Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (13 page)

The Speaker achieved an initial victory on November 7, 2009, when the bill passed the House by a margin of five votes. The Senate then passed its own health care bill six weeks later. But before the two versions could be merged, Scott Brown took the sixtieth Senate seat away from the Democrats.

Gene Taylor was both right and wrong. For Nancy Pelosi’s House was not gone just yet. The Speaker and Harry Reid agreed to reintroduce the bill under a reconciliation rule that would permit passage
under a simple majority. Even so, the Senate, in its post–Scott Brown victory state of jitters, could no longer muster the vote for the public option.

Nancy Pelosi then did what only Nancy Pelosi could do. In a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, she convinced the Democratic Party’s progressive backers that even without their prized provision, a bill without the public option amounted to a legislative milestone and deserved their support. And so they gave it.

Pelosi had run the table. Every major legislative initiative she or the president had sought had passed the House: fair pay in the federal workplace, expanding health coverage for children, the stimulus, energy, hate crimes, federalizing student loans, financial regulatory reform, health care.

After all that, her House was gone.

The day after the midterm elections, when Pelosi had not yet announced her future intentions, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had said to her, “Nancy, you’re the leader. What are you going to do?”

She did not say just then. But she already knew.

Exactly two weeks after that, the Democrats caucused and returned Nancy Pelosi to power by a vote of 150–43, defeating Heath Shuler. One of Shuler’s votes had come from Dennis Cardoza, the Blue Dog intermediary on Pelosi’s leadership team. Pelosi promptly removed Cardoza from the job—installing in his place Henry Cuellar, who had given one of her nomination speeches that day.

Winning with a team of rivals might have been Abraham Lincoln’s way. Nancy Pelosi’s way worked for her.

CHAPTER NINE

Continuing Resolution

In March 1902, early into Teddy Roosevelt’s dynamic presidency, a reporter found something newsworthy about the House’s freshman class—who, as with all innocents, were expected to spend their first several years in Washington being seen and not heard. “The 48 new Republican members of the House,” this reporter wrote, “having discovered what an inconsiderable figure they cut in the general scheme of national legislation, had a dinner the other evening and amid much merriment organized the
Tantalus Club
.” The Republican freshman caucus was named after the Greek god who was condemned by Zeus to spend eternity grasping for fruit and water just beyond his reach.

Their exasperation over not being given adequate floor time and committee assignments was apparently sincere. But their outlook was one of jolly fatalism. That first night, undoubtedly with substantial lubrication, the freshmen dashed out several House resolutions they pronounced worthy of consideration. One was to make the state of Iowa an independent republic. Another was to establish a federal bureau for cutting the hair of Native Americans.

The Tantalus Club met every month or so for dinner at various hotel banquet rooms. Sometimes they would roast ambassadors and other distinguished guests. Often they performed skits, as when a Colorado congressman named Herschel Hogg pretended to be instructing President Roosevelt on the telephone as to whom to appoint to his cabinet. It was a given that the sessions would end with drunken choruses of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Soon the Tantalus Club affairs became as popular as the journalist-sponsored banquets known as the Gridiron Club. The freshmen had achieved relevance, in a sense. They were Washington’s new entertainers.

During that first year of the fraternity’s existence, House Speaker David Henderson, his designated replacement Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon, and several other powerful House members were invited to a Tantalus Club dinner. The dinner menu featured a cartoon of Uncle Joe waiting at the doorstep for the coveted Tantalus endorsement. One of the freshmen stood up and mock-endorsed Maine Congressman Charles Littlefield as “the only man who had located the solar plexus of the octopus, the man who could command the undivided support of 25% of the Maine delegation . . . [and] the man who never sullied his name by attaching it to a majority report.” The freshmen loudly feigned disapproval over the Speaker-designate, then just as loudly gave Cannon their imprimatur once he assured them that they would all be awarded committee chairmanships. Eventually they broke into the club’s adopted anthem, “Johnny Smoker,” and everyone toasted the exquisite powerlessness of the 57th Congress’s freshman class.

