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Utah’s Jason Chaffetz caught the eye of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders last year when he traded reciprocal home district visits with the ranking Democrat on the bitterly divided House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

On Armed Services, Mac Thornberry of Texas continued to cement his credentials as one of the GOP’s top defense wonks by leading a task force study last year aimed at finding ways to improve the military procurement process by tweaking the annual defense authorization bill.

With the 114th Congress, both rising GOP stars were able to move up to the ranks of committee chairmen, thanks to a two-decade-old system of Republican rules that limit the terms for committee chairmen and ranking members for the first time in congressional history. Democrats have shied away from them, saying they discount experience and long-term vision.

For Republicans, however, these self-imposed term limits have helped the party identify and groom the next generation of party leaders, keeping the roster of chairmen younger and more dynamic. The system has also helped boost the power of GOP leadership, particularly McCarthy, who as the No. 2 Republican in the House is the manager of panel leaders — the so-called chairman of the chairmen.

Now, McCarthy is working with Chaffetz, Thornberry and seven other fledgling chairmen in a bid to rally their party around pragmatic short-term objectives and new longer-range goals inside the six-year term-limit horizon for gavels in the GOP.

McCarthy’s success unifying Republicans’ largest House majority in 68 years behind the blueprints of the new chairmen — and 12 veteran counterparts —will be vital to GOP electoral fortunes and to his ability to position himself as a possible successor to Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio.

“Chairmen are key,” says McCarthy. “It’s a member-driven system. It’s a bottom-up approach. I like everything to go through a committee.”

The term limits were originally created largely to chip away at the institutionalized power of committee chairmen — whose fiefdoms could effectively become lifetime gigs — and the new rules have shifted the balance of power in the party.

Ronald M. Peters Jr., a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma, says that the limits have spawned “strong party leaders and a weaker committee structure,” adding there is “the potential for a real donnybrook if people see that it is more valuable to be an elected leader than a term-limited chairman.”

There are some downsides for the party. On the House side, the six-year limit applies regardless of whether the party is in the majority or not. So serving as a ranking member effectively limits a lawmaker’s tenure as chairman. (The Senate GOP term limits of six years apply separately to ranking member and chairman slots.)

Each cycle, the House GOP limits effectively help drive some of the party’s top policy experts into early retirement. Last year, it was Dave Camp of Michigan, one of the party’s leading tax experts who was term-limited at Ways and Means.

At the same time, the system has helped ease aside chairmen who party leaders privately worried were ineffective, such as Darrell Issa of California, whose term atop the Oversight panel was rocky and undistinguished.

Camp, who is now a senior policy adviser for PricewaterhouseCoopers, says the term limits promote a “vibrant organization” by injecting “new ideas and new approaches” and cannot be blamed entirely for pushing out lawmakers who grow weary of “the intensity of Capitol Hill.”

“Overall, term limits are a good thing,” Camp says. “To some extent, we may have seen somewhat shorter careers and some loss of institutional memory, but not all of that can be laid at the feet of term limits.”

The GOP also has ways to compensate some of its favored chairmen who reach their term limits.

Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2012 Republican nominee for vice president, faced the end of his time as Budget chairman last year. But he won the top spot on Ways and Means this year, where he can serve for up to six years as the main driver behind a potential rate-lowering tax overhaul and free-trade deals.

Other key new players among the new chairmen include Budget Chairman Tom Price of Georgia, a leader in his party’s drive to slash spending; Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes of California, an architect of the newly cleared law that shifts National Security Agency telephone data collection duties to the private sector; and Agriculture Chairman K. Michael Conaway of Texas, who is pushing efforts to streamline programs and regulation.

‘Walk Before You Run’

The term limits were created in 1995 under the GOP’s “Contract with America” manifesto.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia says the system has delivered energy as promised without negative effects. He says it’s wrong to blame the limits for the strengthening of elected leaders that began in the 1980s.

“It’s pretty hard to argue that the speaker is all-powerful,” he says. “You want a healthy creative tension between the center and committees.”

In his first full term as floor leader, McCarthy, 50, has used the latest round of term limits as a pivot point to invigorate his party in advance of the presidential election.

Seizing on the popularity and the ambition of the new chairmen, the California Republican has urged the sprawling GOP caucus to embrace a blended approach with distant goals set by chairmen, fast-moving routine bills, occasional veto showdowns and deals to avert meltdowns.

“Remember you crawl before you walk, and you walk before you run,” McCarthy told CQ. “Sometimes you make greater yardage and sometimes you don’t make as much.”

Instead of taking policy stands of his own — like the trademark defense of the Export-Import Bank by his predecessor, former Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia — McCarthy has used his clout to increase whip counts.

For example, he brokered a deal in March to cement floor support for a crucial fiscal 2016 budget amendment to provide $38 billion in new war contingency funds sought by defense hawks.

“You want to work those problems out ahead of time. Having been whip before helps me understand where a lot of members are,” McCarthy says.

Thornberry says McCarthy’s “high emotional intelligence” helps to settle spats and that there’s a new dynamic in his caucus: “It’s flatter. It’s more communicative. It’s moving faster.”

Citing more than a decade of work as an aide to former Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of California, an architect of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and the 2004 corporate tax law, McCarthy has prodded the first-term chairmen to build coalitions and hunt for deals like his old boss.

It won’t be entirely smooth sailing, however.

Some of the chairmen have more of an independent streak, such as Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who leads Financial Services. Often mentioned as a rival to current GOP leaders, Hensarling has been at odds with leadership over issues including flood insurance and the Export-Import Bank reauthorization.

