If you want to be a Star forget bipartisanship

If You want to be a Star, Forget Bipartisanship

There are two kinds of politicians: those who want to be stars and those who want to accomplish something. You can very quickly spot the former. Politicians, who want to be stars are visible because they are not interested in bipartisanship.  During the time I was in the legislature from 1970 to 1987 and then in the Congress from 1989 to 1994, there was great bipartisanship in many legislative bodies across the country.  When Newt Gingrich came to the Congress in 1984, he assessed the political situation and came to the conclusion, that bipartisanship would never lead to a Republican takeover of Congress.  He decided that, in order for the Republicans to take over, there had to be an end to bipartisanship.

In the early 1980’s Gingrich began his assault on bipartisanship by attacking members of the Democratic caucus through the use of charges of ethics violation.  A long series of attacks were made in the late 1980s.  Accusations were leveled at Democratic members on issues including financial corruption, sexual activities and other violations of House rules.  The ethics committee was central to this attack on the Democratic caucus.  The goal was clear; disgrace the Democratic caucus.

When I arrived in Congress there were charges circulating against Dan Rostenkowski, Charlie Wilson, Tom Foley and members who had accounts in the House bank.  The House bank was established sometime in the 1850s to deal with the problems of members who were living in Washington, DC and far from their home banking establishment.  Members paychecks were deposited in the bank and members wrote checks to cover their various financial obligations.  Not infrequently, a members’ account would be overdrawn: sometimes because, a spouse had written a check or members knew their check was coming in a day or so, and wrote checks in anticipation that the account would receive the money before the check would reach its destination.  This process functioned as a rudimentary overdraft protection which was being installed in most bank accounts at that time.  Members were routinely called by the Sergeant at arms staff to inform them that their account was overdrawn.  Deposits were made or a new month started, and no money was ever lost.

This situation was characterized by Newt Gingrich as a corrupt bank that the Democratic Party was running in the House of Representatives.  An investigation was begun by the ethics committee and I was one of four members who looked over all 435 accounts.  The banking scandal, as it was called, was so toxic that all members records were opened up for public view.  The perception of members bouncing checks was perceived by the public as a horrible perk that members of Congress enjoyed and resulted in dozens of members losing their seats in the next Congress.  Newt Gingrich didn't care how many Republicans lost because he knew that more Democrats would lose and thus increase his chances to take over the House.  This all occurred in the session of 1991-1992.

In this session of 1993 -- 1994 Bill Clinton was the new president.  Charges were brought against Dan Rostenkowski and once again the ethics committee was charged with investigation of his alleged corruption.  I was the chairman of the ethics committee during that period, having been appointed by Speaker Thomas Foley.

During this same period the Congress was considering a universal health care program presented by Mrs. Clinton.  The Republicans were desperate to kill this plan because they believed that, if the Congress passed health care for all, the public would support them without question and thus the Republicans would never have a chance to take over power in the House.  The history of success of the Democratic Party since the passage of the Social Security act of 1935 was an ominous sign to the Republicans that if the Democrats succeeded, they would face another 60 years with the Democrats in power. That is why Trump and the Republicans are so dead set against Obamacare today.

The Democrats struggled during the session of 1993-94, just as they did in 2009 – 2010, to enact health care for all.  The bill was poised to pass out of the Ways and Means committee of which Dan Rostenkowski was the chairman.  Dan Rostenkowski was arguably the most powerful man in the House. We may never know why the Justice Department decided to bring charges in federal court against Dan Rostenkowski at that moment.  This threw the Congress into a massive state of confusion and no vote was ever taken on the floor of the House on health care for all. Mrs. Clinton’s effort failed here. A little thing to remember is that is always easier to kill an idea than it is to give birth to an idea.

In order to deal with the economic problems of the country, President Clinton asked for new taxes to be passed in order to begin reducing the debt of this country.  The tax bill was passed without a single Republican vote and set us on a course over the next six years to have our first budget surplus in many years.  However, the campaign of 1994 was a run as a referendum on the corrupt Democratic House caucus.  Newt Gingrich succeeded in that election and the Republicans took over for the first time in 40 years.

Every freshman class in the past had had an orientation at the Kennedy school of Government where issues were presented from the right and center and the left.  The Kennedy School faculty was careful not to present a biased approach to any issue whether it was the environment or taxes or energy or war or whatever.  In order to strengthen his partisan approach to government Newt Gingrich took the Republicans freshmen in January 1995 to the American Heritage Institute in order that they not be come acquainted with their Democratic colleagues and be kept ideologically pure.

