Zinke comes to Havre, talks House leadership and foreign policy

Despite speculation and reports, Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., said he is not interested in making a run for Speaker of the House and instead hopes Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.,will enter the race.

"I hope Paul Ryan understands the gravity, which I think he does, and steps forward," said Zinke, during an interview with the Havre Daily News editorial board Sunday.

Some online outlets, such as Breitbart News, a conservative website, reported that unnamed sources close to the first-term congressman from Whitefish, said some House colleagues encouraged him to put forth his name as a candidate.

"I am not interested to go anywhere other than to serve Montana," said Zinke.

Ryan, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate, is seen as credible to both establishment Republicans and more conservative factions, who caused so much consternation for outgoing Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Boehner shocked the political world two weeks ago when he announced he would end his five-year speakership and resign from the House at the end of October. Last week, the House was thrown into further turmoil when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., seen as the odds-on favorite to be the next speaker, ended his short-lived campaign.

So far, reps. Daniel Webster of Florida and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are the only candidates to enter the race, but neither are thought to have the 218 votes needed to win.

Zinke, acknowledged the chaos, saying the 247-member Republican caucus needs to learn to work together to advance a policy agenda and serve as a check on what he calls a lawless president.

Despite open feuding, Zinke said the gridlock is not the fault of the Republican-led House, but of Senate Democrats who regularly keep bills passed by the House from meeting the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster.

"From my perspective, the House is doing its duty,” said Zinke. He said the House has passed a series of bills on forest management, sweeping anti-abortion legislation and a permanent fix that prevents payments from being cut off to doctors who accept Medicare.

It’s Senate Democrats, he said, who are thwarting passage of some bills approved by the House with the frequent use of the filibuster that requires a bill get 60 votes, effectively stopping that legislation in its tracks.

Since taking office in January, Zinke said he is confident a new president and congress can fix what he sees are the harmful policies of President Barack Obama.

It is on matters of foreign policy where Zinke is most troubled and most vocal, especially on the Iran nuclear arms deal.

“I don’t see how anyone could have voted for this deal without looking at the agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran,” said Zinke, referencing provisions that allow Iran to use its own teams to inspect its nuclear facilities. Republicans have long said the Obama administration withheld the text of those provisions in violation of a law stating all material pertaining to the deal must be turned over to congress. The White House said the information of so-called side deals are usually not released.

Zinke said the accord the U.S and five other countries reached with Iran, will allow Iran to acquire as many as 100 ICBM missiles. Sunday morning it was revealed the country test fired its first precision guided missile, violating an earlier U.N security council resolution barring Iranians from testing ballistic missiles that could deliver a nuclear weapon.

Zinke said the U.S and international community should have enacted much harsher sanctions, which would have put the United States in a much stronger position in negotiations.

He also claims the Obama administration has steered the U.S away from its commitments in Iraq and Syria as those nations unravel. He said he opposed plans proposed by the Obama administration where the U.S would resettle refugees fleeing Syria, saying there is no way to screen out potential ISIS recruits.

In order for the unrest to end, he said the U.S must get a hold on Syria. He said the U.S and a coalition of allied countries should form a no-fly zone along the eastern Syrian border that would monitor and intercept movement along that border in order to stop the flow of ISIS fighters and armaments.

In Iraq, he said, the U.S should directly provide weapons to the Kurds and humanitarian aid to religious minorities in Iraq vulnerable to persecution. Troops from the U.S and other allied countries would need to be deployed in Iraq root out ISIS.

“It’s as much of an Islamic problem as it is a U.S problem, but unless we lead, nobody will follow,” said Zinke.