Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (26 page)

The 3rd District returned to Democratic hands in 1877 and stayed that way for more than a century. The mills in the district had begun to close in the early 1980s. After Congressman Butler Derrick announced his retirement in 1994, the first Republican since Reconstruction, a state legislator and bartender’s son named Lindsey Graham, rode the Gingrich wave to victory. Graham and his Republican successor, Gresham Barrett, were well attuned to two realities. First, the district was deeply conservative. Second, it was economically hurting. Both congressmen maintained unmarred pro-life and pro-gun voting records while making liberal use of earmarks to build new bridges and fund vocational education centers. They also championed in every way possible the district’s largest employer in the post-textile era: the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, a sprawling nuclear reservation.

When Barrett decided to run for governor in 2010, thus handing Jeff Duncan the opportunity to take his place, he brought to South Carolina voters one of the most conservative voting records in Congress—with one exception: Barrett had, at the height of the financial crisis of 2008, voted for President Bush’s bank bailout, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). As a result of Barrett’s dereliction, he was beaten in the primary by Tea Party star and Sarah Palin endorsee Nikki Haley.

And in the meantime, Jeff Duncan—who had condemned TARP as
“disgraceful and un-American,”
and who campaigned pledging never to aid his district with earmark requests—was on his way to representing the land of Cherokees and Huguenots, secessionists and mill workers, Tea Partiers and recipients of federal largesse.

Three days after
casting his vote for Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget, Duncan was in his district office in Anderson, chatting with
a Korean War veteran and his daughter, an Air Force officer who had recently returned from Kandahar. Duncan mentioned that he had not yet been to Afghanistan, or Iraq for that matter. He had, however, taken a day trip to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, just last week, between votes.

“They’re treated very well there,” the freshman said of the detainees. “We went into a medium-security area with communal pods. It was interesting—we were in the hall, and there are windows with shades, and guards who observed them 24/7. And it was dark where we were, and very lit up in the area where they were. And I felt in the presence of evil in there.”

He went on to say that he had only experienced that sensation once before. “My wife Melody and I were in Charleston in the market one day,” Duncan continued. “We were walking up the sidewalk where there are shops. We went into one and were just looking around. And a few minutes later, Melody said, ‘Let’s get out of here. It doesn’t feel right.’ And I felt the same way. It turned out it was a black magic shop. I felt true evil there.”

The father and daughter nodded and stared at the table where they and their congressman sat.

“Anyway—it was a great educational trip,” said Duncan. He presented the soldier with a flag and plaque and thanked both visitors for their service.

Duncan’s schedule in the district was full that week.
He visited the Bosch
manufacturing plant in Anderson, one of his district’s bigger employers. The German-owned company employed 4,500 of Duncan’s constituents to produce oxygen sensors, fuel management components, and other high-tech auto parts—by-products, in other words, of federal regulation.

“Of course, you can’t be from South Carolina and be
supportive
of heavy regulations,” one of the Bosch officials acknowledged with a knowing smile to the freshman. “But when you get data-driven information on safety issues, that does nothing but support our business. Because that’s our niche. It’s created job opportunities here.”

Duncan listened quietly as the job creators spoke hopefully to him about a “collaborative effort with industry and the federal
government.” In other words, Bosch wanted money. Its labor costs here in South Carolina far exceeded the costs of their plants in Mexico. Any “public-private partnership” would help. The company urged Duncan to support the Advanced Vehicle Technology Act, a bill that would channel Department of Energy research funds into cutting-edge auto manufacturing, authored by Democrat Gary Peters and cosponsored by his fellow Michigander John Dingell.

Duncan’s expression remained noncommittal—though he did nod his head solemnly when the Bosch managers discussed the need to reform the voluminous federal tax code.

“Four companies here have made the decision to move their plants out of Anderson,” a manager said. “Three to other states and one overseas.”

“It’s a nationwide effect of the recession and job losses and layoffs and whatnot,” Duncan said. “Other states are experiencing the same thing.”

“Except that states like Georgia and Virginia have found alternative solutions,” the manager said pointedly.

