Capitol Ideas / Armey's Divisions
Bethell, Tom
Armey's Divisions by Tom Bethel! / nside the Cannon Office Building, the old tenants had left but the newcomers had not yet arrived. The movers were evidently expected at any moment. Cardboard...
...The Dallas Morning News reported that, after the election, Anney had a talk with Rep...
...In a vast caucus room on the third floor, the D.C...
...Office doors were firmly shut, old nameplates still in place: Here, for example, was Michael Huffington's one-term abode...
...So there would be change now...
...His strategy is to "sell it to America first" (through talk radio mostly) and then let representatives bring it back to Washington...
...Work requirements" could lead to a government jobs program or a vast array of training programs that will employ tens of thousands of new social workers: one more victory for the caring professions, the facilitators, the coordinators, and the stress managers...
...Stress management" for "dislocated workers" was among the services provided...
...The liberals are saying they should have done welfare before health care...
...He is a man interested in ideas, and as such seems not terribly interested in his material surroundings...
...Gradualism is the way they've gone...
...That's why he favors a flat-tax, which "reveals clearly the cost of government to those who pay it...
...Cardboard boxes marked "House of Representatives" were piled eight-feet high in hallways...
...There's something, surely, that the press has overlooked here...
...But he's not entirely happy with the idea either...
...As majority leader, he speaks "for the party...
...Armey would like to change the system...
...About 200 people had shown up, female minorities mostly...
...20 The American Spectator February 1995...
...He also conveys a sense of diffidence, almost of not quite believing what has happened to him...
...I believe we can build it down in less than forty years, but it will be long, hard work...
...They reflect his new position...
...Congressman Dick Armey's office...
...Ten years later, he is near the top of that pole...
...Half of the total membership will have been elected since 1990...
...Sprinters don't finish marathons, and this is a marathon task we've got before us...
...is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...I also believe that if we try to go too far and too fast to the right, we run into the same problem Clinton did when he tried to make one lump-sum jump to the left...
...But this does not mean "I have changed my attitude about what is sound public policy...
...I asked him how big a change had we just seen...
...In sum, these cautious remarks should not be taken to imply that Armey has changed—"grown...
...In the new House there will be eighty-six new congressmen...
...It's easier to see what we get than what we pay...
...Every minute or so he answered the phone...
...Democrats all along had controlled spending, legislation, government programs—the agenda, in short...
...in economics from the University of Oklahoma, and later joined the faculty of North Texas State (now the University of North Texas...
...I laid this piece of Beltway wisdom at Dick Armey's feet...
...Then he slept on his office couch...
...In 1993, he replied, almost a hundred Democratic congressmen, including powerful committee chairmen, sent Clinton a very public letter saying: If you push a welfare reform bill like the one you described in your campaign ("end welfare as we know it"), we will not only stop welfare reform but your health-care plan as well...
...Two high school teachers had advised him to forget about college, but one crisp night, 30 degrees below zero and 30 feet above ground, he decided to try for it anyway...
...An aide to Roberts said that Armey "agreed that with his new duties he is going to remove himself from the agriculture subsidy debate and let Mr...
...Ideology enables liberals to "see" the evidence for whatever they believe: that government can solve all problems, for example...
...I believe we will get most if not all of the contract provisions for tax reduction through the Congress, to the president's desk, and signed," he said...
...Roberts, who has the experience, deal with the farm bill...
...He has been accused of shrillness...
...When the bill comes to the floor, he added: "I reserve my right as an individual member to hold my amendments against it...
...When programs fail, more money must be spent...
...Dick Armey is going to find himself a nonplayer," Rep...
...Armey's aide Ed Gillespie said that Armey "did not agree to remove himself from the debate," but did agree that he no longer has the time to make the issue "the legislative priority it has been in the past...
...But without a real change in incentives—such as term limits would provide—it is safe to say that the institutional memory and momentum of Congress will be very difficult to overcome...
...Ifthe House of Representatives had always functioned the way it was intended to function," there probably would be no interest in term limits...
...But we need to understand that it will be a long, steady haul...
...Conservatives had made the mistake of thinking that power lay with the presidency...
...Tenure actually diminishes academic freedom, he says today, and faculty governance is the principal cause of the decay of the academy...
...and that my job initially is to let that committee produce a product and then evaluate it...
...Congress...
...His father's spurs and saddle blanket are on display, and there's a framed page from The Spirit of Enterprise inscribed by George Gilder...
...He grew up in North Dakota, and by the age of 18 was working as a utility lineman...
...We know we have a contract to bring that bill to a vote, and that will happen...
...Sitting in his own office, Armey asked me if I would mind if he smoked a cigarette...
...It is doubtful that the problem can be solved nationally...
...If that happens, the federal judiciary will almost certainly emerge as the last line of defense for the status quo...
...Now he will be the new House majority leader...
...The Republicans are geared up, and the vast social-worker establishment will be getting ready to transmute "reform" into a subtle expanlion of the system (as happened in 1988...
...He became chairman of an economics department that "cherished its Marxist traditions," but as he admired the free market, and Ludwig von Mises in particular, he soon became disillusioned...
