Pennsylvania’s new House Freedom Caucus announced its initial leaders this week, with State Representative Dawn Keefer (R-Dillsburg) to chair the new organization and State Representative David Rowe (R-Mifflinburg) to serve as vice chair.
Keefer and Rowe were among the 20 GOP members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to vote against this fiscal year’s budget, a compromise between the majority-Republican General Assembly and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf, which increases state spending by 16.6 percent to $43.7 billion. In remarks to the press, the new caucus’s leaders complained of the extent to which government is growing in the commonwealth and promised to pursue zero-based budgeting and regulatory reform.
“This commonwealth is ripe with opportunity,” Keefer said. “But sadly, that opportunity is thwarted and squandered, time and time again, by self-interests, egos and plain ignorance. Members of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus stand united to protect personal freedoms, the right to pursue economic aspirations without undue government influence and the right to live and raise a family without big brother of government usurping individual liberties.”
The roughly two dozen conservative House members Keefer said are members of the new group may now have a stronger organizational voice than they did in past legislative sessions, but they will have an even harder time pursuing a right-wing policy agenda. For decades, Republicans have usually held the majority in both legislative chambers, but that will change next year when Republicans in the 203-seat house will represent one fewer district than the Democrats.
Republicans ran the State House and the State Senate throughout the Wolf administration, and conservative policymaking was still possible through the constitutional-amendment process. Republicans managed to use that process to curtail the governor’s power to keep an emergency order in prolonged effect, a change spurred by the months-long COVID-19 emergency orders that kept state residents in lockdown and closed businesses for much of 2020 and 2021.
Conservatives hoped to build on that success with new measures declaring there is no state constitutional right to abortion and requiring identification to vote in elections, among other reforms. But since amending the Pennsylvania Constitution necessitates passage of legislation in two consecutive General Assembly sessions, those measures have no chance of enactment.
Moreover, Republicans will face the same hostility from the executive branch that they did over the last eight years, with Attorney General Josh Shapiro stepping into Wolf’s shoes in January.
Still, Rowe said, the extent to which bureaucratic growth and high taxes have compromised business flourishing in the Keystone State demands that small-government voices band together over the long haul toward more rightward governance.
“Those freedoms which are enshrined in the constitutions of both the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the United States of America have been hamstrung by an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy and the elected officials who abdicate their authority to it,” Rowe said. “As any business owner will tell you, you’ll be hard pressed to find a state more hostile to job creators and entrepreneurs than Pennsylvania.”
The Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus is the eight such state organization nationwide. Keefer said the group plans to expand its membership by invite only.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Dawn Keefer” by Dawn Keefer for State Representative. Photo “David Rowe” by PA State Rep. David Rowe. Background Photo “Pennsylvania State Capitol” by Ad Meskens. CC BY-SA 3.0.