The antispending freshman dug in his heels. “The biggest question,” he said, “is what we as a nation can
afford
to do.”

He drove from one event to the next in his red Chevy Silverado pickup. Back when he was a heavy underdog in an eight-candidate Republican primary to succeed Congressman Barrett, Duncan had stood for hours in the bed of this same vehicle with his wife, Melody, holding hands and waving, during maybe twenty Christmas parades throughout his district. He had outworked the competition. As a result, his pickup now carried the license plate 3 SC.

As he drove, the news reached Duncan that President and Mrs. Obama had filed their 2010 income tax return and paid $450,000 in federal taxes on their income of $1.7 million. Duncan considered his own financial situation—which, as a politician and former real estate auctioneer, was certainly comfortable. He owned fourteen rental properties throughout the district. One of them, an old mill house in Laurens he had bought for $20,000 back in 1991, had recently been trashed and vacated by a young female tenant. A door had been ripped off its hinges. The damages would have to come out of his pocket.

“I’m an absentee landlord,” he sighed. “It’s one of those sacrifices you make when you come to Washington.”

Duncan had an hour to kill between meetings. He decided to spend it at his alma mater, Clemson. Someone recognized him on the streets and told him that Duncan’s old football teammate,
Keith Jennings
, was now running a hot dog stand on College Avenue.

Duncan’s face lit up. He’d been a walk-on wide receiver and seldom got on the playing field. Jennings, on the other hand, had been a star. The former Clemson Tiger later played two seasons as tight end for the Dallas Cowboys and seven for the Chicago Bears.

Duncan walked into Jugheads Hot Dogs, carrying with him a Clemson-orange striped tie he had just purchased. The round-faced African-American man with the apron put down his skillet and appraised the customer with wide-eyed delight.

“Jeff Duncan—
congressman
? I can’t believe it! Dawg, that’s good stuff!” Jennings held out a gargantuan fist, which Duncan bumped with his own.

The two alumni descended into football gossip—what Coach Danny Ford was up to, whatever happened to Rodney Quick—before the subject turned to Jennings’s hot dog enterprise.

“It’s all good,” he shrugged. “I can’t afford to pay anyone, so that’s why I’m back here. But anytime I want, I can flip that sign on the door—‘Be back in thirty minutes’—and go down the street and have a beer.”

Leaning over the counter, Jennings said to his former teammate, “Now when you get back to Washington, will you slap around some people and help out the small businessman?”

“We only control one-half of one-third of government,” Duncan wearily reminded him.

That evening Duncan attended
a Tea Party event
by an outfit called Conservatives Taking America Back. The audience of two hundred or so was largely middle-aged, all white, and one of them wore a Revolutionary War costume complete with powdered wig. The freshman and his political godfather, Senator Jim DeMint, both spoke—though the most memorable words came from the meeting’s cohost, local conservative activist Debra Daum, who set the tone of the evening by warning the attendees, “If your agenda is to fundamentally transform the
United States of America, then guess what—you’ve got to take out the patriots first . . . Now, Mr. Obama may have millions of sheep and their little ACORNs can get them to vote, but guess what: eighty percent of America is Christian. We are the majority! . . . But the truth is: Islam is on the rise in this country. Christianity is on the decline . . . I, Debra Daum, will not stand by and watch my country die!”

DeMint by comparison was folksy and understated. “I’m not trying to scare anyone,” the senator said in a lamenting tone. “But I don’t believe we can take four more years of this.”

He then observed with a sly grin, “I understand there are a few people here who want to take their country back.” Over the loud applause, he declared, “Well, you made a good start by electing Jeff Duncan!”

Duncan kept his remarks short. “I’ve only been up there for a hundred days, so I don’t have quotes of my own,” he began, and thereafter quoted others: Reagan, the Constitution, the book of Nehemiah, Thomas Jefferson. He thanked those present for being patriots. “Where else in the world,” he said, “can people gather peacefully to talk about our concerns about government?”

His message was the same as it was and would be: “Let’s stop the spending insanity. Let’s get our fiscal house in order.”

