page_title: Cathy McMorris Rodgers
section_title: Fifth term, 2013–2015
hierarchical_section_title: Cathy McMorris Rodgers / Career / U.S. House of Representatives, 2005–present / Fifth term, 2013–2015
caption_attribution_description: Cathy McMorris Rodgers at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2015
context_page_description: Cathy Anne McMorris Rodgers is an American politician who is the U.S. Representative for Washington's 5th congressional district which encompasses the eastern third of the state and includes Spokane, the state's second largest city. A Republican, McMorris Rodgers previously served in the Washington House of Representatives. From 2013 to 2019, she was the Chair of the House Republican Caucus.
  McMorris Rodgers was appointed to the Washington House of Representatives in 1994. She was elected Minority Leader of that house in 2001, becoming the first woman to lead a caucus in state history. In 2004, she was elected to succeed George Nethercutt in the U.S. House of Representatives. McMorris Rodgers rose quickly through the Republican ranks, first as conference vice-chair from 2009 to 2013 and then as chair from 2013 to 2019; she eventually became the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress. She gained national attention in 2014 when she delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address.
context_section_description: In the 2012 general election, Congresswoman Rodgers received 191,066 votes (61.9%) and Democrat Rich Cowan received 117,512 (38.9%).
  At the start of the 113th United States Congress, McMorris Rodgers became Chair of the Republican Conference, which is in charge of communicating the party's message to the Republican caucus. As Chair, she helps craft Republican messaging and has appeared as spokesperson for Republican issues.
  In March 2013, McMorris Rodgers did not support the continuation of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, but sponsored a "watered-down" alternative bill. Ultimately, her bill failed and House adopted the Senate version of the bill.
  In late 2013, she wrote a letter blasting Democrats and accusing them of being "openly hostile to American values and the Constitution" and citing the Affordable Care Act and immigration as evidence that President Obama "rule[s] by decree." In her position as Chair, she blamed the Affordable Care Act for causing unemployment and when FactCheck.org reported studies that proved the opposite and asked her office for evidence to support her claims, "McMorris Rodgers' office got back to us not with an answer, but with a question."
  McMorris Rodgers sponsored legislation that would speed the licensing process for dams and promote energy production. According to a Department of Energy study, retrofitting the largest 100 dams in the country could produce enough power for an additional 3.2 million homes. The legislation reached President Obama's desk without a single dissenter on Capitol Hill.
  In January 2014, it was announced that McMorris Rodgers would be giving the Republican response to President Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address. The decision was made by House Speaker John Boehner and Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. McMorris Rodgers is the twelfth woman to give the response and fifth female Republican, but only the third Republican to do so solo, after New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1995 and the Spanish response by Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior female Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, in 2011. Ros-Lehtinen also gave the Spanish response this year, which was largely a translation of McMorris Rogers' remarks. The following month, the Office of Congressional Ethics recommended the United States House Committee on Ethics initiate a probe into allegations by a former McMorris Rodgers staff member that the congresswoman had improperly mixed campaign money and official funds to help win the 2012 GOP leadership race against Rep. Price. McMorris Rodgers denied the allegations.
  After voting dozens of times to repeal Obamacare, McMorris Rodgers responded in 2014 to reports that Obama's program had provided coverage to over 600,000 Washington residents by acknowledging that the law's framework would probably remain and that she favored reforms within its structure.
caption: McMorris Rodgers speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C.
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