As Majority Leader, Will McCarthy Push Pro-Growth Policies?

What does the election of California's Rep. Kevin McCarthy to majority leader say about Republican economic policies?

McCarthy has supported all major Republican platforms, including lower federal spending and the Keystone XL pipeline. Though his legislative record lacks truly innovative policy solutions, there is reason to expect that McCarthy will help advance pro-growth policies during his tenure as majority leader.

For instance, McCarthy supports immigration reform and has spoken in favor of a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants. His California district is approximately one-third Latino and is a hub of the agricultural industry, which depends on immigrant labor. He helped draft the House GOP leadership’s statement of principles on immigration reform. This emphasized allocating visas to immigrants to “address the economic needs of the country” and ensuring that U.S.-educated students do not leave the country for jobs overseas, taking their skills with them. However, McCarthy must follow up these words with action—the House has still failed to pass needed immigration reform.

The new majority leader is a favorite of the technology industry, and has actively promoted legislation that would improve the competitiveness of America’s cutting-edge technology companies. As majority whip, McCarthy was a major supporter of a patent reform bill that passed the House by a wide margin. The bill would crack down on patent trolls by requiring plaintiffs in frivolous patent cases to overcome a number of new legal hurdles. Patent reform would reduce the amount of time and money technology companies spend on lawsuits, allowing them to devote more resources to creating innovative products.

Additionally, McCarthy pushed surveillance reform that was designed to ban the NSA and other government agencies from bulk-collecting data. This is a key issue for the tech industry. Since Edward Snowden revealed the controversial NSA data-gathering program last year, American companies such as Cisco have reported that many foreigners no longer trust them to provide technology products for fear of NSA surveillance. For Cisco, orders from the “BRIC+M” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Mexico) are down 13 percent.

Sensible surveillance reform would solidify America’s competitive advantage in world technology markets. Unfortunately, both patent and surveillance reform have gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

McCarthy has supported measures to bring government spending under control, such as the Ryan budget. He was, however, unable to reconcile members over a funding bill to prevent the government shutdown last year, even declaring two days before the shutdown that he did not expect it to occur. In his new position, McCarthy ought to take steps to ensure that must-pass bills do indeed pass on schedule, so that Congress can instead focus on initiatives to expand the economy.

Rep. McCarthy should continue to push for pro-growth initiatives during his tenure as majority leader, as well as try to break the House logjam on immigration reform. Now that leadership elections are out of the way, McCarthy and other House Republicans should put politics aside and focus on pro-growth policies in this Congress and the next.

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