David vs. Goliath
REES, MATTHEW
Capitol Hill David vs. Goliath by Matthew Rees At 9:30 p.m. on September 20, Newt Gingrich met with Republican Reps. David McIntosh, Ernest Istook, and Robert Ehrlich to discuss their fear that...
...The next night, he gave McIntosh his firm commitment...
...Interest groups claim this would violate the First Amendment and impose an enormous regulatory burden...
...McIntosh's energy and smarts (Yale B.A., University of Chicago law school) have impressed Gingrich...
...The Council is a Washington-based interest group that receives 96 percent of its $76 million budget from federal grants and has a political action committee that contributed $171,000 to Congressional candidates last year, all Democrats...
...Richard Shelby of Alabama to say the McIntosh measure would hamper Red Cross disaster relief efforts...
...Activities like political advocacy...
...Meanwhile, McIntosh and Co...
...They also argue that using federal money to lobby for more federal money is already illegal under a 1984 federal regulation...
...The battle over "welfare for lobbyists" is creating a major domestic problem for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole-pun intended...
...They got Gingrich's three key deputies-Majority Leader Dick Armey, Whip Tom DeLay, and Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner-to offer a strong endorsement of the bill at a meeting of House leaders on Sept...
...David has shown extraordinary aggressiveness in getting government off our backs and protecting the middle class from Clinton administration red tape," Gingrich has said...
...During that session, McIntosh noted that some federally-funded groups are opposing Medicare reform, Gingrich's pet issue...
...The favored candidate in the primary failed to file for the seat in time and was disqualified...
...19, when his Portland office was picketed by the National Council of Senior Citizens...
...But cutting off liberal activist groups may be the ultimate effect...
...If McIntosh, Istook, and Ehrlich succeed, recipients of federal grants would be allowed to use no more than 5 percent of their non-federal funds for political activity...
...The bill had cleared the House 232 to 187, but Gingrich was hesitant about insisting the Senate go along...
...The letter wasn't needed...
...McIntosh was also a main organizer of the Conservative Action Team, a group of House Republican activists who push conservative issues...
...The issue, dubbed "welfare for lobbyists," is a big one for conservatives, and House freshmen like McIntosh and Ehrlich have made it a test of their clout...
...That's a farfetched interpretation, but so far Dole has been unable to change his wife's mind...
...Postal Service unless the measure contains the curb on lobbying by federally-funded organizations...
...McIntosh, Istook, and Ehrlich are appalled by the fact that as much as $200 billion in federal money is going each year to non-profit and tax-exempt groups, who then use some of those billions to lobby Congress for more...
...I'm behind this 100 percent," Gingrich assured them...
...McIntosh is lucky to be in Congress...
...Jeffords won't let Republicans attach a rider incorporating McIntosh's bill to the Treasury-Postal appropriation...
...He chose McIntosh as one of three freshmen to chair subcommittees, even as the freshman class made McIntosh one of its two liaisons to the leadership...
...If federal grantees, ranging from the AFL-CIO ($1.3 million last year) to the League of Women Voters ($1 million), succeed in defeating the ban, they will owe thanks to two moderate Senate Republicans on the Appropriations Committee: James Jeffords and Mark Hatfield...
...McIntosh took the primary by 473 votes and easily won the general election...
...Gingrich had been persuaded over the previous few days that McIntosh and his colleagues were right...
...The measure faces a fight in the Senate and a possible veto by President Clinton, but Gingrich's commitment means it has a reasonable chance of becoming law...
...His wife Elizabeth, president of the American Red Cross, wrote GOP Sen...
...Later, however, he read a copy of congressional testimony given back in July by his confidante Arianna Huffington, who described in detail how charities are corrupted by political advocacy, and he got back with the program...
...Maybe McIntosh should lobby her, too...
...And getting Gingrich was a major victory for McIntosh, who has tirelessly proselytized his colleagues on the issue...
...David McIntosh, Ernest Istook, and Robert Ehrlich to discuss their fear that Gingrich might compromise away their measure to curb political advocacy by groups that receive federal money...
...If a group has $1,000 and the federal government gives it an additional $5,000, this frees the original thou' for activities that would otherwise have been impossible...
...Gingrich's desire to compromise evaporated...
...He ran in an Indiana district he'd lived in only briefly, having spent much of his adult life in Washington at the Reagan Justice Department and Bush White House...
...Prior to the meeting, Gingrich had sounded squishy So McIntosh brought a letter, signed by 60 House Republicans, pledging to vote against the bill that will fund the Treasury Department and the U.S...
...GOP freshman James Longley from Maine felt the power of those groups on Sept...
...That's true, but the regulation doesn't address the key point: Money is fungible...
...It's "too restrictive," Jeffords says...
...But the Republicans have purposely refused to frame the issue in terms of "defunding the left," a favored phrase in conservative circles, for fear that would appear too partisan...
...What I take exception to," says Longley, "is the fact that the federal taxpayer is paying for these protests...
...At the end of August, Gingrich was shaken by an Al Hunt column in the Wall Street Journal that called the McIntosh bill "recklessly drafted" and "a fraud...
...Appropriations Chairman Hatfield is even less enthusiastic about the defunding...
...had been maneuvering to stiffen Gingrich's resolve...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 3