Reinventing Committees

For House Republicans, McCarthy’s strategy of betting on the newcomers will be key to extending the GOP’s win streak in three straight cycles and in nine of the last 11 elections. For chairmen, victories will help them retain their slots and provide a potential platform to seek a second gavel on another panel, or to mount a future campaign for senator, governor or, perhaps in Ryan’s case, president.

So far, the tactic of relying on chairmen has scored some modest success. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist think tank, found during the first quarter of 2015 that House committees reported 31 bills, more than the eight and 24 bills moved in the first quarters of 2011 and 2013 respectively. The study compared the burst of energy to sprints after party-control shifts in 1995 and 2007.

McCarthy says the improved relationships on some panels have helped clear the way for the House — and not the Senate — to take the lead on several bipartisan trophies, such as a new Medicare payment plan for doctors and the newly completed plan for private-sector telephone data management.

“In the last Congress, they always kind of rolled us. It’s all different now,” he says. “They have ended up having to take what we sent them.”

But with prospects still uncertain for additional high-profile policy deals, McCarthy has advised members to jump into committee work and pointed to the advice given to businesses by Jim Collins, a former Stanford business school professor, in his book “Good to Great” on the value of well-constructed teams and shared goals. In weekly huddles, he has backed efforts by chairmen to make a fresh start and build relationships in both parties.

For example, on Oversight, Chaffetz has worked closely with the panel’s ranking Democrat, Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, to mount tough bipartisan oversight hearings of the Secret Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As part of an effort to set a new tone, Chaffetz removed portraits of previous chairmen, and shunned any painting of himself. “It’s so 1800s,” Chaffetz says.

In drafting bills and building coalitions, McCarthy is urging chairmen to “look beyond two years” and to envision ways to reconfigure programs. “Structure dictates behavior,” he says.

While McCarthy and panel chairmen lay out their plans, some conservatives have floated the idea of tweaks to term limits. For example, Louie Gohmert of Texas has called for restoring a four-term limit on the speakership that was erased in 2005. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a senior appropriator and longtime GOP strategist, doesn’t see that happening. He says the current system “helps the blood circulate through the system,” and predicts no changes if House Republicans continue to win at the polls.

For their part, Democrats voice mixed views on GOP term limits, saying the true test of a new chairman will be measured not in words but accomplishments.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” says Sander M. Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on Ways and Means, saying that experience isn’t a factor in reaching deals. Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland predicts delays under new chairmen. “That might be an adverse effect,” Hoyer says.

Among Republicans, the main criticism of McCarthy’s cautious strategy comes from the GOP’s right flank, where some members push back against punting tough decisions into the future. Right-wing critics like Issa and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas say the GOP’s power formula rewards obedience, encouraging members to wait in line and defer bold actions such as deep spending cuts to hit Price’s target for balancing the budget in 2024.

“Conservatives are tired of promises,” Huelskamp says. “Chairmen have been diminished,” says Issa, who lost his bid for a term-limit waiver to keep the Oversight gavel. Such complaints mirror a Pew Research Center study in May that found only 41 percent of Republican voters approved of the job done by GOP leaders in Congress, 19 percentage points less than in 2011.

In response to complaints and vague discontent in the base, McCarthy and his allies argue that change must come in installments. While putting off a new round of spending cuts to meet fiscal goals, McCarthy argues that the GOP has laid out a template with showdowns such as a pending reconciliation package aimed at repealing parts of the health care law, and pushing mandatory spending curbs to partly pay for the Medicare payment plan and to offset a plan to spur medical cures.

In the coming months, he vows to move toward fiscal goals in endgame talks on items that loom for the end of the session: an extension of the debt limit, fiscal 2016 spending bills, a potential multi-year surface transportation measure, and either a tax overhaul or an extension of tax breaks.

On taxes, McCarthy has aligned with Ryan in holding out for a plan to pair corporate rate cuts with corresponding individual rate cuts for owners of S corporations that are similar to partnerships. If Democrats give ground and accept such a deal, McCarthy says that corporations, contractors, states and other constituent groups could join forces to push through a corporate tax overhaul in tandem with financing for surface transportation from the repatriation of offshore corporate profits.

If both sides remain apart, he contends that the GOP will have a potent campaign issue and will look to work with the same groups and a new president in the next Congress.

Next Wave

While preparing for year-end talks on taxes and other fiscal issues, McCarthy makes clear that Republicans should be team players and keep in mind their own paths to top slots on panels.

“I like chairmen that can show leadership, that bring people into the circle, regardless of where they stand, but bring them in. Show me that you grasp the different challenges out there, but become an expert,” McCarthy says.

He has encouraged chairmen to work with him as he tries to prepare the next generation of panel leaders, advising aspirants to build track records that can help them to cement support in the steering committee and in their caucus in the next round of changes for the 115th Congress.

Competitions loom at the end of next year for at least five slots: Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers of Kentucky, Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan, Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, and Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller of Florida all face term limits at the end of the 114th Congress. House Administration Chairwoman Candice S. Miller of Michigan, the only current female GOP chairwoman, is retiring.

Well-positioned potential successors include Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey on Appropriations, John Shimkus of Illinois on Energy and Commerce, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina on Education and the Workforce, and Gregg Harper of Mississippi on House Administration.

Their pending ascension may incentivize them to remain in Congress and to raise funds, while injecting fresh energy into those committees.

http://www.cq.com/doc/4703504?5&eapa