The Speaker’s Lobby: 25 Seconds

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

18 November 2009

The afternoon grew late on November 5^th when House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) finally emerged from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Hoyer surfaced for air after a grueling, three-hour long cloister on health care. The House Democratic leadership was barreling toward an historic, weekend vote on their marquee agenda item. But they didn’t yet have the votes to pass the bill. Hoyer’s steps were brisk as he glided out of Pelosi’s second-floor suite and down a spiral staircase to his office on the first floor.

An assemblage of reporters followed the leader and fired questions at the Maryland Democrat as he strode toward his office. What were they going to do about abortion? Did they have the votes? Would they wait to vote next week?

Hoyer didn’t have the answers to most of those questions. And when he reached the staircase landing, I asked him something he didn’t have an immediate answer to either.

“Mr. Leader,” I began, “Will the House hold a moment of silence to honor those killed today at Fort Hood?”

I figured Hoyer was the appropriate person to ask about this. After all, the Majority Leader controls the House floor schedule.

A quizzical look consumed Hoyer’s face. He stopped in his tracks and put his palm on my shoulder.

“The what?” he asked, nearly squinting at me.

“The shooting at Fort Hood,” I repeated.

Then his longtime aide Stacey Farnen Bernards jumped in.

“You haven’t been briefed, sir. It happened during the meeting,” Bernards said.

Hoyer and the other leaders were burrowed so deeply in their health care strategy session inside Pelosi’s alcove that they hadn’t seen the news in hours.

I told Hoyer that about a dozen people had been killed. Apparently by someone in the service. The Majority Leader’s head tilted to the side as though trying to grasp what I was telling him.

“That’s terrible,” Hoyer said. “By someone on the base?”

“Will you have a moment of silence?” I asked again.

“I would imagine we would,” Hoyer replied, still digesting what I told him. The leader then turned and walked down the hall. Hoyer’s gait was markedly slower than when he charged out of Pelosi’s office a few moments earlier.

And sure enough, about an hour later, Pelosi interrupted a series of votes to note the tragedy on the House floor.

“Members and those in the gallery will please rise and observe a moment of silence in memory of the victims of violence at Fort Hood,” the Speaker commanded, presiding over the House chamber from the rostrum.

Democrats and Republicans alike then stood to bow their heads in prayer and meditation.

The usually-rambunctious chamber fell quiet. And 25 seconds later, Pelosi gently tapped the gavel, marking the end of the tribute.

Those 25 seconds of silence could mark the last time Congressional Democrats and Republicans agree on anything about Fort Hood.

While Congress was out of session last week, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) scheduled a hearing for this Thursday. Lieberman’s accused the alleged perpetrator Nidal Malik Hasan of home-grown terrorism.

Meantime, some Republicans were quick to call for a Congressional inquiry. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, declared that the Obama Administration did not cough up information about Hasan and his possible links to terrorism.

“The horrific shootings at Fort Hood are a tragic reminder of the potential deadly consequences of the threat posed by homegrown jihadism,” Hoekstra said in a statement. “Congress has an obligation to review how federal agencies are handling and disseminating information related to the threat.”

But Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) pushed for a more deliberate approach on Fort Hood.

“It would be inappropriate and premature to jump to conclusions on this matter,” Reyes said.

And then Reyes took a not-so-veiled swipe at Hoekstra.

“I am disappointed that some have rushed to the news media with unfounded information in order to gain headlines,” Reyes said. “I hope that my colleagues will refrain from speculation, pray for those who were affected by this tragic incident, and let investigators do their work.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) also cautioned against haste in his news release.

“Right now, we need to avoid jumping to any conclusions and give the Army and the FBI a chance to do their jobs,” Skelton said, citing his experience as a local prosecutor.

But the time for press releases was over when Congress reconvened this week.

First, the Senate Armed Services Committee promptly postponed a meeting on Fort Hood because leading officials from the Army weren’t available. Then came a closed door briefing for lawmakers Tuesday given by Defense and Justice Department officials. And then the White House requested a slow-down from Congressional inquiries into the shootings.

“I don’t see any partisan flavor to this other than if somebody tries to make it a partisan flavor,” Steny Hoyer told reporters late Tuesday morning.

But some lawmakers were already drizzling partisan flavor all over any effort to find out the truth about Fort Hood.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that this represents a systemic breakdown,” said Hoekstra Tuesday afternoon at a press conference packed with Republicans. “Congress needs to move forward to make sure we do our work to get to the right conclusions.”

“First of all, we don’t have all the facts,” countered Reyes an hour later during a scrum with reporters in the Speaker’s Lobby near the House floor.

“Tools and methods that have been used in previous months and years by the intelligence community are no longer at their disposal (to investigate Fort Hood),” said Intelligence Committee member Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).

“I don’t know of any tools that have been curtailed or limited,” countered Reyes. “This may be just again a political smokescreen thrown out there.”

“The families of the dead and the wounded deserve to know the truth. But all Americans deserve to know their government is taking the appropriate steps,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX).

“What the Republicans are doing is irresponsible,” said Reyes. “I don’t think that talking about this case to the media is responsible. I think it is irresponsible to speculate.”

So, no one really knows what happened at Fort Hood. There is wild conjecture about whether Hasan acted alone, had links to al-Qaida, is part of a broad, still-unfolding conspiracy or is just someone who finally snapped.

Meantime, the charges and countercharges between Democrats and Republicans are in full volley. The probe isn’t even launched and it’s already bleeding partisanship. And the GOP is quick to remind people that key aspects of the Patriot Act expire in six weeks.

Which could mean the only time Democrats and Republicans can agree on Fort Hood was for 25 seconds during a moment of silence on the House floor.

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Hive of Scum and Villainy

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

14 November 2009

In the original Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker are in search of a freighter pilot to get off the planet. They travel to Mos Eisley spaceport. Kenobi knows that the best pilots carouse in the town’s cantinas and taverns.

But before they go into Mos Eisley, Kenobi counsels young Skywalker to watch his step.

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” Kenobi warns.

Perhaps it’s little wonder then that the American public doesn’t hold the same contempt for Capitol Hill as Kenobi has for Mos Eisley.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III threw the book at former Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) late Friday afternoon. A federal jury convicted Jefferson in August of accepting nearly $500,000 in bribes and attempting to extort more to help broker business deals in Africa. And at federal court in Alexandria, VA, Ellis handed Jefferson the longest sentence ever meted out to a current or former Member of Congress: 13 years behind bars.

“Public corruption is a cancer on the body politic,” Ellis lectured Jefferson from the bench as the former Congressman stood before him. “Public corruption is a cancer that needs to be surgically removed.”

Over the past few years, a host of federal judges have “surgically removed” other former lawmakers convicted of corruption. 

Former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) got eight years for taking bribes. A judge sentenced former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-OH) to seven years for bribery, racketeering and tax evasion. And a federal judge gave former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) a two-and-a-half year sentence for conspiracy and filing false financial disclosure forms in connection with the Jack Abramoff case. The government released Ney after 17 months in jail.

But the public’s taken note of more than just lawmakers who served time.

There’s the conviction and exoneration of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). Federal probes involving Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Don Young (R-AK) and former Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA). The unresolved indictment on a state charge of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). Potential ethical lapses involving Sens. John Ensign (R-NV) and David Vitter (R-LA). And Ethics Committee inquiries into the conduct of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Laura Richardson (D-CA).

With Jefferson’s fate in his hands, Ellis seemed noticeably disturbed at the “hive of scum and villainy” that sometimes doubles as Capitol Hill.