...government's Department of Employment Services was advising out-of-work congressional staffers on résumé preparation, job openings, and "job search techniques...
...Pat Roberts of Kansas, incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee...
...By 1997 he expects to see a "massive tax restructuring...
...He had just thought of an epigram: "Conservatives believe it when they see it...
...He also said (as NPR did not broadcast) that limits would come up for a vote and that he would vote for it...
...It's really a massive change," he said...
...Clay Shaw of Florida, in line to head the relevant Ways and Means subcommittee, sees them...
...If you do not see in the headlines or hear on evening news loud howling and wailing and bitter accusations about hardhearted callousness, assume that the system is set for one more quiet expansion...
...But I am not predicting an outcome...
...I don't mean to be timid now...
...I am careful how I describe it...
...H e soon came in with his assistant, Edward Gillespie...
...To have become majority leader without opposition suggests unheralded diplomatic skills, for one thing...
...Liberals see it when they believe it...
...Of all the things that are in the contract package, the one that I consider most dynamic and changeable is welfare reform...
...I reminded him of what he well knew, that since the Depression government control over the economy has never really been rolled back...
...It's always hard to believe that one lives at the cusp of real change...
...All congressmen of whatever party who vote against term limits should be targeted for defeat...
...Academic politics soon became too vicious for him, so he sought out the relative tranquillity of the U.S...
...It is indeed, and readers who want to follow the play without a scorecard should remember this: the welfare establishment over the last thirty years has been handed no defeats and has excellent news media connections...
...A week after the election, Armey got into a little trouble for something he said about term limits on National Public Radio...
...He's too shrill and has absolutely no effectiveness...
...Government has been a one-way ratchet, Armey said, because "the program is perceived more clearly than its cost...
...Two weeks earlier, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post had invited about eighty people to a dinner for Charlie Peters, who founded the Washington Monthly twenty-five years ago...
...Look at the Democrats...
...He also knows how difficult it will be to change a system that has endured without challenge for forty years...
...and do all the necessary work to facilitate that committee bringing its agenda to the floor...
...Synar himself is a goner now, beaten in the Democratic primary by a retired schoolteacher whose campaign consisted of slipping his business card under windshield wipers...
...One comment I heard two or three times, and read several times more in the following week, was that Clinton "should have done welfare before health care...
...Indoor work...
...Including capital gains with 50 percent exclusion and indexing...
...Within a week," Armey recalled, "the president announced that he would do welfare after health care...
...That is going to be a very fascinating process...
...It is "the saddest position I take in politics...
...Armey is a six-footer with what looks like a suntan...
...I don't speak solely for Dick Armey anymore," he has said...
...His psychologist wife would call it "projection...
...The only promising solution is the restoration of autonomy to the states...
...First elected in 1984, Armey, 54, represents the suburbs of north Dallas...
...Down the hall one congressional office was open, and a young man sitting beside the front desk was taking envelopes from one pile, slitting them open, and placing them in another pile without removing the contents...
...His private office lacks the usual "power wall"—framed photos of Himself with Presidents Past...
...Armey told me: "The first thing I do as majority leader is recognize that we have a whole new Agriculture Committee...
...Mike Synar of Oklahoma told Business Week in 1993...
...Taxes, for one...
...Anyway, the time for welfare reform has come at last...
...They were standing patiently in different lines, while a woman behind a podium gave advice on form-filling...
...Conservatives base their beliefs on evidence...
...Having to support term limits is "a sad position for a person who loves the Constitution," he says...
...The Contract With America calls for "a tough two years and out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility," for example...
...Meaning...
...He does not expect that his flat (17 percent) tax proposal will come to the floor before then...
...Probably that's what they mean by shrill...
...Term limits "lock us into a reform Congress," he told me...
...When he arrived in Washington, he slept in a cot in the House gymnasium until Speaker Tip O'Neill turned him out...
...Armey told President Bush that reneging on his no-new-taxes pledge would make him a one-term president, and he told President Clinton much the same thing...
...Horrid traps lie ahead for Republicans, and it is not clear that Rep...
...If Republicans can "straighten out the House," he said, making it function "democratically" and "efficiently," maybe Americans will find "their enthusiasm for term limits waning...
...He graduated from Jamestown College, received a Ph.D...
...However the Supreme Court rules, nothing short of a constitutional amendment will suffice: states that do not vote for limits will accumulate seniority at the expense of those who do...
...How about farm subsidies...
...Armey, incidentally, thinks it is "problematic" whether they will pass...
...Then he said: "It took forty years to 18 The American Spectator February 1995 build this welfare-regulatory state...
...H e does see one or two early victories...
...What does Armey think...
...What's interesting here is that the new majority goes around pondering the ideological mindset of his opponents: a big change from earlier GOP leadership...
...As a former editor I was present, and it was a rare pleasure to spend the evening with so many (neo) liberals...
...Maybe, but Congress is organized to vote money out of some people's pockets and into others', and as long as this continues term limits will be needed...
...upended desks and inverted chairs were jammed into corridors, canvas carts filled with old Federal Registers were ready to roll...
...People want change, but in moderation...
Vol. 28 • February 1995 • No. 2