Prior to 1995 bills and appropriations were done on a bipartisan basis in the majority of occasions.  After the election of 1994 the Republicans and, particularly the speaker, controlled the flow of legislation that largely excluded participation by committees and especially by Democratic members.  The Democrats quickly learned what the nature of the new Congress was to be: partisan in everything.

Suddenly the air was filled with numerous ethical complaints against Newt Gingrich.  Since that time the Congress has been in almost continuous combat in the ethics committee.  Members on both sides of the aisle have been attacked for matters large and small, with the only real goal, being to smear the other side.

As one thinks about power as one of the elements that drives members participation in the political process, one quickly realizes that partisanship is the best way to get power.  Bipartisanship, by its very nature, suggests power-sharing and Newt realized that a minority can never get control in a bipartisan arrangement.  There will always be more left center leaning Democrats than there are right leaning Republicans.

One example, from the Appropriations Committee, is an illustration of this concept.  The subcommittee chairmen of the Appropriations Committee are called “Cardinals”.  The Cardinals would sit down with their ranking member, who is the highest senority member of the minority party, and allocations would be made of the money to be appropriated in that area.  The majority member would control 70% of the money and the minority member would control 30% money.  This bipartisan approach gave the minority some impact on the process and did not exclude them totally.  When Newt took over, these allocations were no longer made, and funding decisions were made totally by the speaker and his leadership group.  This style of leadership persisted to the speakership of Dennis Hastert.  It was largely implemented by his majority leader Tom DeLay who took over the day-to-day running of the House.  During that period from 1995 until 2007 the House of Representatives was run on a strictly partisan basis.  The Republican members were disciplined if they voted with the Democrats, so the moderate Republicans found it increasingly difficult to remain in the house and vote as they saw fit to represent their constituents.  The Republican caucus took on the appearance of the parliamentarian systems like Great Britain or other European countries.

After 12 years of this regime Democrats won control in 2006.  Most of the new members coming in, or those that had been elected in the previous 12 years, knew no other form of legislative operation.  That process established by Newt Gingrich has been continued by the Democratic leadership.  Older members who remembered a previous style of operation tried to reestablish, in some instances, the old system but it was always overridden by decisions made at the level of the leadership.  The regular order of legislation, which exists in the rules, was largely abandoned first, by Gingrich, and then by the subsequent Democratic leadership.  Absolute power was the goal of both sides.  Members who were elected and wanted absolute power were pleased.  Members, who understood that a democracy cannot solve the complicated problems it faces by looking to only one side of the issue, were and are very frustrated.

The election of Barak Obama brought to the head of the political process, someone who tried to reestablish the principal of bipartisanship.  His hope was that this nation could solve its problems by having all sides heard in the debate.  The first session showed the Republicans refusal to relinquish the strategy of partisanship as they said, “No! No! No.”  I am at a loss to suggest how this grab for absolute power can be changed.  I sometimes believe that only a real catastrophe for this country will cause us to return to the principal that we must seek the common good.  To do that, we must listen to everyone as we make the decisions in our government.  The majority will ultimately make the decisions, but the process of listening to disagreeing views is important, if we are to find answers that will both work and be acceptable to the population.

“I had no idea how to run a congressional office”

Rarely does one hear such an open expression of ignorance and/or honesty by a member of Congress. The reason for this book was expressed by a Republican Blake Farenthold on 15 December 2017 on page A 16 of the New York Times. “I have never served in public office before. I had no idea how to run a congressional office, and as a result I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional.” Mr. Farenthold was resigning at this time from Congress amidst charges of sexual harassment.

This should be the lead line in a book. It is the most honest expression of the truth of the root of many of the problems faced by the Congress and by the American people today, as their government flies into dysfunction. The candidates and/or elected officials who read this will be able to see with clarity the depth and complexity of the problems they face in dealing with the problems of the people. Personal problems whether social or financial, get hopelessly entangled in the effort to solve the peoples’ problems through the process of legislation. Most people looking at the Congress don’t want to look at the human problems that affect the behavior of their elected officials. On the one hand the public tries to put public officials on a pedestal. Almost instantly after they have put the public official on the pedestal they begin to point out his or her feet of clay. The process of destroying the elected official begins almost the day after the election as people look for evidence that the government is corrupt or cannot be trusted to deal with problems which other people face.