“All of the cases are sad with all of these Congressmen. I recall being particularly stung by Cunningham’s conviction,” Ellis opined.

Ellis and Cunningham were both naval aviators. Ellis said they even flew the same aircraft and noted that Cunningham “distinguished himself more that I did” as a pilot, becoming a Vietnam War flying ace.

Ellis lamented the scourge of corruption and allegations of wrongdoing that has settled in the halls of Congress.

“There must be some sort of a greed virus that attacks those in power,” Ellis said. “No one is immune from that greed.”

To prosecutors, the Jefferson case was special. The government asked Ellis to lock up the 62-year-old Jefferson for 27 to 33 years.

“His activity represented the most extensive and persuasive pattern of corruption in the history of Congress,” said prosecutor Mark Lytle. “The government found he conducted his Congressional office like a criminal enterprise.”

Jefferson’s defense attorney Robert Trout told the court that his client expected a “stern” sentence. He fretted that if the government succeeded in trumping Cunningham’s sentence, Jefferson’s decree would be “the longest sentence ever imposed on a Member of Congress. And the Department of Justice would tout it as such.”

Jefferson was born in poor, rural Louisiana. But he made it to Harvard Law School. And Trout appealed to Ellis to consider this.

“From his starting point, what he has accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary, considering the starting point,” Trout told Ellis.

But Ellis was having none of it.

“It’s clear you’ve lived an extraordinary life. It makes this event all the sadder for me,” Ellis told Jefferson. “You are a person of gifts. These gifts have been squandered.”

Jefferson’s case came to light when the feds unearthed more than $90,000 in his freezer during a 2006 raid on his New Orleans home. The cash was stowed in boxes of Pillsbury pie crust and Boca Burgers.

The government nailed Jefferson on 11 of 16 counts. And at the sentencing, Trout argued that his client “was acquitted of the offense that got all of the national attention and was the source of late-night jokes.”

The FBI’s investigation of Jefferson even ignited a minor Constitutional crisis. On Memorial Day weekend, 2006, the feds secured a warrant and searched Jefferson’s Congressional office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Never before had one branch of the government raided the offices of another. Then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) demanded that the FBI return documents seized in the raid. Hastert argued the search broached a firewall separating the branches of government. Former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) even called a hearing on the matter.

But all of that made little difference Friday. Jefferson was a convicted felon. And Ellis was poised to deliver the former Congressman’s punishment.

Before the hearing started, Jacques Chevalier, formerly of Natchitoches, LA, stood outside the courthouse to wish Jefferson well.

“I think this is a black man being discredited because he’s black,” Chevalier said. He worried about the length of Jefferson’s sentence compared to other politicians.

“They get off with a pat on the gluteus maximus,” Chevalier protested.

Neither Jefferson nor Trout spoke to the press before or after the hearing. But Jefferson’s pastor, Bishop Paul Morton did talk to reporters after arriving at the courthouse in a chaffeurerd Lincoln Town Car. Morton is the head of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship which often holds large services in the Louisiana Superdome.

“I just told (Jefferson) that right overpowers might,” Morton said before entering the courthouse. In the courtroom, Morton took a seat next to Jefferson’s five adult daughters and wife Andrea.

Shortly before handing down his sentence, Judge Ellis declared a short recess. Reporters and court officials milled about. Jefferson went out into the hallway to confer with one of his daughters. And about halfway through the recess, Morton donned his coat and met Jefferson by the elevators. They spoke for a moment. And then Morton left without shaking Jefferson’s hand. Well before Ellis imposed the former Congressman’s sentence.

The conviction remains on appeal, But if you’re Jefferson, perhaps you know it’s bad when even your pastor slips out early.

But with the Congressman facing 13 years behind bars, perhaps there will be enough time for ministerial visits in prison.

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway located just behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Compromising Positions

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

11 November 2009

It was well past 11:30 last Friday night when a cluster of reporters starved for information descended on Nadeam Elshami as he exited the Speaker’s Office in the U.S. Capitol.

As spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), journalists peppered Elshami with questions about if there was a deal on abortion.

“Go upstairs to the Rules Committee,” directed Elshami.

What? They announcing an agreement there? Some of the reporters didn’t even know the Rules panel was still meeting at this late hour.

“All I can tell you is go up to the Rules Committee,” implored Elshami.

And with that, most of the reporters abandoned their long stakeout in front of the Speaker’s Office. They hustled up to the third floor of the Capitol, some taking two stairs at a time, to reach the bandbox that doubles as the Rules Committee’s hearing room.

And in the front row of the hearing room sat Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), one of the biggest abortion foes in Congress.

The Rules Committee is the most-powerful panel no one outside the Beltway has ever heard of. It’s the gateway to the House floor. Almost every piece of legislation must first layover at the Rules Committee to receive a ‘rule.’ The ‘rule’ is the blueprint for how the House will handle a given issue on the floor. How much debate time is permitted. What amendments are in order. And the deck is always stacked in favor of the majority party.

But the full House can sideline a bill by not okaying a rule to govern debate. That means the measure never makes it to the House floor.

That was the conundrum on health care for the House Democratic leadership.

Abortion bedeviled the health care reform bill for months. Stupak and other pro-life Democrats threatened to defeat the measure unless the legislation specifically prohibited women from using federal dollars to pay for abortions and preserved private health care plans that did not allow abortions.

Since summer, Stupak suggested he might try blow up the “rule” on the health care bill unless he got his way. And defeating the “rule” would keep the overall health legislation off the floor.

The Rules Committee entertained nearly interminable testimony about the health care bill since 2 pm on Friday. Most lawmakers and aides were exasperated at the process. Especially as it bled so late into the night.

The press corps that loped upstairs for the big announcement in the Rules Committee slid into chairs at the back of the cramped hearing room. I entered through a back door and secured a chair close to Stupak on the side. The clock pushed midnight. And no sooner had I sat down did I receive separate emails from senior House leadership staffers informing me there was an “agreement” on abortion. Such a deal could help secure the necessary votes for the rule and propel the actual bill onto the floor.

Stupak and a handful of other pro-life lawmakers began their testimony before the Rules Committee at 12:01 am Saturday. The reporters leaned forward, eager to hear Stupak announce the compact crafted with the leadership.

“Through these last weeks, we’ve looked to resolve the issue. We looked to have an agreement tonight,” Stupak said. “But it fell apart.”

Fell apart? What? They said there was a deal? Surely they wouldn’t want us at the Rules Committee to hear about their failure.

So for the next 45 minutes, Stupak, Reps. Joseph Pitts (R-PA), Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA) and others appealed to the Rules Committee to let the House debate their abortion amendment.

That prospect seemed impossible . After all, Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said earlier that the only amendment anyone could offer would be the Republican alternative health care bill.

“We’re not playing any favorites,” Slaughter said.

Stupak and his colleagues abandoned the witness table around 12:40 am. The few reporters still lingering buttonholed the Congressman in the hallway. A former Michigan state trooper, Stupak appeared drained. He hadn’t set foot in Washington all week. His mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly during surgery a few days before. Stupak returned to Washington late Friday went straight to the Rules Committee. He hadn’t even swung by his Congressional office yet.

“I have not had a deal with the speaker,” Stupak told the throng. “I have not received any assurances by the speaker that (my anti-abortion amendment) would be made in order.”

Everyone scratched their heads. How could there be a deal then?

“We’ve had so many agreements. I don’t believe anything unless it’s on paper,” Stupak said. “Let’s see what (the rule) says.”

