Politics/Congress's Feisty Frosh
Norquist, Grover G.
0 n January 5, 1993, the 103rd Congress was sworn in with 110 new members. This unusually large influx of new blood was caused by the decennial redistricting for the nineties, the House Bank and...
...its members thus enjoy the unmatched munificence of protection-seeking industry-backed PACs...
...Gradison barely campaigned, expecting, he told friends, to win based on his seniority and ability to get along...
...The lesson of the last four years is clear: the more we act like them, the more we lose...
...They are not "real" committees like Ways and Means or Armed Services, which actually draft and forward legislation to the full House...
...While the 1992 campaign had all candidates using "change" as a mantra, the forty-seven new Republicans and sixty-three new Democrats in the House will only accelerate recent trends in both parties...
...Republicans can expect frustration: while the Senate offers more opportunity to challenge Democrats, only in the House do Republicans possess the will to do so...
...These six were gently reminded that membership on "juice" committees would be denied those who fraternized with conservatives...
...It remains for Kasich to find professional staff who can neutralize the accommodationist expertise of Pete Domenici, his Senate counterpart...
...On the Senate side, the newly elected senator from Utah, Robert Bennett, who had promised similar action in his campaign, made no effort to get a vote in the Republican caucus...
...Pombo says his term-limited compatriots "are not interested in learning the system, they want to change it...
...Meanwhile, forcing a second vote on close issues will give the Democratic leadership time to twist arms before the roll is called again...
...One answer is term limits...
...95,214) will be able to vote in the Committee of the Whole House—in essence giving them a vote on the floor equal to that of any other member (population of the average congressional district: 570,352...
...The meetings were all financed by Washington lobbyists...
...Gephardt replied, "I appreciate the gentleman's suggestion...
...Why the successful party revolt in the Republican ranks and the hangdog "check your constituents at the door" approach of the Democrats...
...This year, "getting along" was not viewed as an asset...
...Conference committees can be critical in shaping the final details of legislation...
...A chastened Republican leadership is working with the freshmen to demand a vote to kill the committees and withdraw the funding—keeping it free from the clutches of the Speaker of the House and his chief of staff, who doubles as his wife...
...Motor Voter" goes further, and forbids local or state governments from dropping voters from the rolls even if they haven't voted for the last four, ten, or even fifty years...
...The move cuts in half the 10-vote gain registered by Republicans in the 1992 elections...
...While minority leader Bob Michel and whip Newt Gingrich were re-elected without a challenge, Dick Armey won a critical race for the number-three spot in the leadership, chairman of the Republican conference, by defeating incumbent Jerry Lewis by four votes...
...Unable to bribe, threaten, or cajole enough Democrats, the Democratic leadership has reneged on its promise of another vote...
...It took the votes of sixty-four non-freshman Democrats to defeat re-authorizationincluding the leaders of real committees who resent having to face competition from the grandstanders...
...If no vote is taken before March 31, the four committees will cease to exist and their funding will flow into the infamous Speaker's Slush Fund...
...When the Narcotics Committee came up for the first vote, the House voted 237 to 180 not to give them any money...
...Only a handful of Republicans ventured to Harvard to sit with the bulk of the Democratic freshmen and be told that freshmen should bide their time, defer to the leadership, and learn the ropes...
...Speaker, if I might be so bold as to suggest that an easy way out of the particular predicament for all of these select committees would be frankly to . . . extend all of them for one year...
...The Republican House leadership wrote to all elected Republicans and urged them to attend the conservative Annapolis conference and not the Harvard conference...
...Well he might, but the House Republican freshmen did not appreciate seeing their first victory thrown away in favor of a compromise position no longer needed...
...This without a hearing or a vote in either house of Congress...
...This left the Republicans with no choice but to vote to end the committees' existence...
...Under this bill, Zoe Baird's chauffeur could be registered to vote in the state of Connecticut, and in his Peruvian hometown...
...Hunger...
...Many of Foley's deputies had come to Washington as part of the "Watergate Baby" class of 1974, and they remember the damage that seventy-five freshmen Democrats inflicted on the older, seniority-based Democrat leadership...
...The new rules also allow Foley two days to respond to "questions of privilege," motions that in the last Congress served to allow Republicans to force embarrassing votes on the House check-kiting and Post Office scandals...
...These rules changes give the speaker the right to remove House members from conference committees at will...
...The freshmen then went on to spearhead the election of Tom DeLay of Texas over Bill Gradison of Ohio as conference secretary...
...Freddy St Germain—in the dead of night—helped set the stage for the savings and loan problem by increasing the federal deposit insurance exposure from $40,000 per person to $100,000 per account...
...Last December, thirty-two Republican freshmen attended the Free Congress/Heritage/Family Research Council conference in Annapolis on how to be an effective freshman activist...
...For instance, it was during just such a conference in 1980 that Rhode Island Rep...
...They made their disgust unmistakably clear in an unprecedented number of phone calls to Michel, Gingrich, Armey, and DeLay...
...and Children, Youth and Families...
...Confident of their control in the House, Democrats rejected the Republicans' compromise offer of a one-year funding re-authorization, opting instead to pursue full funding for two years...
...In his seconding speech for Armey, Ohio freshman Martin Hoke explained' why most of the new Republicans feel compelled to confront the Democrats: I was elected because the American people are fed up with the status quo...
...The new Democrats continue to cede power to the House leadership, and to press the scales in favor of the American left by changing election laws and the rules of the House...
...Virgin Islands (pop...
