment: to oversee his party’s transition to the majority – and to somehow translate its campaign promises to reform the way Congress works to a practical rule book that, well, reforms the way Congress works.

This is no sexy task. And it will not culminate in a landmark bill that bears Walden’s name. This is a matter of floor-vote calendars and committee-hearing schedules. Should Congress stream live witness testimony and committee deliberations? Keep printing 200 copies of each amendment? Slash the money spent on the Capitol’s underground subway or guards or cafeteria cooks – or all of the above?

“We often get hamstrung about what the existing structure is,” Walden, 53, said in an interview this week. ” ‘Well, we can’t do that because we have a rule.’ Um, guys, we write the rules. Think outside the box. If you were designing this institution starting today, how would you design it? What works? What doesn’t? And how would you do it better?”

These are the weighty concerns that have consumed Walden’s life since last week’s elections. When Boehner (Ohio) is installed as House speaker on Jan. 5, his regime will assume control not only of the rules that govern the House, but also the shared responsibility with the Democrat-controlled Senate of the vast operations of the Capitol complex.

It falls to Walden’s 22-member transition committee to determine what will change – and quickly, since the new rules would go into effect in January. This week, Walden led days of meetings, seeking ways to trim the size and expense of a bureaucracy that many Republicans derided on the campaign trail as bloated.

The committee members also want to bring more transparency to House operations. What particularly rankled them, and many American voters, was the Democratic majority’s act of procedural jujitsu in pushing through the health-care overhaul this spring.

Walden is hardly considered a partisan bomb-thrower, but he is a reliable conservative, and he acknowledged that he grew agitated during that debate. In March, he and a handful of Republican colleagues stood over the Capitol balcony holding up signs that spelled “K-I-L-L T-H-E B-I-L-L,” stoking a tea party protest.

“That really put me over the top, just to say, ‘Enough! Enough!’ ” Walden said. “This is not how the people’s business should be conducted.”

Republican leaders say that no other lawmaker is better suited than Walden to make the necessary changes.

“He’s been kind of my go-to guy here over the last year, and everything I’ve given him, he’s done a great job,” Boehner sai

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