Stupak left. And around 1:30 am Saturday, with only a handful of lawmakers and reporters on hand, the House Rules Committee approved a rule that sure enough guaranteed consideration of two amendments: the Republican alternative health plan and Stupak’s.

There, in the dead of night, with almost no one watching or there to document it, something unthinkable happened. Nancy Pelosi stared at a stinging defeat on the health care effort. Such a loss could carry even greater political consequences for President Obama. Pelosi is known for her ability to cajole and persuade House Democrats. However, tonight, Pelosi failed to bridge the abortion impasse.

Pelosi’s critics often deride her as ruthless and uncompromising. But she’s also pragmatic. And Pelosi knew she had to take dire action that even threatened to alienate an entirely different wing of her caucus.

Assuring a woman’s right to choose has been a plank in the Democrats’ national platform for years. And with the health care bill swinging in the balance, the first female Speaker of the House gave the Rules Committee her blessing to make Stupak’s amendment in order.

It was a last-ditch effort to salvage the bill.

Pelosi’s maneuver infuriated pro-choice Democratic women like Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), one of the speaker’s chief vote counters, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). For days, DeLauro was nearly reticent every time she exited the health care negotiations in the Speaker’s office. Lawmakers who don’t want to answer reporter’s questions directly are said to perform a “tap dance.” As reporters pursued DeLauro across the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, the Connecticut Democrat shuffle-ball-changed her way through an actual tap dance to avoid answering the scribes queries. And when DeLauro left Pelosi’s quarters late Friday night, she didn’t say a peep.

Of course, little did anyone know of the bomb Pelosi detonated inside her office on abortion.

Saturday morning came with the House buzzing about the Stupak amendment. The Democratic leadership ordered a series of votes on non-controversial issues shortly after the House gaveled into session. These votes are known as “bed checks.” It forces members to go to the floor so the whip teams can take “attendance” and assess if they have the votes on crucial votes coming later in the day.

Two storylines emerged during these votes. First, Pelosi’s strategy with Stupak showed it could pay off. A number of reluctant, pro-life Democrats said they could now vote for the bill. But only if the House approved the Stupak amendment first, latching the anti-abortion language to the rest of the package. So, the real test could be on the Stupak vote. And in the wee hours of Saturday morning, Stupak said “if my amendment is made in order I believe it will pass.”

But by fixing the abortion problem, Democrats may have created another one.

Which is the second storyline.

Republicans were vitriolic in their criticism of the health care bill. But many GOPers appreciated how the Stupak amendment would permanently outlaw federal dollars from paying for abortions. Since 1977, Congress has reauthorized the ban annually. Republicans had a choice to make. They could vote for the Stupak amendment and stick with their party’s anti-abortion policy. Or vote against Stupak and sink the entire health care bill for Pelosi and Mr. Obama.

Rumors spread through the Capitol that Republicans might not vote against the Stupak amendment, but instead vote “present.” That way, Republicans didn’t vote against their consciences on abortion. But they would manage to kill the bill.

It didn’t happen that way.

Anti-abortion organizations phoned Republican leaders to warn them they’d watch pro-life lawmakers to see how they’d vote on the Stupak amendment. And instructions came from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that lawmakers shouldn’t try to capitalize on the Stupak amendment for political gain.

Pro-life politicians often speak about the “sanctity of life.” And when it came time to vote Saturday night, anti-abortion groups made it clear that the “sanctity of Stupak” outweighed Republican desires to defeat the health care bill.

“Of all the votes they (anti-abortion groups) decide to score and they pick this one?” fumed one Republican lawmaker about the missed opportunity to defeat the legislation. “We could have killed this bill.”

However, House Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) disagreed with that assessment at a post-witching hour press conference Sunday morning.

“We weren’t confident that we could have brought down the bill,” McMorris Rodgers said.

And two of McMorris Rodgers’ colleagues signaled that it was paramount for pro-life Republicans to vote in favor of the Stupak amendment, despite their objections to the overall health care bill.

“Life is not something you play politics with,” said Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA). “We would have lost all of our credibility.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) echoed Pitts.

“We have never used the right to life issue as a ploy or a means to get something else,” Smith said.

And they didn’t.

Legendary House Speaker Henry Clay once quipped that “compromise is negotiated hurt.”

Republicans and Democrats alike were hurt in this battle. But at the end of the day, it was clear that one party compromised. And one party did not.

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

- The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: The Great Schism of 2009

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

06 November 2009

Perhaps it’s fitting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) co-hosted a luncheon at the Capitol this week to honor Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Bartholomew leads the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Catholic Church during The Great Schism of 1054. It’s one of the greatest divides in religious history.

House Democrats want to debate and pass their massive health care reform bill this weekend. And the rifts between House Democrats are so deep that this could be called The Great Schism of 2009.

Republicans spent most of Thursday excoriating the health care bill on the West Front of the Capitol. At least they were discussing health care policy. That’s because Democrats were talking about everything but health care in an effort to lug the behemoth legislation across the finish line. The off-stage discussions focused on the fissures that plague both political parties: abortion and immigration. And that’s to say nothing of a little-known issue involving something called “black liquor.”

Let’s start with abortion.

More than 190 House Democrats are members of the “pro-choice” caucus. However, there are just enough conservative Democrats who oppose abortion to blow up the bill on the floor.

“We knew there would be a flashpoint,” said Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), who tried to bridge an impasse between pro-life and pro-choice Democrats. “(Abortion) would become a major detraction. We don’t want this bill clouded.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the chief architects of the bill. He insists that the legislation does not allow anyone to use federal dollars to pay for abortions. But many anti-abortion Democrats demanded even stronger language in exchange for their support on the bill. Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) propounded an idea that explicitly outlaws tax dollars from paying for abortions. Ellsworth also asked for guarantees that abortion opponents always have access to a pro-life health insurance plan. Ellsworth’s proposal also makes permanent the “Hyde Amendment.” The Hyde Amendment is a measure that bans the federal funding of abortions. But Congress must reauthorize it every year. Ellsworth wants the Hyde Amendment extended to the life of the health care bill.

But despite his quest, many pro-life groups lobbed epithets at Ellsworth and accused him of selling out just to help pass the health care bill.

“I know what’s in my heart. I know what’s in my head,” Ellsworth said. “And I think the Guy upstairs knows where I am.”

Then there was immigration.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) huddled at the White House mid-week to voice their concerns that the bill could have pernicious effects on illegal immigrants.

Again, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman argued that the package had firewalls to ensure that undocumented persons would have no access to subsidies to purchase health insurance. But Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) argued that illegal immigrants would still fall in the crosshairs. Gutierrez said that some low-income, undocumented workers would be in a bind. That’s because they would be unable to purchase health coverage and be ineligible for government assistance. So Gutierrez suggested that many illegal immigrants would wind up precisely where they go now for medical care: the emergency room.

“It costs the American taxpayers money!” thundered Gutierrez about his prediction. “What other knife do you want me to plunge into my heart?”

In the end, the CHC stood down after pleading with Democratic leaders to not tighten up provisions against illegal immigrants. CHC members were fine with refusing subsidies for coverage. But they breathed a temporary sigh of relief that the legislation would not deny undocumented persons access to the health care program even if they paid their own way.

“I think we’re all there,” said former CHC Chairman Joe Baca (D-CA). “We’ve come to a common ground.”

And then there was “black liquor.”

This is not a reference to Johnnie Walker scotch. Nor “Jagermeister,” as a colleague suggested.

