Scenes from a Speakership
McClintick, David
Scenes from a Speakership By David McClintick Wednesday, March 8, 1995 You've lied!" Newt Gingrich rails. "You've cheated Bud Shuster!" The Speaker of the House is sitting on a blue leather sofa...
...Republican party chairman Haley Barbour, who is the governors' host, slips out to a telephone and calls Newt Gingrich, whose assistant pulls him from a strategy session of the Republican leadership...
...It is the twelfth consecutive bill in the Contract With America to pass the House...
...You need to see Henry Hyde...
...The next day, a dozen Republican governors, including John Engler of Michigan, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, and William Weld of Massachusetts, await Gingrich in the basement of the Washington Court Hotel...
...It is a totally misleading myth...
...What you've got to do is design a system which does not worship public opinion, but which is ready to have a dialogue that creates public judgment...
...Gingrich corners Marge Roukema of New Jersey, who has just voted no...
...The Speaker of the House is sitting on a blue leather sofa in a closed office across the street from the Capitol berating Rep...
...David McClintick, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Indecent Exposure and Swordfish, which examine crises inside a major corporation and a federal spy agency, respectively...
...A bearded former trapper and boat captain from Fort Yukon, Young is one of only a few Republicans out of 230 in the House who did not sign the Contract With America...
...This is a very important point...
...Saturday, February 18, 1995 Try to look a little less student-like and radical and you might be on the noon sweep on CNN," Newt Gingrich tells the students of "Renewing American Civilization," his 20-hour college course...
...So how do you preserve the stability...
...There is a profession of public leadership, just as there is a profession of military command...
...Henry Hyde has never seen so many governors in one place-certainly not in his suite of offices in the Rayburn Building...
...Passing the welfare bill itself isn't the most immediate of Gingrich's worries...
...Only if Gingrich overcomes those obstacles can he bring the welfare bill itself to a vote...
...and Ed Kutler, who concentrates on health care and liaison with the governors-along with Armey's staff and the regular whip forces...
...While the Democrats are solid for the Democratic alternative, only one of the GOP members who voted against the rule votes for it, and it goes down 228-205 at 7:30 p.m...
...the Speaker says...
...Thompson asks...
...Term limits are a very crude effort, which I support, to rebalance the system...
...The cuts, which are being disputed by several committee chairmen-including Transportation and Infrastructure's Bud Shuster-are central to Gingrich's determination to control and streamline the House...
...We've got a real problem-I don't know how it's going to turn out," Gingrich replies...
...Young declares...
...Not redrafted, maybe modified," Gingrich says...
...How does an effective citizen learn how to do this...
...What can we do to help...
...No, by virtue of the fact that he systematically mastered the requirements of the profession...
...I think you have to have a long dialogue," Gingrich says...
...Benjamin Franklin was in politics his whole adult lifetime...
...This is a revelation to the governors...
...Hyde...
...Sometimes in life, you can't make fine gradations...
...It's clear that Gingrich's and Armey's private entreaties were only partly successful...
...Yeah...
...Damn it, Newt, I told you I was gonna go out and do this job," Young says...
...The vote is 325 to 99, with 99 Democrats joining 226 Republicans in voting yes...
...The floor battle is rougher, the tactical calculus trickier, than at any time since the crime bill last fall...
...That's too short a growth curve to deal with the world...
...An aide bursts in on Gingrich...
...I can't do the job without it...
...Gingrich's entire senior staff works the floor-chief of staff Dan Meyer...
...Stearns and McHugh vote yes on the rule, Jay Dickey no...
...At noon, with Gingrich across town speaking before the U.S...
...Well, that's a very inside-the-Beltway thing to say, that ignorant amateurs-I would dare say that Dr...
...Engler asks...
...In addition to proposing the most radical changes in governance since the 1930s, the bill has aroused the pro-life lobby, which worries that the measure's goal of discouraging out-of-wedlock births might have the unintended effect of increasing abortions...
...It won't be a problem," he says...
...He's beating the s- out of Upton...
...When Gephardt finishes, Rules committee chairman Gerald Solomon concludes the debate for the Republicans...
...Gingrich shouts...
...Jack Howard, who specializes in welfare and crime...
