- Former GOP Rep. Ken Buck continues to criticize what he says is the dysfunction of the House.
- He recently told WaPo he got “more good work done” when Democrats led the lower chamber.
- Buck, who compiled a mostly conservative voting record, retired from Congress last month.
It hasn’t even been a month since former Colorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck departed Congress. But the hits keep on coming.
Amid a slew of recent criticism of the Republican-controlled House — including his contention that the institution “keeps going downhill” — the conservative recently made a remarkable claim regarding his own effectiveness while he served in the chamber.
While most members are thrilled when they’re part of the majority party in Congress, Buck told The Washington Post that he “got a lot more good work done” when Democrats ran the House.
Buck pointed to the passage of the bipartisan Speak Out Act, which bars pre-dispute nondisclosure agreements in cases involving allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault claims. And he also spoke of his work tackling antitrust issues in Big Tech.
The former congressman told the newspaper that it was “ironic” that he felt more productive than when his own party led the chamber.
Buck was first elected to the House in 2014 to represent Colorado’s deep red 4th congressional district, and he entered the chamber when Republicans were also in the majority. But unlike the House of the mid-2010s, Republicans at the start of the 118th Congress had one of their slimmest House majorities in years.
The tight majority made life impossible for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and has made things tough for current Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. McCarthy had to navigate an ascendant ultra-conservative wing that wielded influence in the House Republican conference. And Johnson is now dealing with the same internal dynamics in a chamber that the GOP controls by a razor-thin 218-213 margin.
