Speaker Mike Johnson may have the House’s top job — but it’s an anesthesiologist from Queens who might soon be the most powerful member of Congress.
Rep. Andy Harris, who has repped the eastern shore of Maryland since 2011, took on an elevated profile in September when he became chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, the GOP’s most conservative bloc.
With Republicans holding a razor-thin majority, the famously fractious collection of two- to three-dozen GOP spending hawks could hold outsized power over President-elect Trump’s legislative agenda.
Harris, 67, is a MAGA diehard, but told The Post he and his members intend to hold the line on runaway government spending.
“Whether that new spending comes in the form of tax relief or actual new spending, such as a border wall,” Harris explained, sitting in his fifth-floor office in the Longworth House building in Washington, DC, where he keeps three bibles and a portrait of Jesus painted by his mother. “It will have to be offset, because it can’t result in a net increase to the deficit.”
“We did it in Mr. Trump’s first term, and we will do it if necessary in the second term.” he added.
The eight-term Republican congressman was quick to add that he doesn’t expect there to be any major friction with the White House — and believed the concerns of his members would be taken seriously.
In his 75-minute conversation with The Post, Harris expressed confidence in Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and their new Department of Government Efficiency.
“The first pass will be just to examine the efficiency of the existing workforce given the existing workload, and since both he and Vivek were in corporate America, they understand that every corporation has to do that,” Harris said.
The M.D. cheered President-elect Trump’s push for Greenland.
“There’s a lot of natural resources in Greenland that I think could be very useful both for economic security and for military security,” Harris said. “Greenland has moved toward independence from Denmark over the last century. I don’t know why we can’t attempt to move them further over in our direction and away from Europe.”
Like many conservatives, Harris was critical of Trump’s pick for Secretary of Labor, Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whose nomination received the backing of Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien.
“Her record in Congress, I don’t think is consistent with the mainstream Republican thought on labor issues,” he said.
He didn’t know what to make of Trump’s 11th-hour attempt to reverse bipartisan legislation to force Chinese company Bytedance to divest from TikTok. The company is widely viewed as a national security threat because of its ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“I don’t understand . . . My first instinct would be that he would agree that the connection to the CCP is dangerous,” Harris said.
The Freedom Caucus doesn’t release its official tally of members, but Harris said the group has two-to three-dozen members — more than enough for them to play kingmakers in the budget fights which lay ahead in 2025.
Trump huddled with Harris and Freedom Caucus members at Mar-a-Lago Friday evening — likely in anticipation of their coming influence.
An 11th hour funding deal to keep the government open in December will only keep the lights on until March — at which point a new funding solution will have to be found.
“I expect them to be highly influential,” said former Virginia Rep. Dave Brat, a one-time Freedom Caucus member now working at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. “The Freedom Caucus positions mirror the positions of the American people and particularly the people who voted for President Trump.”
Harris, 67, hails from Laurelton, Queens — a 20-minute drive from Trump’s childhood home in leafy Jamaica Estates.
The graduate of Regis HS, the elite Catholic prep school in Manhattan, said he didn’t miss the bad old days of the city.
“I remember one morning I got on the train, and literally, there was a dead person on the train. And that person obviously must have been there for a while, because that car really smelled like nobody went in the car,” recalled Harris.
Harris went on to study at medicine at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital in Baltimore and later served as an associate professor there for nearly three decades. He’s lived in Maryland since 1975.