“The congressional ‘colts,’ ” a reporter wrote, “are wise for not taking their helplessness too seriously. It is the experience of all new congressmen, and they must wait patiently for recognition until they get seasoned.”

Jeff Duncan walked onto the House floor shortly after noon on February 10, 2011. The chamber was nearly empty. He strode carefully to the well, and then to the left of the House clerk’s desk. He held in his hands a five-page House Resolution, which read at the top: “Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to establish the Committee on the Elimination of Nonessential Federal Programs.” Then
Duncan deposited it
in the wooden box known as the hopper. He looked around. No one was paying attention. He might as well have been tossing a half-eaten sandwich into a wastebasket.

Still, it was a rite of passage to savor. Jeff Duncan had dropped his first bill. He walked languidly across the well, down the aisle, and then out of the chamber.

The bill’s intent was to replicate the so-called Byrd Committee, established in 1941 by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd to identify and slash unnecessary federal expenditures. Everything the committee targeted for cutting would be subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress. While campaigning in the summer of 2010, Duncan had read an op-ed calling
for the return of the Byrd Committee by
Grover Norquist
of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist had later told the
Daily Caller
that this was a golden opportunity for a House freshman to cosponsor: “I want the person who says, ‘This is me, this is mine, when this passes, I’m a star.’ ”

Intending to be that very person, Duncan moved quickly. He procured the blessings of the staffers of the Republican Study Committee, the House GOP’s in-house conservative coalition. The RSC circulated a letter to Republican members soliciting cosponsors of Duncan’s initiative. With a helpful nudge, the letter closed by observing, “This common-sense bill is an excellent opportunity for freshmen members to build up credibility on fiscal issues.” Duncan and Norquist each sent out letters as well. By the time Duncan had dropped the bill, he had acquired sixteen cosponsors, half of them freshmen.

What he hadn’t solicited were the blessings of Boehner and Cantor—and in fact when the majority leader was asked by a reporter about Duncan’s spending-slashing committee bill, he seemed momentarily taken aback before replying, “What I can tell you is that committees and their subcommittees are doing exactly that, and that is the oversight function, engaged on a daily basis.” Duncan also hadn’t checked with the Appropriations Committee, which of course already had the job of determining how federal money was spent. He frankly thought the committee was doing a lousy job of it. Washington’s addiction to spending was a big part of why he ran in the first place. America was $14 trillion in debt. This was no way to run a business.

Duncan had other bills in the works—lots of them. A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. A bill limiting House members to three terms and senators to two terms. And in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, Duncan had decided to work with the NRA on a law that would allow Washington, D.C., residents—including, of course, House members—to carry a firearm. Duncan already had a concealed-weapons permit for South Carolina. But when he left the office at night and walked the half mile to the apartment he shared with his fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott, he would walk under an overpass where the long shadows were frankly unnerving. He didn’t want to be the next congressman to be waylaid by a madman.

Jeff Duncan was striving to make his mark. He hadn’t gotten
assigned to the Energy and Commerce Committee as he had requested. Instead, Duncan landed on three committees: Natural Resources, Homeland Security, and Foreign Affairs. He’d signed on to no less than a dozen caucuses—including the RSC, the Balanced Budget Amendment Caucus, the Tea Party Caucus, the Pro-Life Caucus, the Liberty Caucus, and the Sportsmen’s Caucus. Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy had asked Duncan to join his freshman whip team. And one afternoon in mid-January, Iowa Congressman Steve King invited him to accompany King and a few other Republicans out on the sullen little patch of grass on the Capitol’s east lawn known as
the Triangle
, and stage a press conference on repealing Obamacare.

About fifty reporters and a dozen or so tourists formed a ring around the rickety metal podium affixed permanently to the ground. Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman and soon-to-be presidential candidate, materialized with her press aide and several reporters.

Duncan was a fan of the congresswoman. He introduced himself. “Ohhh, good to meetcha, Jeff,” said Bachmann, who was at least a foot shorter than the South Carolinian even in her heels.

She immediately turned and hugged a lady, saying, “Awww, don’t you look pretty in your red hair!”