He carried that same message to the state capital of Columbia for the annual Washington Night meeting of the entire
South Carolina delegation
—hosted by the state Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Nutramax, maker of pet foods, creator of jobs in Lancaster, South Carolina, and proud supporter of Christian-based missions throughout America. Duncan sat at the head table in the middle, alongside the state’s other elected federal officials: fellow freshmen Tim Scott, Trey Gowdy, and Mick Mulvaney; Republican Congressman Joe Wilson and Democratic Congressman James Clyburn; and Senators DeMint and Lindsey Graham.

The Q&A lasted for well over an hour, but it was nonetheless hard, from among those eight strong voices, for Jeff Duncan to make any kind of impression with the audience. There was DeMint, the purist of the right, speaking scornfully of the Continuing Resolution that had been signed into law that week: “The amount of cuts we saw last week was so nominal as to be embarrassing.” There was Graham, far and away
the most learned of them on foreign policy—and speaking, on the subject of the state’s foremost economic challenge, how to obtain federal dollars to dredge the seaport at Charleston, with pragmatic determination: “I’d rather lose my job than lose this port.” There was Clyburn, the lone Democrat, assailing the Ryan budget as “unconscionable” while at the same time reminding the audience that his support for the Savannah River Site was unwavering, and that he took “some credit for getting the Obama administration to where it is” on nuclear energy. There was Joe Wilson, a starkly sotto voce contrast to the dissenter who bellowed out “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care speech before a joint session of Congress less than two years ago.

All three of the other freshmen were more erudite than Duncan. His roommate Tim Scott described the delegation’s “awesome” efforts to aid the Charleston port in his district with breezy self-assurance. The lawyerly Gowdy quoted from the seventeenth-century English writer John Bunyan and spoke movingly, when the subject turned to immigration, of his son’s high school classmate, a girl from Sierra Leone whose hands had been amputated for attempting to vote. Said the clever and cocky Mulvaney when the topic turned to education, “I don’t know anything about the schools in Wisconsin. Drove through the state once, don’t care to go back. Why does anyone think I in Washington can or should do anything to impact education in Wisconsin? I was hoping we’d have in the [Ryan] budget something on education similar to what you saw on Medicaid: give the money back to the states and say, ‘Go at it.’ ”

Duncan uncorked one acidic line when a questioner asked about the EPA. “They want to treat spoiled milk like an oil spill,” he scoffed. Otherwise, he did not stand out. It was an experience—the congressional experience—to which Jeff Duncan was growing accustomed. It was frustrating enough that, even leaving aside the maddening intransigence of the Senate, the lower body was failing to address the key issues of the day. On the fight to reduce government spending, he believed that old bulls like Appropriations chairman Hal Rogers were just as dug in as the Democrats—that when the Appropriators offered their first feeble package of cuts, “
Rogers knew
all along that those weren’t real numbers.” And on his near-and-dear subject of energy independence, Duncan had concluded that the discussion had become fatally
inclusive. “We’ve got to take the environmentalists out of the equation and come to some common ground,” he would say. “And that’s increasing domestic supply.”

But the more vexing revelation to his first hundred days was his inability to be heard within the body. None of his legislation—the Byrd Committee program-slashing bill, the D.C. gun permit bill, the anti–National Labor Relations Board bill—had even seen any committee activity, much less been put to the House floor for an up-or-down vote. Sitting on three committees, he strove to find a moment, any moment, in which he could distinguish himself. But as with the Muslim radicalization hearing, there was little of substance to be achieved in five minutes’ time. Back in the South Carolina legislature, Duncan could speak on the floor for twenty minutes on a topic. He could see himself moving votes with his words—it had actually happened. On the House floor, his speeches were limited to a minute, or thirty seconds, or even fifteen seconds—and with that Duncan would blurt out what he could, red-faced, in his auctioneer’s patter.

He figured that maybe down the line he might become a subcommittee chairman. In the state legislature, Duncan had come to be viewed as a dependable, reasonable guy—a leader in his own unspectacular way. His colleagues there had awarded him a chairmanship after six years. As it happened, six years was precisely the term limit he had campaigned on for House members last year. Duncan would have to revisit that logic at some point.