The central themes of politics: money, sexual relations and the use and abuse of power are rarely discussed on human basis. They come to light and are generally used as bludgeons to destroy a politician in the next election or before. The understanding of these issues is hopelessly naïve and simplistic. But we will try to do in this blog is to lay out what it is that a congressman faces and how he or she can best deal with it.

Just for a moment consider for yourself the set of problems you would face as a new Member of Congress. The old joke in engineering school is, “yesterday I couldn’t spell ‘engineer” but now today I am one” really describes the circumstances around being elected to Congress. Suddenly, you, an ordinary citizen, have been entrusted with the hopes of 700,000 people in your district. They give you a budget of $1.4 million give or take a little and tell you to hire 18 people to help you to do your job, about which you know very little. You will have to lease, at least, one office in your district and staff it with some portion of the 18-person staff. They must deal with the myriad of problems bring to the Congressional office each day. Veterans issues, immigration issues, Social Security issues, Medicare issues, IRS problems, applications to the military academies White House visitor’s tickets and on and on.

The first mistake new Members make is to feel they must reward campaign workers with jobs. Many of the workers are highly qualified in some academic area and want to move into a policy job before you or they know what you need first and what you will need later. I started some of my best people in my office at reception on front desk. There you can get a chance to see how they handle the variety of phone and in-person contacts with the people who will re-elect you.  That first contact with your office make take years to overcome if they brush off or offend some voter from your district.

But THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB is who you hire to handle your money and be responsible for following the Ethics Committee rules of the House. Chiefs of Staff, Legislative Director and Communications Director get all the attention and are most sought after, because they affect the public policy positions of the office. They write the bills and plan strategies to move ideas through the Congress.

Your office manager is often an unknown person who sits at their desk and handles a multiplicity of duties.  There is no one way to handle this job but there must be some one in the office who says ”NO.” My first office manager was a woman who had worked for 20 years for one Congressman and when he retired, she stayed on with his successor whose style she didn’t like.  She was looking for a job and was recommended to me by my predecessor. 

I asked her why I should hire her, and she replied,” I ‘ve worked in the House for 22 years and my budget always ends in the black.”  That is important because if the budget is overspent the Congressperson must pay out of his or her own pocket for the excess expenditures. I often asked her to figure out a way to pay for something. Her first response was often, “I don’t think you want to do that.” If I persisted, her next level was “you can’t do it that way.”

If I pushed her harder, she used her ultimate weapon, “the Finance office will not approve and I’m not going to spend one day in the Federal Prison system in an 8X8 prison cell with you. I’ll quit first!”

I can give countless examples of Members who didn’t listen or didn’t have anyone to say “NO” to them.  One member decided to use some government money to create a Downton Abbey ambience in his office.  He later resigned.  Having some one who knows the ethics and finance office rules is the only protection a Member has against getting caught in an ethics complaint.  What may seem right to a newly elected member, because of their private sector experience, often turns into a career shortening experience.

Another way to cover yourself is to have a lawyer who watches what you do.  I had a chief of staff who would say, “I am going over to the Ethics Office and talk to our lawyer.”  That was her way of calling in the big guns on some idea I was sure was all right. Ethics is a shifting mine field and many older members get in trouble because no one says “NO” or because, “that’s the way we have always done it.”

It was sad to watch senior members get caught in some change in the rules. I have too many examples to pick one.  The biggest was the check protection plan of the House Bank.  The House Bank was created to deal with members banking problems in the 1850’s.  Essentially, everyone had their paycheck put in the House bank and they proceeded to pay their bills. No member ever had a bounced check because if their account was overdrawn at the moment the check was presented for reimbursement, other members’ money was used to cover the overdraft.  One wonderful woman in the Sergeant of Arms Office had the onerous task, at the start each month, to call member’s offices to tell the member or his COS that they overdrawn and should provide money.  Members knew that a new paycheck would cover the shortage if they had over spent. No money was ever lost, but some members took advantage of this failsafe system to run a rather sloppy personal accounting system. 

When Newt Gingrich began planning to take over the House, he saw this situation and it looked bad. By that time all banks had overdraft protection, but it was formal, with interest payments involved. Newt knew there were more Democrats than Republicans, and that if he called attention to this, it would hurt the Democrats back home because they could be accused of bouncing checks. This attack on the personal fiscal integrity of Democrats played a large role in the defeat of the Democrats in 1994.