...Newt Gingrich has been emboldened by the reinforcements, and aggressive new leadership is also to be found in John Kasich of Ohio, the ranking member on Budget, a position usually filled by an accommodationist, in the interest of politely dividing up the spoils...
...This unusually large influx of new blood was caused by the decennial redistricting for the nineties, the House Bank and House Post Office scandals, and the congressional golden parachute that allowed members of the House to add their campaign war chests to their government pensions if they retired in 1992...
...None did...
...Narcotics...
...Six Democratic freshmen had committed to attend the nonpartisan, privately funded, conservative-oriented conference in Annapolis co-sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, and the Family Research Council...
...by the difference in direction W between this year's freshman classes...
...Even the moderates," Weyrich says, "are spoiling for a fight and listening to no one who says, 'Let's wait and see.'" Third, for the first time the conservatives ran a congressional training conference in direct competition with the traditional taxpayer-funded "Welcome to Congress" seminar held at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government...
...From now on, congressional retirees will have to subsist on pensions averaging a total of $1.4 million...
...T he fireworks continued when the House Republicans agreed to try to limit the re-authorization of funding of the four Select Committees—Aging...
...Nothing may move, but sparks will fly...
...Not a single Democrat showed up in Omaha...
...U nlike their Republican counterparts, the Democratic freshmen arrived in Washington as sheared sheep...
...The Freshmen Democrats were also buffaloed into voting for certain rules changes that stripped them of much of their potential power as a group or as individuals...
...All votes reported in the press will appear to give the Democratic position an additional five supporting votes...
...The Republican freshmen are moving their party to the right, and toward confrontation •as a strategy...
...0 f course, the changes in the rules also gave Speaker Foley five additional votes to pad his already generous partisan majority...
...Forty-five of the freshmen Republicans voted to kill this wasteful committee, as opposed to eighteen of the sixty-three Democratic freshmen...
...California freshman Pombo—who made a famous phone call to Bob Michel following the select committee sell-out—says bluntly, "I have six years to make changes in Congress...
...A similar boomlet in the House Democratic caucus went nowhere...
...With ninety staffers, these committees spend more than $4 million each year, and do little more than provide opportunities for members to grandstand...
...We've lost our momentum, not because the two parties have changed, but because our leadership has not effectively expressed the differences between us...
...In three regional meetings with them, Speaker Tom Foley and other Democratic leaders drove home the point that good committee assignments would flow from absolute loyalty...
...Under the new rules, any Republican or Democratic House member who objects to such shenanigans can bepulled off the conference committee by Speaker Foley...
...I haven't been here long, but I've figured that much out...
...The new battle cry is "No prisoners," meaning no funding for any of the four committees...
...This will make for an interesting next two years, as an increasingly vocal Republican leadership runs up against an increasingly closed system...
...Those who had overthrown the old order were not about to allow sixty-three freshmen to rock the boat...
...The Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich points out that this incoming freshman class is the feistiest, most determined, and most self-starting since 1978—another year without a Republican in the...
...The Democratic leadership keeps reassuring its members that it will use tax dollars to fight term limits in the courts...
...Nonetheless, the psychological advantage will remain...
...Now the delegates (not House members) from the District of Columbia, Puerto'Rico, Guam, American Samoa (population: 32,395), and the U.S...
...White House...
...A conference committee is composed of House and Senate members of both parties who meet to iron out differences between House and Senate versions of the same legislation...
...I have no time to waste...
...Lewis had shared Michel's unwillingness to confront the Democrats...
...Republican Richard Pombo of California unsuccessfully tried to offer an amendment that would have registered taxpayers to vote when they paid their taxes...
...They want change...
...To suit the radical freshmen, the Republican leadership now rejects Michel's compromise position...
...Foley & Co.'s power grab includes the just-passed "Motor Voter" bill, which will register to vote any applicant for a driver's license or welfare...
...Reports from Republican leadership meetings now read like dispatches from a War Room...
...Democrats have tried to deflect criticism by arguing that the five extra votes won't really count, promising to vote again should any vote in the Committee of the Whole be decided by those five votes...
...Meanwhile, these freshmen Democrats were ordered not to attend a bipartisan Omaha "Freshman Summit" scheduled to meet a few weeks after the election to unite the entire 1992 class in a fight for congressional reform...
...the more we act like us, the more we win...
...Republicans and Democrats alike have taken their initial lessons to heart...
...The Republican platform, by contrast, has endorsed term limits since 1988...
...House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt thus moved to adjourn, promising "extensive consultation about how and when to proceed with the other committee questions"—i.e., arm-twisting...
...They immediately moved to place their stamp on the House leadership...
...There is no White House to defer to...
...Still scrambling, Gephardt was pulled from the fire by House Republican Leader Michel, who asked, "Mr...
...A second reason is the lack of a Republican president...
...We need Dick Armey to draw these contrasts in a persuasive and convincing manner...
...Having radically changed their leadership, the forty-seven freshmen demanded and won in conference a House Republican rule change that will place a six-year limit on a member's service as ranking member of a committee...
...Furious at losing control of their members, the Democratic leadership knew it would lose the votes on the next three committees as well...
...first, the Republican F changes: The forty-seven Republican freshmen make up almost a third of the 177 Republicans in the House...
...The bill institutionalizes Chicago-style voter fraud opportunities in states that heretofore have beenhonest...
...In any event, the measure is almost certainly unconstitutional (Foley himself made this point on the House floor in 1970), and it is a mark of their servility that all sixty-three of the Democratic freshmen present cast their votes at Foley's direction to expand the delegates' power...
...A juice committee controls legislation with the potential to damage an entire industry...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