...The Speaker also confers with Jay Kim, the Korean-American from California, who has voted no on the rule because he is concerned about the fate of immigrants under the welfare bill...
...Well, I can tell you that I will vote for the bill...
...Rules strictly bar outsiders from the House chamber, even VIPs, when the House is meeting...
...Controversial bills sometimes founder on their rule, and Hyde and his allies oppose this rule because it bars the "abortion" amendment from debate...
...His team first must pass the "rule" governing debate on amendments...
...Instead of conforming to the 30 percent budget cut that Gingrich has decreed, Young is demanding an 18 percent increase, in part because his committee has expanded responsibilities, having absorbed parts of two other committees since the last Congress...
...Gingrich asks...
...Don't threaten me...
...They're trying to do a background package," Gingrich says, munching strawberries and cantaloupe in atonement for past pancakes and sausage...
...The bill passes...
...But Barton doesn't want to mar his 100 percent score with the National Right to Life Committee...
...We're not returning to anything-we're stepping into the future," counters Janet Sanders, 33, a pre-law student...
...Majority Leader Dick Armey and Rep...
...All of the Founding Fathers would have repudiated that model and said, that's exactly what you meant by 'mobocracy' That's the mob...
...Barbour calls Gingrich back: "He won't say for sure, but says it won't be a problem...
...The purpose of elections is to choose between a series of competent people...
...Ask yourself whose agenda he's furthering with this amendment...
...You cannot justify this increase...
...Roukema is the senior female Republican in the House...
...You can come over to the Hill and tell your state delegations that this is critical, that you need their help...
...By virtue that he just won an election...
...Fred Upton is a moderate Republican congressman from Engler's state of Michigan, who has estranged himself from the new Republican leadership because of a penchant for working on bipartisan projects with the Democrats, who are now urging him to vote for their substitute measure...
...The whip team has pushed Republican members as far as it can...
...The Speaker, whose temper cools as quickly as it flares, acknowledges that Armey may be right...
...Well, we'll find somebody who can do the job, Don...
...Many conservatives still want to micro-manage welfare from Washington...
...From city council, to county commissioner, to the state legislature to the federal government, you have a class of incumbent politicians that is sickening the system-incumbents rigging the game for their own survival...
...Standing next to the podium, Len Swinehart quietly tells Speaker pro tempore Michael Oxley of Ohio, "Put down the gavel-let's get this over with...
...Glancing over a spreadsheet, Gingrich is furious at the way Thomas has computed the 30 percent cuts the Speaker has ordered in the $223 million budget of the 19 House committees...
...Well, I would argue that the whole intent of our Constitution-the reason we have elected officials-is so people like us can go to Washington-" "None of the Founding Fathers would have believed that...
...Bill Frist did exactly what he did to become a surgeon...
...If Gephardt can get all 204 Democrats and the independent socialist Bernard Sanders of Vermont to support the substitute, he will need only 13 Republicans to pass it...
...Frist is a professional politician," Gingrich says...
...Dick Armey and the other leaders try to calm them...
...Exactly based on your concern, think about how long it takes to reach a judgment rather than have an opinion, and then how long it takes to learn to lead a free people...
...They try again to resolve the disputes that sparked the clash between Gingrich and Thomas...
...Armey finally speaks, suggesting that Gingrich might want to let Thomas and the committee chairmen try to resolve their differences before the Speaker invests the prestige of his office in any dispute...
...A bunch of us are just as pro-life as you are and we're for the rule without the amendment...
...Atelevision set glows with the muted image of Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, who is outside on the floor stem-winding the Democratic side of the rule debate to its climax, claiming that the Republican bill "will throw millions of innocent children out on the street...
...The meeting is tense but strangely subdued, more like an academic seminar than the more typical pep rally...
...Gingrich explains that it's unclear how Hyde, who nearly defeated the vote on the rule yesterday, will go today...
...The concept that you can spontaneously spew up 535 well-meaning citizens who will randomly show up in Washington and magically do good, totally undervalues how hard it is for a free people to work together...
...The framers of the Constitution, while fearing tyranny, were also fearing mobocracy," she says, continuing a previous breakfast conversation...
...But two years ago, when Gingrich was the Republican whip in a Democratic-controlled House, he tried to remove Thomas as the ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee for being too accommodating to the majority party...
