Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (25 page)

The normally taciturn ex-offensive lineman Jon Runyan hulked over the microphone. Without referring specifically to any of his colleagues, the New Jersey freshman pointedly said, “You know, when I was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, we didn’t start losing till Terrell Owens joined the team. It only takes one guy to bring down a locker room.”

Steve LaTourette whispered to a colleague, “Most of the ones who need to be hearing this aren’t here.”

Bachmann, however, was. She went to the microphone and, to the bewilderment of several present, applauded Runyan’s remarks.

McCarthy was also glad to hear the freshman speak up, though for a different reason. He’d been hosting a dinner at the Capitol Hill restaurant Luigi’s the night before. Runyan had been one of the invitees and had shared the Terrell Owens anecdote. “You’ve got to tell that story to the conference tomorrow morning,” the whip had urged him.

It was in fact McCarthy’s idea to stage the conference that morning. “We’ve got a problem with our members,” he had warned Boehner. “We shouldn’t let it fester.”

Listening to Runyan, Griffin, and others vent their frustrations, McCarthy was secretly delighted. He thought,
This is how any family does it. You air it out. Everybody respects it, and you grow stronger.

Three hours later, the House was gaveled to order, and debate on the budgets proceeded.

As a kind of undercard to the main event, Raul Grijalva, the chairman of the minority’s Progressive Caucus, presented its own budget for
floor debate. A freshman, Mo Brooks of Alabama, responded by saying, “We are at risk of insolvency and bankruptcy because the socialist members of this body choose to spend money that we do not have!”

From the other side, a livid Keith Ellison jumped up and raised a point of order. “I would like the gentleman’s words taken down for the reference to certain members of this body as socialists,” he declared.

Begrudgingly, Brooks stood up and moved “to strike the particular use of one word that the folks on the other side of the aisle have objected to.”

Debate then moved to the Republican Study Committee’s alternative budget, far leaner than the Ryan plan, as it proposed to freeze all nondefense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. A great number of House Republicans found the RSC budget to be austere in the extreme. Jeff Duncan was given a minute to articulate his support for it.

Holding up a prop, the South Carolinian said, “Mr. Chairman, folks, no prepared remarks, no fancy speeches. I brought with me a financial calculator. And regardless of how you calculate the numbers, America is spending too much money.”

He rattled along in his auctioneer’s cadence—concluding with, “Let’s stop the spending insanity here in Washington, D.C., and let’s do what we tell the folks back home we are going to do, and let’s get our fiscal house in order.”

The two budgets
were then put to a roll call vote. First, the Progressive Caucus budget was defeated, with only its seventy-seven members voting for it. Then came the RSC budget. For this vote, Steny Hoyer had hatched a plan.

The Democratic minority whip knew that the Republicans would be throwing their weight behind the Ryan budget plan. But Hoyer also suspected that the RSC’s 170 or so conservative members would want to show Tea Party groups and other right wing advocates that after the whole CR saga, they would never again vote down any plan that dramatically reduced federal spending. Before the vote on the Ryan budget, they would all cast a symbolic vote for the RSC budget—expecting, of course, that the remaining Republicans would join with the Democrats in defeating it. Unless . . .

“Let’s get everybody to vote ‘present’ on the RSC amendment,” Hoyer instructed his whip team two hours before the vote. His
deputies then fanned out and hovered by each door to the chamber. As a Democrat prepared to walk in, members of the minority whip team would whisper the plan to them.

McCarthy squinted at the tally board as dozens of the seldom-used letter
P
instantly popped up next to the names of dozens of Democrats. A number of Republicans began to murmur in confusion. Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson Jr. and other Democrats began to scurry up and down the aisles, no longer bothering to whisper anymore: “Change your vote to ‘present’!”

Dingell’s face turned sour when a whip gave him the instructions. “That’s a pussy vote!” he snarled. But he did as told.

The Democrats had 172 members voting “present” instead of “no.” That left the RSC budget with having more votes for it than against it—which, if that remained the case, would become the House’s ipso facto budget, with the Ryan budget not even given an opportunity to pass.

Clever—keeps us on our toes,
thought McCarthy. His whip team began to plead with several RSC members to change their “yes” to “no” so that their budget would not pass and they could then proceed to the Ryan budget. The Democrats hooted and cheered as Republicans like Louie Gohmert and Tim Scott abandoned their original positions. The RSC budget was defeated, 119 to 13.

Van Hollen then presented the Democratic minority’s alternative budget—one that reduced discretionary spending while also raising taxes on the wealthy. Ryan began his response by complimenting his opponent. “It’s not always that the minority offers an alternative budget,” he said. “In fact, I know there are a lot of pressures not to do that. So I think Mr. Van Hollen is to be commended, and his very capable staff, for actually proposing an alternative. That’s important.” Van Hollen nodded his appreciation, and Ryan then proceeded with his criticisms that the cuts were far too shallow and the tax burden far too deep. All 236 Republicans present, plus twenty-three Democrats (most of them Blue Dogs), voted against it.

The main event was now at hand. Before speaking on behalf of his budget, Paul Ryan said, “I yield two minutes to the gentleman from California, the distinguished majority whip.”

McCarthy rose and spoke into the microphone at the committee table. “What we are taking up today is the point of where this country goes,” he said. After a few words about the debt and how the Path to Prosperity would address it, he then repeated one of his favorite binary characterizations: “Today could be the day that we create the great American comeback, or it could be the day that America goes into the long fade into history. The floor is made up of a microcosm of America—and all of America knows that we have to control the situation we are in.

“So today, a ‘yes’ vote is for jobs, for energy independence, and a new Path to Prosperity.”

Suddenly, from the visitors’ gallery, a loud youthful male voice semi-melodically bellowed out:
“Oh why can’t you see . . . when you sell out the earth . . .”

