SPOKANE, Wash. – Cathy McMorris Rodgers has made her mark upon the US Congress over the past two decades as the former House Republican Conference chair and current chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. After two decades in the legislature, this January.
McMorris Rodgers looks forward to spending more time with family once she leaves Congress in January.
“I do want to come home, this is home. I’m fifth-generation in eastern Washington, both sides of my family are here,” McMorris Rodgers said.
When she resumes life as a private citizen, she’ll have a storied career to look back upon. Eastern Washington’s congresswoman started her political career with an appointment to a Washington State House seat in 1993 after Bob Morton moved to the Senate.
She served as the Republican minority leader in the State House briefly from 2002 to 2003 before taking over US House District 5’s seat from the outgoing in 2005.
Throughout the Bush and early Obama era, McMorris Rodgers followed her party’s direction in supporting the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan while opposing marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act.
During the later Obama years, she emerged as a with the 2014 Achieving a Better Life Experience Act and She underscored the personal nature of these issues for her on Tuesday.
“It is personal. Since I was first elected to Congress I got married and had three kids, and our oldest, Cole, was born with Down Syndrome. I was made aware of the legislation right after he was born,” McMorris Rodgers said.
She became the conference chair of the House Republican party making her the fourth highest ranking Republican in the chamber until 2019. She also delivered the to President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address.
The congresswoman attributed her ascendance to Republican leadership to policy experience gained over a long political career.
“I love being chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and being able to really lead on an agenda, but that doesn’t happen without years of experience and building relationships,” McMorris Rodgers said.
Toward the end of her legislative career, McMorris Rodgers initially joined Republicans who baselessly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen and said she would refuse to vote for the certification of the results but reversed course after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
After a that she would leave the House, McMorris Rodgers has mostly focused her final months in Congress on and She called for lowered political polarization across the country as she looks back on a career which included navigating increasing divisions between the two major parties.
“This culture of contempt, where we just view each other with complete disdain…if we don’t agree on a political issue…We need to lower the hostility,” McMorris Rodgers said.