...Every one of the Founding Fathers was a professional...
...Newt Gingrich is given the results by telephone in New York...
...A bell sounds in offices throughout the House side of the Capitol summoning members to vote...
...One of the amendment's cosponsors, Democrat Pete Stark, they say, is the quintessential rich liberal elitist up to no good...
...William Thomas, the chairman of the sensitive Oversight Committee, which manages the internal affairs of the House of Representatives...
...The concept of the ignorant amateur is very important...
...Sanders asks...
...he is now, for all intents and purposes, Nussle's subordinate...
...Jim Nussle, who chaired the Republicans' transition to majority status in the new Congress, listen in stunned silence, along with several staff members...
...Frist or Fred Thompson-" "Dr...
...I think we may lose the bill...
...I'm gonna have all these hearings...
...The governors cancel a crowded slate of previously scheduled meetings and workshops through the afternoon...
...Six Democrats are absent from the chamber, enough to tie and thus defeat the rule if they all vote no...
...I did the best I could-I can't control all my people," Gingrich tells the governors after listening to their complaints...
...The motion fails...
...He is believed also to be the only member of Congress to carry a buck knife in his boot...
...You have asked for too much money, Don," Armey says...
...The excitement among the governors is palpable...
...This all may be moot...
...Shuster will have to live with a reduced budget...
...It's a very important difference...
...Hyde declines to say flatly how he will vote on recommital-in other words, he's agreed to vote for the bill if it comes to that but has not guaranteed that he will not vote to kill it right before then...
...This is not the pleasant part of being Speaker," Gingrich says...
...When time expires, the yes's lead the no's 217 to 211...
...Now, it isn't clear why she opposes the rule...
...Having been assured of the result by Armey and DeLay when the effects of the governors' lobbying became clear, he decides to keep a long-standing speaking engagement...
...For the first time in the 104th Congress, the Democrats smell blood...
...But this is a huge increase...
...How necessary do you think term limits are if the population exercises their right to vote...
...Then they must defeat a "motion to recommit," which opponents of bills usually offer at the end of debate...
...However, the results fail to satisfy another chairman, Don Young, who heads the natural resources committee...
...Only a year and a half apart in age, they came to Congress in the late seventies, became friends, and shared an apartment for a time...
...We're concerned that it will get hung up on this abortion thing," one governor says, "and I say that as a pro-life governor...
...Kim switches to yes...
...He votes no...
...In the past, the House has been leisurely about bringing votes to a close...
...Shuster complained to Gingrich in an "urgent alert," "Bud to Newt" memorandum early this morning...
...Could it be she just wants some attention...
...Back in the meeting with the governors, Barbour says to Hyde: "A lot of people are looking to you for leadership on this...
...I don't think we know yet...
...Gingrich stands and moves away from Thomas...
...Aided by computers, Thomas and his staff have clarified their budget plan, and Gingrich realizes his anger was in error...
...Gingrich and Thomas have a complex relationship...
...Wednesday, March 22, 1995 Amoral crisis equal to segregation, equal to slavery," Newt Gingrich called the welfare system at his January swearing-in...
...Both men rise to their feet at opposite ends of the table...
...Thompson asks...
...He and his staff leave Gingrich, Armey, and Nussle in private...
...Don't you threaten me...
...Some 15 Republicans, most of them conservative pro-lifers, opposed the rule...
...It's a direct repudiation of republican government...
...You won't let me do the job...
...You do this every time...
...By 1:30 Gingrich is working the House floor...
...Over welfare...
...I'll help with some people," Hyde says...
...I've never voted against right-to-life in my career," Barton laments...
...Look at who wrote the Constitution...
...You can count on it...
...Don Young, the Alaskan with the buck knife, has been courted by the Democrats on the rule vote but returns to the Republican fold at the last minute...
...He's just trying to kill our welfare bill...
...We've never traveled before...
...I'm not a joiner," he explained...
...The un-decideds in Armey's office give no hint of their decisions and return to the floor, which is filling with members and the whip teams of both sides...
...Barbour returns to Hyde's inner office...
...Governor Engler is on the floor...
