Exclusive – Rep. Kevin Hern Announces Bid for Republican Study Committee Chairman

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that he plans to run to become the next Republican Study Committee (RSC) chairman, saying, “no one will work harder to stop the Biden administration from ruining our country.”

Hern — who represents Oklahoma’s first congressional district and is a two-term congressman — hopes to replace Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) as the leader of the largest caucus of House Republicans. As Banks will be term-limited as the chairman, Hern hopes to lead the 150-plus member conference into a House Republican majority that would continue Banks’s legacy of making the RSC a preeminent organization within the House Republican Conference.

“No one will work harder to restore the conservative, America First agenda,” Hern said in his video announcing his bid for the RSC chairmanship. “No one will work harder to stop the Biden administration from ruining our country.”

“I’d appreciate your support to take back the House and take back the country,” Hern said.

Hern rose from poverty to achieve the American dream, and now he hopes to help his fellow Americans reach that level of success as the RSC chairman, he told Breitbart News.

After working himself through high school and college, the Oklahoma conservative became an engineer before pivoting to becoming a McDonald’s franchisee, now running over 24 McDonald’s franchises. He has worked in many other industries such as manufacturing, technology, and finance. Hern first ran for Congres in 2018 after witnessing Trump use his experience as a businessman to unleash the American economy as president. He emphasized that the RSC is the best vehicle to push through good policy to benefit the American people.

“I think strong leadership is important, and I spent a lifetime working for them working to get the American dream. I came from a very poor background and saw what happens when you have an egregious government reaching into your pockets every single day with high taxes and then saw what they did with the welfare state,” Hern said. “And I just spent a lot of time in business in leadership roles running multiple businesses. I was on the receiving end of a lot of this, and when I came to Congress, I came for one particular reason, it wasn’t for a job or for money, it was to come and get this country back on a path to protect the opportunity like guys and gals like me, and there’s no better place in Congress to do that than the RSC with its conservative policies, its policies for the American worker, the American taxpayer.”

Hern said he has met with over 100 RSC members for at least 30 minutes to discuss his race to become the next RSC chairman.

The RSC has recently worked on messaging and policy proposals to counter the Biden administration.

Hern, as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, worked closely with Banks to craft an alternative budget that was described to RSC staff as “the best budget RSC’s ever produced.”

The Oklahoma congressman’s experience on Ways and Means and as a small businessman may help shepherd the RSC towards producing legislation and budgets to help combat the rampant inflation and dismal economy unfolding two years into Biden’s administration.

“I think one of the biggest pieces of misinformation that we’ve seen over my lifetime is that business principles don’t work in government. I think President Donald Trump proved that to be wrong. When he came in and what he did was getting our job creators back and engaged in putting Americans to work and having won the greatest economies we’ve seen in the history of this country,” he said.

Hern said the “center of our problem with inflation is overspending.”

Hern said he would continue to be critical of Republicans and Democrats “alike.”

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) served as an instrumental part of conservatives’ fight against the $1.2 trillion so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which eventually garnered the support of 13 House Republicans.

Hern served as part of a five-member RSC panel explaining the RSC’s issues with the bill. The Oklahoma conservative that shortly after their RSC press conference during Republicans to oppose the bill, Republican leadership announced they would also oppose the bill.

The RSC has long messaged against the bill, noting the many leftist carveouts in the bill and how it would not do much to alleviate America’s infrastructure needs:

Hern described the press conference as a “great exercise in leadership from Chairman Banks” and said that he believes it’s important to voice the RSC’s stance on issues so that they are aligned with its constitutional principles.

Hern said if he were elected as the RSC chair, he would focus much of the conference’s efforts on combatting a rising China, including addressing America’s supply chain reliance on China, and potential conflict between Taiwan and China.

The RSC has also led the culture war against the radical left, which has been increasingly centered on America’s most powerful corporations.

After Disney announced its opposition to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) Parental Rights in Education bill and has continued to inject “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in its stories,” RSC Chairman Banks said he would fight to rescind Disney’s copyright renewal. Other Republicans, such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), have since proposed similar measures.

Hern said that Republicans need to use Congress’s power to fight back against the left’s woke campaign.

“If these corporations want to get involved in our day-to-day government work, then we need to make sure that we’re using our government powers to push back on those, whether it be tax policies, regulatory policies,” Hern explained.

The bid for RSC chairman could also lead as a path toward Republican leadership. Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Mike Johnson (R-LA) both served as chairman. Currently, Scalise serves as the Republican Whip, and Johnson serves as vice chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Hern will face off against Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) for the RSC chairmanship.

But for Hern, his focus in the near term is helping get America “back on track” by combatting the deleterious effects of Biden administration policies when Republicans likely take back the House next year.

“The historical process of RSC is to be conservative in our budget, put a conservative budget out, talk about our conservative values and push those and work on our individual liberties and personal freedoms and our Constitution,” Hern said. “And I still think that we’ve gotten away from that so much, and we saw Chairman Banks and Chairman Johnson moving us back that way. We need to continue doing that now that we’re going to be in the majority.”