Lesson to be learned: nothing you do in Congress is ever hidden from sight. For those who feel a little paranoid at this moment, rest assured.  Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. I once led the Pledge of Allegiance in the House.  The phrase under God was added in the Eisenhower administration to distinguish us from Godless Communism. I did not say “Under God.” Someone somewhere picked up that my lips had not uttered these words and set off a firestorm of phone calls from some religious organization in Texas.  My office phones were disabled for 3 days with vitriol about my lack of endorsement for the concept that we were a Christian Country.

Word to the wise: You are constantly under scrutiny, especially with the expenditure of Government money. Never think you are alone. They are watching.

So now you have power

As I was preparing for my class at the University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies in 2018, I was holding a gavel that I held when I was Ways and Means Chairman in the Washington State legislature. I was going to use the gavel in the class as the president of a mock United States Senate. Our class is one on foreign policy, and we were giving each student a state to represent. One student would be the senator from Alabama and another from the state of New Hampshire and so forth. The point of the exercise was to look at a foreign policy issues and then prepare a floor statement of five minutes and an op-ed of 500 to 700 words defending the position that the senator was going to take.

Going through this exercise reminded me of my experience in the United States Congress in 1994 when the House was swept by the Republicans, and they took the chairmanship of all the committees. There were many Chairman who had never in their lives held a gavel in their hand or had any idea what the power of the chairman is. I was on the budget committee and the Ways and Means committee in the 1995 session of the Congress, and I watched the chairman of the budget committee, Jim Nussle from Iowa, struggle with his newly- acquired role and power. Jim had come into the Congress and had been one of the rebels who along with Newt Gingrich stirred up trouble which later led to Newt Gingrich becoming Speaker. Nussle and several other members of the Congress put bags over their heads and went down on the floor in a demonstration of the fact that decisions were being made in secret.

When the Republicans won, they had few if any members who had had any experience in the Congress or state legislature in running a committee. They were constantly in conflict with the Democrats who knew how to run a committee and knew the rules and consequently tied the inexperienced chairman in knots. After observing this for five or six weeks, one day I had a conversation with Jim Nussle. He didn’t trust me because I was a liberal from the West, and I was all that was wrong with the political process at that point from his point of view. I said to Jim, “I think I can make a few suggestions that might work to your advantage as the chairman.” He and I were friendly but certainly not friends or political allies so he was a little wary of taking any advice for me.

I said, “Jim, the chairman of the committee has only three powers. The first power is to, call the meeting to order by banging the gavel.

 “The second power is to set the agenda. In the House of Representatives that’s called laying down the chairman’s mark. This essentially is the issue of the day in a bill form that makes the most sense to the chairman. Once the amendment process starts or the discussion starts, the chairman’s job is simply to keep order, allowing members on both sides to express their opinion pro and con on every issue. The chairman does not have the power to control the things that people say. He cannot correct or override the opinion of any other member unless the majority of the members support him.” I also told him “Jim, let the Democrats talk. That’s all they have is their five minutes to talk. When you interrupt or disregard them you make them angry and make it harder to run the committee.”

The third power that a chairman has, is to call for the vote and bang the gavel ending the meeting. I said, “Jim never forget you have the votes and when you want to end the meeting you can end the meeting by calling for the vote.” It was fun to watch Jim over the next few months take those lessons and learn to call the meeting to order and then leaned back in his chair and look at the ceiling while the Democrats railed on and on. Every so often he would look at me and smile.

Power is not in having the gavel in your hand. Power is understanding the rules of the game and how to use the gavel to get to where you want to go. A large part of the destruction of the legislative process has been caused by the fact that new chairmen came in who had no idea what they were doing and did not have staff who had been through the ropes  before once or twice and could help them. Their struggles were the struggles of the blind leading the blind. That’s one of the places that we can correct what’s happened by teaching people how to run a good committee. If you have the votes for an idea, you don’t have to be afraid to bring it out as the chairman’s mark and have it fully debated so that everyone is comfortable with the process even though they may hate the result. After a good committee meeting it’s possible to go and have a friendly drink with someone that you have been wrestling with over the last few hours. Open committee processes are the beginning of a return to bipartisanship.  Boy, do the people want that!

Why I started this Blog

In 2019, I would like to begin communicating with my friends using this mechanism. I have decided that I will do it at least once a week so that there is a continuation of my thinking and a pressure on me to actually put in writing what I think. As the new Congress starts, there are many things that the new Members face, and perhaps some experience from the past may be useful.