...By 2:00 he and Majority Leader Armey are behind the closed doors of Armey's adjacent office listening to Cliff Stearns, Jay Dickey, John McHugh, and a half dozen other pro-life members who believe the welfare bill may foster abortion...
...Let him do it...
...No, sir...
...That is not true...
...Doesn't the very idea of career politicians go against the notion of government of the people...
...What are you going to do to solve it...
...Young leaves the room...
...If approved, the recommital motion sends the bill back to the committee that drafted it, effectively killing the bill...
...Everybody and their brother is trying to figure what does this mean...
...We nearly lost the rule, we could lose on the Deal substitute, we could lose on the motion to recommit, we could lose on final passage...
...I'm finding myself right now in the debate between six- and twelve-year term limits...
...Sanders asks...
...Why do you need a $2 million increase...
...No, no...
...Dick Armey listens to his fellow Texan, Joe Barton...
...It's very hard to educate leadership in four years, which is what you would have with a six-year term-at the end of your fourth year you'd have to be a leader...
...John Engler takes the lead in explaining how active the governors have been in the fashioning of the welfare legislation and how important they consider its passage...
...I think the bill will pass," Hyde says...
...He sat down and, in a highly disciplined, intelligent way, said, look, I want to be an effective citizen, and effective senator...
...Encouraged, the governors disperse to call on their own congressional delegations...
...But he promises to review them...
...Gingrich still wants to compromise with the complaining chairmen, but the other leaders insist that he back the cuts-which he ordered...
...None of them were amateurs who showed up on Tuesday and said, I have this inspiration, let me just do it, because my creative juices are flowing...
...Chamber of Commerce, Whip Tom De-Lay's count shows the Republicans narrowly losing the rule and the Democratic substitute bill, offered by Nathan Deal of Georgia, gaining support...
...They feel he has promised more welfare reform than he is delivering on the House floor next week, and they plan to tell him so...
...The Speaker reluctantly agrees, his anger ebbing...
...So, he was an ignorant amateur until he got into the race...
...It only looks like a lot because the old committee never spent any money...
...I think there's a great sentiment in the country right now to return to something that works, something you can grab hold of," says Terry Terrell, 46, a compact, curly-haired former Navy pilot and writer for aviation magazines who is enrolled in "Renewing American Civilization...
...Not that people like you shouldn't go, but the minute you go, you become a career politician...
...What's he doing...
...He is convinced that the Ways and Means Committee, to take one example, can fashion welfare and tax legislation as efficiently with a budget of $10 million as it has with $16 million...
...But it appears to him that Thomas has derived the cuts from false assumptions and that he has been unfair to Bud Shuster...
...The pleasant part of being Speaker occurs that evening when the House, with Gingrich presiding, approves a bill limiting certain lawsuits...
...Arne Christenson, who handles budget and appropriations...
...Pete Stark isn't pro-life," Armey asserts...
...The dynamic of the room changes from unhappiness with some aspects of a bill the governors thought a sure winner to fear of losing a bill that in many ways is satisfactory...
...Newt, are you serious...
...You don't need to worry about it...
...How do we get him off...
...approval would cloud the fate of the Republican measure...
...It has been decided in recent days that food stamps will not be sent back to the states in the form of block grants at all...
...But the Gingrich-controlled Rules Committee bars the amendment from floor debate, knowing that if it passes, the bill will lose the support of members who believe that curbing out-of-wedlock births is a key to transforming welfare...
...The governors and Henry Hyde prove crucial in returning straying Republicans to the fold...
...No, sir...
...I don't know if I can solve it...
...After an extended conversation with Gingrich, she switches to a yes...
...Who should we see first...
...At the beginning of this Congress, however, Newt Gingrich made clear he would enforce the prescribed time limit of 17 minutes...
...The welfare bill on the floor of the House does not provide as much independence as the governors want...
...senior floor aide Leonard Swinehart...
...CNN's Bob Franken and a camera crew have been permitted access to the breakfast...
...The approval of the rule is one of the narrowest victories to date in the 104th Congress...
...I've got all this travel...
...Gingrich aide Jack Howard calls his colleague Leigh Ann Metzger in the Speaker's car and asks that she make sure he returns from his speech in time to huddle with undecided Republican members before the vote...