At 10:28 pm on Tuesday night, House Democrats unveiled a 42-page “manager’s amendment.” That’s the final alteration lawmakers make to a bill before bringing it to the floor. Lawmakers devoted seven pages of the manager’s amendment to something called “Second Generation Biofuel Producer Credit.” Which involves “black liquor.”

Black liquor is a byproduct produced in making paper. Some paper plants use it as an alternative fuel.

The manager’s amendment strikes a biofuel tax credit used by pulp and paper firms. The government saves $24 billion by eliminating the credit. That’s desperately needed revenue to help offset the cost of the health plan.

Meantime, those involved in agriculture asked why the manager’s amendment went into exhaustive detail defining “qualified feedstock.”

For the record, the manager’s amendment designates “qualified feedstock” as “any lignocellulosic or hemicelluosic matter that is available on a renewable or recurring basis or any cultivated algae, cyanobacteria or lemna.”

All spelled out in a health care bill.

Meantime, there was grousing from Republicans that they didn’t know what was in the bill.

No Republican lawmakers were expected to vote for the package. But Republicans carped that there wasn’t enough time to read through the bill. Even though Democrats met a demand to unveil the 1,990-page legislation last week. That was ahead of a voluntary commitment Democrats made to present the legislation at least 72 hours before a debate.

In fact, it could be argued that lawmakers even got a “73^rd” hour to leaf through the legislation, since Democrats dropped the bill before clocks reverted to Standard Time after a summer of Daylight Saving Time last weekend.

Republicans contend the bill is “government-mandated health care.” Of course, some could say that “falling back” is part of a government-mandated time.

Congress passed the Standard Time Act in 1918. The law first established Daylight Saving Time. I’m told that in 1918 everyone was informed that they could choose the time they wanted it to be. But detractors remained unmoved. They warned that passing the Standard Time Act would put the U.S. on a “Canadian-style” time system controlled by the government.

On Friday afternoon, the Democratic leadership fished around for votes. Moderate Rep. John Tanner (D-TN) declared he would vote no. And Reps. John Adler (D-NJ) and Michael McMahon (D-NY) jumped ship as well. Both are first-term lawmakers who represent districts which swung from Republican to Democratic in 2008.

But it was elections that helped House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-NY) pocket a couple of new votes. On Tuesday, voters elected two Democrats to the House in special elections: Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) and Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY). Garamendi and Pelosi have known each other for decades. And in one of his first acts in Congress, Garamendi told reporters that he learned long ago never to count Pelosi out.

Garamendi said years ago Pelosi’s family was driving to a picnic at Garamendi’s home when their car missed a curve and flipped over. No one was hurt.

“She brushed her kids off, called for a new car and arrived about 45 minutes late,” Garamendi said. “This is one determined woman.” 

And House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-CT) was resolute that Pelosi would secure the votes.

“I feel very confident that we’re there and tomorrow evening, we’ll be celebrating a great victory,” said Larson.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) serves as special assistant to Pelosi. And he wasn’t as sure as Larson.

“We’re in shooting distance,” Van Hollen declared.

I pressed Van Hollen about whether Democrats were ready to bring the bill to the floor and try to gin up the necessary support during the vote.

“You don’t want to roll the dice on that,” Van Hollen said. “This is too important.”

As Friday afternoon dissolved into evening, the House Rules Committee met in a seemingly-interminable session.

The Rules panel serves as a gateway to the House floor. Almost every piece of legislation must first get a “rule” from the committee. The rule establishes parameters for how the House will handle a measure on the floor. If you don’t get a rule, you can’t debate the bill.

Members of the Rules Committee peppered the Democratic authors of the bill with questions in the cramped hearing room. Hours of this interrogation exasperated House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA).

“We’re thinking of renaming this committee Guantanamo,” Miller sighed at the five hour mark in the meeting.

“It’s worse than Guantanamo,” blurted Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA).

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

- The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: I Want a Pony

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

01 November 2009

I always thought I made out pretty well on Christmas morning. Over the years I scored box seats to Reds-Dodgers games when they were the hottest ticket in town, a motorized yard cart with the “Batman” insignia painted on the front (hence making it the “Batmobile”), Matchbox cars, a Tyco train set and various other diversions.

But somehow, Kris Kringle never quite brought me everything I wanted.

How could he possibly have forgotten? I told him right there as I sat on his lap at the mall. I even watched his elves take copious notes of my requests.

Years later, I’ve finally figured out what I needed as a seven-year-old to make my Christmas morning complete.

I needed a “manager’s amendment.”

In Congress, the manager’s amendment is a final package of alterations made to a bill, right before it hits the House floor. It’s a series of tweaks and additions, designed to prep the bill for debate. The manager’s amendment usually fixes problem areas. But it’s also crafted in such a way to court the support of lawmakers who are skeptical about the legislation. This is called the Goldilocks Effect. Making sure the bill isn’t too hot or too cold. But just right. 

You see, if I had a manager’s amendment on Christmas morning, I could have gone back to the Jolly Old Elf and demanded there be certain “fixes.” Specific additions and subtractions to my holiday order. Otherwise, I was going to be one rambunctious first-grader for the rest of the year. I mean, how can you expect someone to behave in Mrs. Hollack’s class if you aren’t rewarded for your efforts?

So, as the House of Representatives glides toward a possible vote on a massive health care reform package later this week, key lawmakers and aides are operating on a manager’s amendment that they hope secures the votes of lawmakers who are grumbling about the legislation.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said there are “some who aren’t very comfortable with some portions of the bill and others who are very comfortable.”

And the leader told me to expect the manager’s amendment on the health care reform bill to be ready “Monday or Tuesday.” Hoyer also noted he couldn’t “predict exactly what we’ll see in it.” But once the manager’s amendment is set, the clock starts running.

“I would expect for the earliest votes to be no earlier than Thursday. Seventy-two hours after the manager’s amendment is put online,” Hoyer indicated during a colloquy with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) late last week.

House Democrats released the 1,990-page health care reform bill Thursday. And immediately drew fire from the GOP.

“There’s only one purpose for a thousand page bill,” said. Rep. GT Thompson (R-PA) last Wednesday. “And that’s to hide stuff.”

So Republicans grew increasingly concerned about the contents of the manager’s amendment the pending health care bill.

“To try to figure out what they take out…what they put in…it becomes a puzzle of such complexity that nobody will know what’s going on,” said Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO). “Which may be exactly what the majority wants to have happen.”

Republicans and even some Democrats are wary of manager’s amendments. Particularly after what happened in June on the 1,200-page climate bill, designed to curb greenhouse gasses. The measure was already 1,200 pages in length. But Democrats engineered a 309-page manager’s amendment that they released in the middle of the night before the vote. The House later approved the climate-energy bill in a squeaker, 219-212.

So Democrats are drilling down on a manager’s amendment for the health care reform bill. A senior House Democratic leadership aide says there won’t be many major changes to the legislation in this manager’s amendment. But like children on Christmas morning who didn’t find everything they wanted under the tree, liberal and conservative Democrats are pelting Congressional leaders with their appeals.

For instance, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and six other lawmakers wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) begging her to waive federal law in order to protect an option for states to pick up the tab for people’s health insurance coverage.

“We urge you to include it in the Manager’s Amendment,” the lawmakers told Pelosi in their missive.

A senior Democratic source also signals that there could be a provision in the manager’s amendment to satisfy lawmakers concerned about the health care bill using federal dollars to pay for abortions.

