U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., announced this week she will not participate in the House Republican Conference and its committees during her upcoming term.
“We have to govern for a change, and we have to make some changes. My party will be in charge next year, fortunately, but unfortunately it doesn’t want to do the changes,” Spartz said in an interview with IndyStar, part of the USA TODAY Network.
She said on X she plans to remain registered as a Republican and is eager to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
“I want President Trump to be a great president, because I want my party to put the money where mouth is and deliver,” Spartz told IndyStar.
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Spartz is a congresswoman representing Indiana’s 5th District, which covers an area northeast of Indianapolis, including Anderson and Marion. She will be sworn into her third term in January.
Spartz’ announcement is one of a long line of protests she has made about the operations of the federal government in Washington, D.C., since she was first elected in 2020. In one example, Spartz threatened to quit Congress in late 2023 if lawmakers did not establish a commission to study the national debt.
In early 2023, Spartz announced she would not seek a third term, but reversed that decision just before the early 2024 filing deadline. She gave herself three months to make her case to voters while also running against eight other opponents in the GOP primary.
Spartz won the May primary with 39% of the vote. In November, she defeated Democrat, Libertarian and independent opponents winning nearly 57% of the vote.
The decision to not participate in the House Republican Conference or committees could leave Spartz out of the discussion of legislation and priorities led by House Republicans in the next Congress.
Republicans will hold a trifecta in the White House and Congress in the incoming session, but their lead in both chambers is slim. The GOP is expecting a 220-215 majority in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate. The majorities were larger but some Congressional Republicans have been tapped for leadership roles in Trump’s incoming administration. With such slim majorities, the party will need to be unified to pass their priority legislation, but members have splintered on issues in the past.
Some Republicans expressed concern about losing their razor-thin U.S. House majority, and the Indiana Democratic Party criticized Spartz’s move.
“Now that she’s won, she’s decided not to do a major part of the work she was elected to do. Central Indiana deserves better,” the party said in a post on X.
But former U.S. Senator and Indiana Governor-elect Mike Braun defended Spartz’ position.
“When I heard Victoria was thinking about just focusing on all the waste, all the inefficiency, that would be a lot more rewarding than being in a system now where most of the legislation is actually crafted behind closed doors by leaders not involving regular order,” Braun said in an appearance Tuesday on News Nation. “We’d probably be a lot better off if she had impact there than what most representatives and senators do routinely, which is not having the real legislative apparatus working.”
Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi
Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com, and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley.
