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!