Meantime, members of the fiscally-conscious “Blue Dog” coalition fretted about the legislation’s price tag and whether it could drive up the deficit. They wrote to the Congressional Budget Office seeking more clarity about the potential the bill has to bust the budget. Meantime, members who represent the three most-liberal groups in the House Democratic Caucus huddled at the White House Thursday night to make a last-ditch pitch for the bill to contain a so-called “public option” in the bill. The “public option” is where the government offers insurance to someone.

In a statement after the meeting, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) proclaimed that “there is still work to do.” Lee added she would “work with my colleagues to ensure that the final package has the strongest public option.”

So here is the House Democratic leadership on Christmas morning. It’s toiled for months, carefully crafting a health care reform bill, wrapping it in a package with a pretty red bow and placing it under the Christmas tree. It’s weighed the concerns of those on the left and the right in the caucus, and tried to forge a plan that satisfies all.

And like petulant children, some House Democrats have run downstairs just before dawn, torn open the package and screeched in collective dismay: “I want a pony!”

Pelosi tries to assuage them.

“We don’t have the money, dear,” Pelosi says.

“I want a pony!” they scream, stamping their feet.

“But where would we put it?” asks Pelosi.

“I don’t care!”

“We don’t have the votes.”

“I-WANT-A-PONY!” they bawl, teetering on the verge of a meltdown.

As they wipe away the tears, all good parents know this is where misdirection comes in.

“Would you like some ice cream?”

In other words, “Here. Blow your nose. Let’s try to fix this as best we can. And get you a big bowl of a Manager’s Amendment!”

I’ll take two scoops. Doused in chocolate syrup. With sprinkles.

Oh.

And a cherry on top.  

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s earned an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the House chamber. It’s where lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Death Panel

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

30 October 2009

It’s the time of year when Halloween thrill-seekers stalk graveyards in search of goblins and phantasms.

I stalked a cemetery too, this week. For creatures even scarier than ghosts and ghouls.

I was looking for politicians.

Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC was Arlington National Cemetery long before Arlington National Cemetery ever existed. It’s the final resting place for 19 senators and 71 U.S. representatives. They’re joined by a vice president, a world-renowned band leader, a legendary FBI director, an attorney general, the first woman to seek the presidency and a man who was the original Washington insider. And that’s to say nothing of the dozens of markers memorializing America’s deceased political elite.

Tourists may flock to Arlington National Cemetery to spy the graves of the Kennedys and watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. But few journey to the banks of the Anacostia River to pay their respects to America’s first leaders at Congressional Cemetery.

“Every city has old cemeteries,” said Congressional Cemetery Board Chairman Patrick Crowley. “But this cemetery honors the founders of the nation.”

I asked Crowley what the qualifications were for interment. There’s just one.

“Death,” he said.

A good place to start a visit is the cemetery’s public vault. The public vault was essentially a placeholder until the dead could be moved to a permanent grave. The bodies of three presidents dwelled here right after they died: John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. Despite an icy rain, Harrison delivered the longest inauguration address in American history. It ran nearly 8,500 words. The president contracted pneumonia and died a month later. It was the shortest tenure of any U.S. president. Harrison’s family then moved the president’s body to the public vault at Congressional Cemetery until they were ready to bury him in North Bend, OH, a suburb of Cincinnati.

“He spent a month in the White House and three months in here,” said Crowley of Harrison’s stay in the public vault of Congressional Cemetery.

In fact, the remains of Dolley Madison were also interred in the public vault for a time because she died a pauper.

There are numerous monuments that honor lawmakers who aren’t buried at Congressional cemetery. These memorials are known as “cenotaphs,” which technically means “empty tomb.” Each cenotaph is comprised of a squat, sandstone box, topped with a sloped cone. The conical top is reminiscent of the original Capitol Dome. Some of the cenotaphs mark the lives of lawmakers ranging from former House Speaker Henry Clay to former House Majority Leader Hale Boggs (D-LA).

The Boggs cenotaph is intriguing because it’s shared with the man who perished with him in a 1972 plane crash, Rep. Nick Begich (D-AK). Boggs is the father of journalism legend Cokie Roberts. Begich is dad to Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) who defeated former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) last year. Neither plane nor bodies have ever been found.

Current Rep. Don Young (R-AK) then succeeded the elder Begich in the House. After the Senate swore-in the younger Begich earlier this year, the newly-minted senator made a pilgrimage to his father’s marker at Congressional Cemetery.

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) isn’t buried at Congressional Cemetery. But his cenotaph is located just steps from the Boggs-Begich monument. It’s a low-cut slab that resembles a contemporary gravestone. Crowley says the Boggs-Begich cenotaph so impressed O’Neill that he wanted one too.

“By far, he’s one of the most prominent, most powerful politicians here,” Crowley said. “Or not here rather.”

There’s a cluster of gravesites wedged together near the north fence of the cemetery: Roland Mahoney. John Smilie. John Dawson. Elijah Brigham. Richard Stanford. Warren J. Coffin (good name for a guy in a graveyard). And Vice President Elbridge Gerry. Gerry was James Madison’s second vice president and one of the co-signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Gerry’s grave stands tall above the others, while a few of the neighboring graves are squished together. Only an inch or two of space separates those gravesites.

This unique layout is only appropriate. After all, Elbridge Gerry gave us the term “gerrymandering.” That’s the practice of drawing the lines of Congressional districts to favor one candidate or another. Gerry was known for crafting bizarrely, misshapen districts. One even resembled a salamander. Journalists soon merged Gerry’s surname and the word salamander to coin a new phrase that’s become part of the American lexicon. 

Perhaps the most-visited grave in Congressional Cemetery belongs to longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover led the FBI for 35 years. And his grave is just as striking as his career. It’s lined with a wrought-iron fence, bearing the FBI seal. Even a little bench emblazoned with the FBI logo sits near Hoover’s tomb.

Down the row from Hoover’s grave is a marker bearing the name Clyde Tolson. Students of history will note it’s no accident that only a few yards separate the final resting places of both men. Hoover plucked Tolson from the FBI rank-and-file to be his number two. The men socialized together and took most meals together. They were inseparable. In life. And in death.

Yet the sandstone inscriptions on neither the Hoover nor Tolson grave alludes to the other man.

Another unique grave lays down the same row from Tolson’s.

The marble on Leonard Matlovich’s tombstone is deep charcoal. The inscription reads “A Gay Vietnam Veteran.” It features a relief of Bronze Star citation President George HW Bush presented to Matlovich. And then there are these words at the bottom of the stone: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

Patrick Crowley says Matlovich’s marker “is probably the strongest political statement” in the cemetery. Crowley notes that a lot of gay and lesbian groups visit Matlovich’s gravesite. He says one visitor who knew Matlovich said that “his life was really about the political statement he was making.”

Obscure but important figures also lie at Congressional Cemetery.

Historians debate about whether Belva Lockwood is either the first or second female to seek the White House. Most historians argue the first female presidential candidate was Victoria Woodhull in 1872. But her name was never printed on any ballots and she didn’t meet the Constitutional requirement of 35 years of age. But one thing is certain: Belva Lockwood is buried at Congressional Cemetery. She sought the presidency in 1884 and 1888. People voted for her. She even implored Congress to count her ballots. It didn’t. Lockwood died in 1917.

Washington is known for it’s “insiders.” There’s lobbyist Tony Podesta. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward. Attorney Vernon Jordan. And White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

But well before there were Messrs. Podesta, Woodward, Jordan and Emanuel, there was Tobias Lear.

Patrick Crowley says Washington, DC is a town of “who you know and who you work for.” And in his day, Tobias Lear worked for the best. He was personal secretary to President George Washington.