...Everybody else has cut by a third...
...And you're not doing it now," Armey counters, contending that a vote for the rule isn't a vote against right-to-life...
...Would it call for a constitutional convention, or could we do it by amendment...
...Despite growing consensus that something must be done, the Republican welfare bill is proving to be the most inflammatory and divisive component of the Contract With America...
...Hyde reflects...
...I'll have to cancel all my hearings...
...Oxley complies, with what has been known since ancient times as a "quick gavel," and the vote is closed...
...They are chatting over breakfast in a sleek cafeteria as rain drenches the campus of Reinhardt College in northern Georgia for the seventh consecutive weekend...
...Now that the Republicans control the House, Gingrich has surprised insiders by appointing Thomas chairman of Oversight, even though the post's power has been considerably diminished...
...He followed Newt Gingrich for several months this year for a work-in-progress on the 104th Congress...
...The next major test of the respective strengths of the two sides-the vote on the substitute bill offered by Democrat Nathan Deal-comes tomorrow after several amendments are debated...
...Thomas bested Gingrich's candidate for the post and thereafter mended his ways...
...The electronic scoreboard shows a dead heat as the numbers mount...
...It is not to pick ignorant amateurs who don't have a clue about a free society...
...Jack Howard has managed to preserve three yes votes from among two dozen conservative Democrats angry at Republicans over a budget and appropriations controversy...
...Henry says he's going to vote for it," Barbour says...
...Gingrich promises to address the immigration issue later, perhaps in a separate bill...
...They are upset with him...
...asks Tommy Thompson...
...You're getting to your numbers, but you're getting there by lying and cheating Bud Shuster...
...No, in fact, I would argue that it's silly to think you won't have career politicians...
...If we step into the Third Wave, as the Tofflers suggest we are going to do, will the Constitution need to be redrafted...
...Gingrich shouts...
...I don't want to just go and babble...
...One of the courtliest men in Congress, Hyde greets Engler, Thompson, Jim Edgar of Illinois (the only one Hyde knows personally), Kirk Fordice of Mississippi, Fife Symington of Arizona, Terry Branstad of Iowa, and Mike Leavitt of Utah...
...And my guess is that the people who favor six years totally underestimate and undervalue the difficulty of leading people...
...A Democratic amendment to strike an "illegitimacy" provision is attracting pro-life Republicans, including the influential Henry Hyde...
...Gingrich and Armey tell the dissidents that the abortion amendment has less to do with curbing abortion than with Democratic tactics for defeating the centerpiece of the Contract With America...
...It's mobocracy The founding fathers wanted republican government...
...Formerly a Las Vegas dancer, now married to one of the Oak Ridge Boys, the honey-blonde Sanders drives to Reinhardt from Nashville every Friday evening to take the course...
...We'll be at Day 50 next Wednesday...
...He speaks in Manhattan again Friday morning, and then returns to the Capitol in time for the vote on the motion to recommit and the bill itself in the early afternoon...
...Well, find out where he's going to be on the motion to recommit...
...Those are good numbers," Thomas insists...
...If you remember [pollster Daniel] Yankelovich's argument-there is a difference between public opinion and public judgment...
...Young seethes...
...They're the only club that people have figured out...
...If we lose Henry Hyde, we lose it all...
...If they pass the rule, the Speaker's men then must defeat a Democratic "substitute" welfare bill...
...Bill Frist, a Nashville heart surgeon, and Fred Thompson, a Nashville lawyer, were both elected to the Senate in 1994...
...The Speaker, who normally votes only when the count is close, inserts his card and presses "yes...
...asks Sanders...
...Thomas says, flabbergasted and uncharacteristically deferential...
...Had it not been for the three Democrats who supported it, and the Republicans who switched under pressure from Gingrich and Armey, the rule would have been defeated, sending the welfare bill, its future very much in doubt, back to the Rules Committee...
...in 1989 she backed Gingrich's opponent in his race for whip...
...The Republican high command-Gingrich, Armey, Whip Tom Delay, and John Boehner, who chairs the Republican Conference comprising the full GOP House membership-gathers three hours later at a huge table in the Speaker's conference room overlooking the Mall...
Vol. 1 • September 1995 • No. 1