Louie Gohmert of Texas then arrived. Duncan had met him back in November while touring offices—they’d talked about Gohmert’s barbecue grills. The Texan seemed to have forgotten who Duncan was. He was carrying with him a phone-directory-sized copy of the health care bill with dozens of yellow Post-it markers dangling from its pages.

They stood in a somber semicircle before the cameras with Duncan and another freshman, Steve Pearce of New Mexico, positioned behind the marquee players. King and Bachmann spoke first. Duncan had brought with him his well-worn copy of the Constitution. After King introduced him, he said, “Folks, as a freshman congressman, it’s humbling for me to stand out here in front of the people’s House and defend what I carry with me every day, and that’s the United States Constitution.” He held out his copy.

Of the health care bill, Duncan said in a rising voice, “Millions of Americans screamed out loudly that they didn’t want this. And so one of the first significant votes that I will cast as a congressman will be to repeal Obamacare. As a citizen, Jeff Duncan, I didn’t want the government
making decisions for me and my family. I felt that I could make those decisions better myself.”

Duncan said that he now looked forward to working with these distinguished colleagues to “repeal this unconstitutional piece of legislation—and replacing it with something that’s better. We’re gonna work on that together.”

Having suddenly run out of things to say, Duncan concluded with, “So I’ll, uh, turn it back over to Steve,” and stepped back as Louie Gohmert expertly lunged forward to the bank of microphones and proceeded to interpret, with outsized stupefaction, the contents of the legislative monstrosity he held with both hands: “It takes control of restaurants, vending machines . . . If you’re a friend of the administration, you’ll get a waiver and it’ll cut your costs dramatically. If you’re not a friend of Obama, you’ll go out of business . . .”

Jeff Duncan was about to become very relevant—though not by himself, and not as a protégé of the TV-savvy Republican members.

At the end of January
, Duncan and several other members of the Republican Study Committee flew to California for what one of the RSC officials would later term a three-day “conservative love-fest.” Sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and held at the Reagan Library, the retreat had the unspoken purpose of enabling the RSC’s new chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan, to identify those freshmen who were particularly wedded to conservative aims.

In previous years, the RSC had been a small if loud sect of the House’s most conservative members. More than a policy shop, it served as the Republicans’ ideological conscience—or nuisance—much as the Congressional Black Caucus had historically been for the Democrats since its founding in 1971, two years before the RSC began.

But the 2010 elections had changed all that. Fully 78 of the 87 freshmen joined the Republican Study Committee, overnight swelling its ranks to about 177 of the overall conference’s 242 members—more than four times that of the moderate Tuesday Group Republicans. Meanwhile, its new leader, Jim Jordan (a two-term backbencher and former Ohio State wrestling coach), was about to become a major player on Capitol Hill.

Jordan immediately took a liking to several of them: Steve
Southerland, a former funeral home owner from Florida; Andy Harris, previously a Maryland state senator and before that an anesthesiologist; Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania auto dealer in his prior life; Steve Pearce of New Mexico, who had actually served three terms in Congress before being defeated in 2008 and returning two years later; Tom Graves, an experienced Georgia legislator who had won in a special election, five months before the rest of them; Raul Labrador, an Idaho immigration lawyer who happened to be both Puerto Rican and Mormon; and Jeff Duncan.

All of them—and indeed most of the Republican freshmen—had run on the Pledge to America, which promised to roll back non-security-related discretionary spending to 2008 levels, or before Obama took office. The savings, based on Obama’s requested fiscal year 2011 budget, was estimated by House Budget Committee staffers to be $100 billion. Thus the Pledge became a vow to whack $100 billion.

The problem was that the Democrats had never passed Obama’s budget—and further, that by January, four months of fiscal 2011 had already gone by. Appropriations staffers informed Boehner’s and Cantor’s surrogates that reducing federal discretionary spending over an eight-month period by $100 billion couldn’t be done—not without cutting into the bone. They suggested a significant but still much smaller spending cut package. It would be $32 billion in actual reductions, or $61 billion from what Obama had requested—the latter of which, when annualized, amounted to $100 billion.