You can barely read the top of Lear’s tombstone today. But Crowley calls Lear was “the original Washington insider.”

A Fourth of July celebration is not complete without a rousing rendition of John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” And a visit to Congressional Cemetery isn’t complete without stopping by the grave of the man known as “The March King.” In fact, Crowley describes Sousa as “the best-known musician around the world of his time.”

Sousa led the U.S. Marine Band served as conductor of The President’s Own band for administrations ranging from Rutherford B. Hayes to Benjamin Harrison. He also composed “Semper Fidelis” and “The Washington Post.”

Crowley says high school marching bands play a tribute to Sousa at the cemetery.

Located at the base of Sousa’s grave is a G clef, accompanied by a musical score cut into the sandstone. Translate the notes and sharps correctly, and you can whistle the opening bars to Sousa’s magnum opus “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“A man of great stature deserves a great monument,” says Crowley.

Great men and monuments aside, it is Halloween. And Congressional Cemetery is noted for tales of the macabre.

One of the mostly grisly stories involves Arctic explorer William Cross. He was one of 19 men who died during an 1881 expedition to the North Pole. Cross froze starved to death. And Cross is buried at Congressional Cemetery. But with a caveat.

“Some of him rests here,” says Crowley.

Crowley says when rescue boats finally packed up the dead, undertakers noticed that Cross’s body looked like it had been butchered.

“His friends had him over for lunch,” says Crowley of the desperate explorers who barely survived the mission.

Robert Slight is buried at Congressional Cemetery. He was a carpenter who fell from the Capitol Rotunda one night. Legend has it that Slight’s ghost inhabits the Rotunda, often toting a wooden tray of tools.

Of course, besides Slight, the Capitol itself boasts a roster of characters who haunt the building. The ghost of John Quincy Adams is spotted periodically in Statuary Hall. A “demon” cat is said to prowl the Capitol just before national tragedies like the Lincoln and Kennedy Assassinations and 9-11.

But this Halloween, be on the lookout for a very special ghost.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled the final version of the massive health care reform bill. All told, the legislation runs 1,990 pages.

“This huge bill is designed to be so complex that nobody would ever know for sure what’s in it,” sighed House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

But Boehner didn’t count on the apparition of a legislator from another era.

Steve Livengood of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society says the late Sen. Boies Penrose (R-PA) “liked to take pride in reading every bill that was on the floor.”

Penrose served 24 years in the Senate, dying in 1921. He was a bachelor and would often stay late at the Capitol, reading the bills as he rocked in a creaky rocking chair.

Livengood says you could hear the squeaking of the rocking chair all over the Senate wing of the Capitol.

“He died in office. Nobody told him,” Livengood. “And you can still hear him.”

Lots of lawmakers will cull through the health care reform bill this Halloween weekend. However, few if any will read all 1,990 pages.

But if you hear a mysterious squeaking emanating from the Senate, it may be the ghost of Sen. Penrose. He’s just sifting through the vagaries of “COBRA extensions” and “negotiated rates” for doctors.

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: White Smoke

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

29 October 2009 

A plume of white smoke is sure to emanate from Capitol Hill this morning.

For House Democrats are unveiling their final health care reform bill during a grand ceremony on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.

For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) regaled the Congressional press corps with platitudes and trifle that the health care legislation was “on schedule” or “on track.” She frequently seasoned this rhetoric with exclamations that the work was “exciting” and “historic.”

And on the day before Pelosi and the Democratic brain trust prepared to roll out the much-anticipated health care package, the speaker never spoke.

In fact, few Democrats said much of anything. And the big rollout was never even made official until the leadership blasted out an announcement via email at 7:36 pm Wednesday night.

Reporters got a hint that something was afoot when an email from Pelosi advisor Reva Price started filtering its way through the Capitol midday Wednesday.

“You are cordially invited to join Speaker Pelosi, Leadership and Members of the House Democratic Caucus for an event tomorrow on health insurance reform,” the message read. It went on to indicate the event was scheduled for 10 am on the West Front of the Capitol.

Congressional reporters immediately started pinging sources about this event. What exactly was the event? Was Pelosi introducing the bill? Did they get a cost-analysis from the Congressional Budget Office? Was the announcement even true?

Information was scarce. Several House leadership aides initially feigned ignorance about any event until reporters confronted them with evidence of the email invitation. But everyone remained mum. And chatter started among the press corps that maybe Pelosi didn’t have the votes. Or perhaps there was a problem with the bill and the speaker was trying to walk back plans for a West Front blowout.

The House Democratic brass was scheduled to caucus in Pelosi’s office around 2:45 pm. So reporters buttonholed every one of the speaker’s lieutenants as they arrived for the meeting.

“Are they bringing out the bill tomorrow?” I asked House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) as he strolled across Statuary Hall to the Speaker’s Office.

“We’ll see. I’m not sure a decision has been made,” Waxman responded.

I put the same question to House Education Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) when he arrived.

“I don’t know. I just got here,” answered Miller, one of the architects of the health care legislation.

And finally a moment of clarity from Pelosi’s special assistant, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) when I made the same inquiry a third time.

“That is the current hope,” Van Hollen said of a Thursday introduction. “That was the plan.”

News!

Flash! Van Hollen advanced the story!

The minutes ticked away as the Democratic leadership team huddled in Pelosi’s office. More reporters trickled in to wait for more info in hallway in front of the speaker’s office suite, steps off the Capitol Rotunda.

Reporters jumped nearly every lawmaker who walked by.

Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) emerged first.

“I wasn’t in the leadership meeting,” Crowley said as a scrum of reporters chased him down the hall. “I was in the whip meeting.”

“Then tell us how the whip count is going?” asked one enterprising reporter.

The reporters retreated to the corridor. Then a throng of them jumped into action and accosted an older gentlemen as he walked toward the House chamber.

“Who is that?” asked a reporter.

It turns out it wasn’t anybody in on the health care meetings. But former Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD). A scribe asked Sarbanes what he was working on.

“Nothing in particular,” Sarbanes quipped.

The reporters returned to their posts.

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) was the next target. As head of the Rules panel, all legislation must pass through Slaughter’s committee as a gateway to the House floor.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Slaughter said as reporters tracked her through Statuary Hall. “I’ve got to go to the Rules Committee right this minute.”

Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) materialized a bit later. Andrews chairs a key health subcommittee and is a go-to figure for reporters in the health care debate. But not today.

“I do have news,” Roberts proclaimed.

The reporters clustered around the New Jersey Democrat.

“The Phillies are going to defeat the Yankees in the World Series,” Andrews said.

The journalists sighed.

Andrews exited Pelosi’s sanctum after only a short visit.

“Phillies in six,” Andrews said.

The scribes peppered the Congressman about Thursday.

“There is no event scheduled yet,” he said.

The reporters pressed him further.

“It’s not my announcement to make,” Andrews replied. “We have something that’s imminent.”

The reporters continued.

Finally, a query Andrews was willing to field.

“How will Brad Lidge do?” I asked Andrews, referring to the Phillies closer.

“He’ll be scoreless in the World Series,” Andrews answered.

The press corps lingered. And it’s ranks swelled to more than 30. Some leaned against the wall. Others found a makeshift seat in an alcove cut out of the wall. A few ambled aimlessly through the Rotunda.

Meantime, scores of tourists filed past Pelosi’s office. Each wedge of people led by a “Red Coat,” Congressional tour guides identifiable by the red blazers they wear.

I stopped one guide and told her group the nation’s leaders were finalizing health care reform just behind the wall.

“That’s great!” piped up one enthusiastic man.