Rapping his gavel, the Speaker pro tempore, Republican Phil Gingrey, declared, “The Chair notes a disturbance in the gallery which is in contravention of the laws and rules of the House!”

“Oh say can’t you see it’s my country you’re destroying . . .”

“The sergeant at arms will remove the person responsible for the disturbance and restore order to the gallery!”

The young man was pulled out of the audience and hustled out of the chamber by Capitol security.

Gingrey rapped the gavel several times more. It was Van Hollen’s turn. “Mr. Chairman, we are turning back the clock,” he said. “We’re turning back the clock on progress and we’re turning back the clock on—”

“If you look through my eyes . . .”

Another young man wearing a T-shirt was hoisted out of the gallery.

Van Hollen gazed pleasantly ahead and waited for order to be restored. “We see different paths and make different choices to—”

“Oh say can you see that the earth is in pain . . .”
This time a young woman’s singsong.

“Clear the gallery!” several Republicans hollered out as she was hauled off.

Van Hollen then said, “Mr. Chairman, if I—”

“Oh say can you see . . .”
Another young woman.

“Clear the gallery!”

“Enough!” said Paul Ryan. “Enough!”

Gingrey threatened to clear the gallery. The chamber slowly simmered down.

“Mr. Chairman,” continued Van Hollen, “we now all agree we have to act now to put in place a plan to reduce our—”

“You’re supposed to represent this country, so why don’t you . . .”

It was a third young woman. The others in the visitors’ gallery began to look anxiously among their ranks to see if anyone else resembled the previous disrupters. Most of them did.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Van Hollen, “I ask unanimous consent to begin my remarks from the beginning and reset the clock.”

There was no objection. “As I said, nobody doubts that every person in this chamber loves this country and wants to do the right thing—”

“Oh when will you listen to our generation . . .”

Ryan walked over to Van Hollen and offered sympathetic words as another female protester was dragged off singing. Beside the Speaker’s table, the clerks anxiously thumbed through what appeared to be antique registers as if trying to locate a precedent for such a ruckus.

“We shall overcome . . .”

At last, they overcame. The Ryan budget passed, 235–193. Only four Republicans—Walter Jones, Ron Paul, Denny Rehberg (who would soon be running for the Senate), and a West Virginia freshman named David McKinley (whose state had the highest rate of Medicare beneficiaries in the country)—voted against it. No Democrat voted for it.

Paul Ryan found Kevin McCarthy on the floor and shook his hand. “It’s your listening sessions that made this happen,” the Budget Committee chairman said.

Later that afternoon, McCarthy
rode to Dulles Airport. Seated in the back of the black SUV was Jeff Denham, a freshman who had previously served in the California State Senate while McCarthy was in the State Assembly. That was five years ago. Now Denham was hitching a ride with the third-ranking House Republican’s security detail.

The whip was chewing on a brownie while checking his BlackBerry. “Heck of a week,” he exclaimed. “But it’s good! I’d rather be in chaos than not!”

Said McCarthy, “We stayed on offense the whole time. When
you look at it from afar, as an aerial chess game, here’s one group, the Democrats, that outnumbered us. But
we
led.
They
reacted to
us
. As long as we keep leaning in, all they can do is react. I don’t think they can come together.”

That very afternoon, an obscure Democrat county clerk in western New York named
Kathy Hochul
sent out a press release. In it, she asked a question of her heavily favored Republican opponent in the special election to fill the vacated office of the 26th Congressional District of New York. The question related to the just-passed Ryan budget, and it read: “If Jane Corwin was currently a member of the House of Representatives, would she vote to slash benefits, increase costs, and hold America’s elderly population responsible for fighting with insurance companies?”

A couple of hours later, Hochul’s demand had goaded Corwin into issuing her own press release—saying that yes, she would have voted for the Ryan budget with its controversial provision to end the Medicare guarantee.

McCarthy was wrong. There was in fact a way for the Democrats to come together. The Republicans had just handed it to them.

PART THREE

“YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M COMING FROM!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Draft Horse

Jeff Duncan’s America was the 3rd Congressional District of South Carolina, which occupies the state’s western flank, abutting Georgia and North Carolina. The upstate portion of the district was for nearly three hundred years the dominion of
Cherokees
, while farther south the territory was settled by French Huguenots in the mid-18th century. Though today its principal cities, Anderson and Greenwood, are the home to auto parts industries and other manufacturers, until a few decades ago the area was a haven for textiles—the business that brought John Duncan, a mill turnaround specialist and the father of the district’s future congressman, to Ware Shoals to begin with.

The 3rd District’s first U.S. representative, a wealthy planter named Daniel Huger, was ill throughout the drafting of the Bill of Rights but would become the patriarch of one of the state’s early political dynasties. A half-century later, the 3rd District elected Laurence M. Keitt, a twenty-nine-year-old, heavily bearded ladies’ man described by one contemporary as “the most irascible of all the Southern members.” Keitt was a Fire-Eater, or ardent secessionist, who argued that “African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social and political fabric of the South . . .”

He achieved lasting notoriety, however, for his violent antics on the House floor. In 1856, Keitt accompanied fellow South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks into the Senate chamber and held off onlookers with his pistol while Brooks thrashed Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with his cane for blaspheming their state. Keitt was censured on the House floor and then resigned, only to win (according to one report) “unanimous reelection” a month later. He instigated at least two physical encounters in the House chamber—one
in which Keitt was knocked to the ground after calling another congressman a “damned black Republican puppy”—and beat his washerwoman at the Willard Hotel. After South Carolina seceded, the Fire-Eater commanded a Confederate regiment and was killed in the last year of the Civil War. Throughout Reconstruction, his former office would be occupied by a succession of Republican carpetbaggers, one of them an African-American.