A handful of Freedom Caucus members voted against new House Speaker Paul Ryan, but Rep. Matt Salmon, who is also in the group, said he believes Ryan and his promise to change the chamber's culture will draw their support.
"Paul is sending the right messages to everybody, and in the spite of the fact that there were some that voted against him, I believe that there's going to be a real unifying house moving forward," the Arizona Republican told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show.
The problem with former Speaker John Boehner, who announced his resignation last month, was that he made "all of the decisions" with staff members, giving them "more decision-making ability than a congressman does, and that is a problem."
Ryan has promised to allow committees to draw up bills, something Salmon said has not happened in years.
"When Boehner was speaker, he would jerk the bills out of the committee, and go to some room, and make a decision with the staff on what the bill would entail, and that is not good policy," Salmon said.
"I don't think that anybody — conservatives, liberals or anybody — is served well, when you have one guy making all of the decisions, because it is not the way that our Founding Fathers set it up."
Salmon said that on Thursday, after Ryan gave his acceptance speech, he was sitting next to one of nine Freedom Caucus members who had voted against him for speaker.
"He turned to me and said, 'Paul is the right guy, and we will support him 100 percent,'" said Salmon.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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