The Red Coat noted that a number of Europeans were in this particular tour group.

Someone muttered something about “socialized medicine.”

The reporters next quarry was an unsuspecting Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO). The Colorado Democrat arrived with a few constituents and aides in tow. Perlmutter addressed his constituents just before the reporters swarmed him.

“The journalists are obviously onto something the Members (of Congress) must not know about yet,” Perlmutter said.

The minutes ticked into hours. And the afternoon waned.

Reporters rubbered close to the edge of Pelosi’s hallway when Henry Waxman appeared.

Turns out he was just using the restroom.

A few journalists groused about their cell phone and BlackBerry service seemed faulty in the hallway. Someone joked that the Democratic leadership must be “jamming” the signals, much like Cuba interferes with Radio Marti broadcasts from the United States.

More Democrats arrived. Reps. Phil Hare (D-IL), Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Tim Walz (D-MN). Turns out there was a confab of the House Democrats’ sophomore class in Pelosi’s office. Elected in 2006, Pelosi dubbed this group of second-term lawmakers the “majority makers” since they’re the ones that helped Democrats wrest control of the House away from the GOP.

“Republicans hope if they vote for this health care bill they’ll call them the ‘Minority Makers,” said one scribe.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) is one of the most-prominent members of the sophomore class. Like bumper cars, reporters crashed into one another as they sought out the Vermont lawmaker.

“Single-payer!” exclaimed Welch, invoking the health care slang for a program where the government pays for all health services. “It’s a groundswell for single payer!”

Of course, Democrats stripped that health care option from consideration long ago.

Louise Slaughter arrived on the scene a third time. And again, the journalism throng swarmed her.

“The best people are coming behind me,” Slaughter insisted.

The journalists retreated. But just in time to descend on an exiting Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).

DeLauro was reticent.

“Look guys, you can follow me from here to Timbuktu,” DeLauro said. “But I don’t have anything to say.”

Someone joked if they have “negotiated rates” in Timbuktu. That’s another health care term which describes how costs could be set under the Democrats’ legislative proposal.

Finally, the reporters got what they wanted: definitive information on what was going down Thursday.

The word came not from Pelosi. Not from a Pelosi spokesperson. Not from Chris Van Hollen. Not from Henry Waxman or anyone else privy to the conclave.

The news came from an unlikely source in the form of Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN). Whose  tenuous link to health care reform stems from the fact that he represents the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Walz fed the information-starved correspondents with news manna cultivated from inside the meeting.

Walz said it appeared that “negotiated rates” would be the system to set prices for those who purchase coverage from the federal government. The bill’s price tag was scored at less than $900 billion. And yes, the leadership has requested that rank-and-file Democrats attend a big event on the West Front Thursday morning.

Shortly after Walz departed, reporters focused on Rep. Marion Berry (D-AR) and wedged him into a door jamb. Berry signaled he had some lingering questions about the bill. And he hadn’t yet made up his mind about how he’d vote on it. But Berry said he would be present on the West Front Thursday morning.

A reporter asked Berry if it was disingenuous for the leadership to request House Democrats to attend a pep rally for a piece of legislation that many hadn’t yet read or weren’t certain they could support.  

“I think that’s standard operating procedure,” Berry      quipped of the Democratic leadership’s maneuver.

Pelosi exited the building with little fanfare while reporters took their turns chatting up Berry. Finally the Speaker’s Office was empty. And after nearly four hours in the hall, the reporting throng finally dispersed. As the reporters walked away, a few spoke about the “72-hour” agreement to post the bill online before it could be debated. Someone wondered if that could balloon to “73-hours” if it included the extra hour this weekend, courtesy of the return to Standard Time.

At 7:36 pm, the Speaker’s Office finally announced that there would be a big health care reform event Thursday morning on the West Front of the Capitol. It would start at 10:30 am, not 10 am. The 10 am timeframe mentioned in the cryptic email earlier was the time the “extras” were asked to report to the set. And the press release noted that they’d hold the rollout in the Cannon Caucus Room if it rained.

Even though the U.S. doesn’t have nationalized health care yet, it does have nationalized weather forecasting. The National Weather Service predicts drizzle in downtown Washington, DC today with a high of 62.

And thus the biggest announcement of the year’s health care reform debate came and went Wednesday without anyone in the Congressional leadership formally uttering a word.

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: When the Whip Comes Down

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

22 October 2009

Forty is the new 30.

And on Capitol Hill, “surveying” is the new “whipping.”

The House Democratic leadership this week launched its first official effort to poll where lawmakers stand on the massive health care reform bill. The process provides leaders a metric to gauge whether they the votes to pass the plan. It also lets them know where there are potential problems so they can tweak the legislation.

A senior House Democratic leadership aide indicates that this nose count is not a formal “whip.” Instead, it’s just a “survey.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the chief architects of the health care reform legislation. He characterized the count as a cordial exercise.

“You hold out what the proposal is and you say ‘Are you there? Can we count on you?’” Waxman said. “And when they say they are there, we count on them.”

But this process is not always as pleasant as Waxman described.

Both parties employ “whips” and “whip teams” to canvass their respective members on critical votes. Whips gather intelligence, spot trouble areas, and encourage party discipline.

And the job can be harsh. After all, Congress derived the title “whip” from fox hunting. On a foxhunt, the “whipper-in” helps the huntsman control the hounds. And if the dogs get out of line, they’re “whipped” back in.

Of course, that would ever happen on Capitol Hill. Especially on a major piece of legislation like health care reform.

There are lots of ways to whip a vote in Congress. Many viewed former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) as a master of persuasion. Dole innately knew when to buckle down on a lawmaker and when to back off. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) was known as “The Hammer.” When he was Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson whipped senators with what was called “The Treatment.” Johnson used his towering frame to hulk over a target. A photographer famously documented LBJ backing the late Sen. Theodore Francis Green (D-RI) over a desk while administering “The Treatment.”

House Democrats may yet have to resort to bare-knuckle tactics to lug the health care reform bill across the line. But that isn’t their gambit yet.

Veteran Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) says for now, it’s a survey.

“It’s not whipping in the traditional sense,” Serrano said. “There seems to be an understanding that we’re getting close to something.”

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is one lawmaker who Democratic leaders enlisted to help with the “survey.” He joked with reporters about his techniques to determine where his fellow representatives stand.

“On some people, I’m doing a Vulcan mind-meld,” Weiner said facetiously. “Some…I’m getting completely inebriated.”

And finding lawmakers at this point  who feel they’ve actually been surveyed, or whipped, are far an few between.

A reporter asked Rep. David Wu (D-OR) Wednesday afternoon if the Democratic leadership whipped him.

“To my knowledge, no,” Wu said.

But Wu suggested there are lots of covert methods the leadership employs to glean where a lawmaker falls on an issue.

“They talk to people. You don’t know how many reporting channels they have,” Wu said.

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) is someone who Democratic leaders will certainly survey. A freshman, Driehaus is a moderate Democrat who represents a swing-district with an active Catholic population. In particular, Driehaus is monitoring how the final health care bill handles the thorny issue of abortion. And Republicans want to make the Ohio Democrat’s health care vote an issue next year. But Driehaus says no Democratic leaders have talked to him yet.

“Don’t worry. They’re whipping. I have no doubt that I’ll be whipped,” Driehaus said.

However, Driehaus said he doesn’t believe the leadership will pressure lawmakers who face tough re-election campaigns to vote yes on health care reform.

“Being whipped and being pressured are two different things,” Driehaus said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) served as her party’s whip from 2001 to 2003. And Pelosi used those whipping skills to line up votes for a controversial energy and climate bill this past June. Just days before the legislation hit the floor, many lawmakers didn’t see how Democrats could brew enough support for the plan. But Pelosi worked the floor day after day, making personal appeals to wavering lawmakers.

“She surprised us,” conceded a senior Republican aide.

So what’s the magic recipe to whip a vote? It depends on personalities and the circumstances. But ironically enough, most seasoned-whippers agree that brute-force threats don’t spur recalcitrant lawmakers to switch their votes.

Several years ago, former House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) told reporters how elementary school students would ask him if he actually got to whip the members. Blunt blurted that “knee pads” would probably be a better a tool for whips to use in their quest to convince lawmakers to vote a certain way.

Regardless, the role of the whip is essential when big bills roll down the pike.  

Former House Majority Whip Bill Gray (D-PA) used Star Trek to describe the role of the whip. In his analogy, Gray likened the Speaker of the House to Captain Kirk. He then said the Majority Leader was Mr. Spock. And the Whip? Well, that was Scotty down in the engine room. It was his responsibility to get the dilithium crystal mixture just right so the Starship Enterprise could traverse the galaxy.

On Capitol Hill, it’s up to the whip to balance the Congressional dilithium crystal formula to power controversial pieces of legislation across the House and Senate floors.

And for now, the propellant is a “survey.”

House Majority Whip, er, “Surveyor” Jim Clyburn (D-SC) is manning the engine room  on this expedition, navigating the asteroid belts and black holes of health care reform.

“My survey’s going very good,” Clyburn told FOX.

Congress first wrestled with reforming health care in the 1940s. The issue died slow deaths in the early 1970s and in 1994. And if Jim Clyburn gets the legislative dilithium crystal mixture right, House Democrats will approve health care reform. And then they will have gone where no Congress has gone before.

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         “The Speaker’s Lobby” refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Chain Letter

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

18 October 2009

A four-year-old boy in the tony Washington, DC suburb of Potomac, MD woke up from his nap at Montessori school.

And then promptly gave it to his classmate.

His classmate then took it home. She leafed through the book “Where the Wild Things Are.”

A few days later, she gave it to her nanny.

Later in the week, the nanny went for drinks at the Liberty Tavern in Arlington, VA. She hobnobbed with young professionals and sipped pinot noir.

The nanny then left them with a cocktail far more potent than the ones they were nursing at the bar.

One of the young professionals went to work two days later at a big law firm on K Street in downtown Washington. She chatted over coffee in the break room with a third-year-associate at the firm.

And then she gave it to him.

After he finished his coffee, the associate then went upstairs to the law firm’s government relations shop and handed his boss a proposal he finished the night before.

But that’s not all he gave him.

Later that week, the boss took the proposal the young associate drafted and tucked it into his attaché case. He had to run up to Capitol Hill for a meeting in the Dirksen Senate Office Building with staffers from the Banking Committee. The lobbyist boss then hailed a Diamond Cab on K Street. The cabbie drove up Constitution Avenue and dropped the lobbyist off by the Dirksen building. The lobbyist passed him a ten for a tip.

The cabbie appreciated the lobbyist’s generosity.

But he got more than he bargained for. 

The cabbie then executed an illegal U-turn next and immediately picked up another fare. Another lobbyist sprinted out of Dirksen. She fought her high heels with every step. She was running late for meeting across Capitol Hill in the Rayburn House Office Building. The cabbie pressed the ten in his right palm against the steering wheel as he drove the second lobbyist past the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress and turned right on Independence Avenue. He dropped the second lobbyist off across from Rayburn and made change with the ten.

But that wasn’t the entire extent of their transaction.

The lobbyist then entered the Rayburn building. She unpacked her keys and BlackBerry and prepared to go through the metal detectors.

Not used to the drill of passing through security in Washington, a family of tourists from Montana fumbled with their things as they approached the Magnetometer. The mother dropped her cell phone twice as she took off her coat and tried to organize everything on the conveyer belt to be X-rayed. The lobbyist standing behind her grew impatient. But graciously reached down to hand the flustered woman her cell phone.

But that’s not all the lobbyist handed her.

The Montana family spent a few days in Washington. They visited the Smithsonian, traipsed through Arlington National Cemetery and dined at the Old Ebbitt Grill. They headed back to Capitol Hill on the last day of their tour to get a family picture from the terrace of the Cannon House Office Building. The sky was powder blue that morning. The mother thought the perfect way to end their trip was to grab a snapshot of the family with the Capitol dome looming in the background.

Capitol Hill bustled that morning. But the mother coaxed a kind aide from the House Budget Committee to take their picture. She handed the aide her Nikon D90 digital camera.

Along with a little something for his troubles.

The aide took the “little something” back to his committee. And a few days later, he shared it  with most of his colleagues on both the majority and minority sides.

The committee staff then flanked out around Capitol Hill.

One aide gave it to a House page. Who promptly gave it to three other pages. Who then delivered it along with a set of documents to the House Appropriations Committee.

The aides on the Appropriations Committee then took it into the Speaker’s Lobby with them, just off the House floor.

There, it skipped from a stenographer to a bevy of lawmakers confabbing in the well of the House chamber during a vote on a Motion to Recommit.

One of the Congressmen took it with him to the House gym in the Rayburn building for a weekly basketball game.

It was a  vigorous contest. Drops of sweat dripped from the lawmakers’ arms and foreheads and onto the hardwood court. And the Congressman who received it on the House floor gave it to another lawmaker when they both hit the court hard going up for a rebound. The second Congressman landed in a pool of the first lawmaker’s sweat.

That Congressman was then assigned to a House-Senate Conference Committee. 

And he passed it along to three senators as they met in room HC-5 of the Capitol, drafting the final version of a bill.

One of the senators gave it to a U.S. Capitol Police officer working the door of the Hart Senate Office Building. Who then gave it to her sergeant. Who then gave it to a custodian who worked the overnight shift in the building.

The custodian then gave it to a journalist who he always saw fetching a snack out of a vending machine in the basement of the Hart building.

Who then gave it to a horde of other journalists as they pressed around Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when he spoke to reporters at the traditional, Tuesday stakeout in the Ohio Clock Corridor, just outside the Senate chamber.

One of the journalists then went back to the House side where she worked in the Radio-TV Gallery on the third floor of the Capitol. And a couple of days later, she sat in the back of a hearing room in the Rayburn building. The reporter talked with a woman who handled press for a California lawmaker.

The chatter was idle. But something else was rather active.

The California press secretary then walked back to her office. A day later, she spoke with her intern, who was just in her second week on the job.

“What are you working on this morning?” the press secretary asked the intern.

“The chief of staff asked me to sort through the mail first. Do you need help?”

“I do,” answered the press secretary.

“Some of this mail is just so weird,” groaned the intern. “Look at this.”

The intern handed the press secretary a letter. It was single-spaced and ran five entire pages, front-and-back. The font looked like it originated from an old, manual Underwood typewriter. The press secretary thought it had been Xeroxed because the typeset was crooked on a couple of pages. The letter was addressed to every member of Congress, the New York Times, the Washington Post,  National Public Radio, FOX News, Huffington Post and TMZ.

“Oh, it’s a chain letter,” the press secretary announced.

The intern sighed.

“I don’t know why people bother to send this crazy stuff. Everyone knows chain letters don’t work,” the intern said. “Now what did you need me to do for you?”

The press secretary put the chain letter down.

“Tell you what. Finish sorting through the mail first,” the press secretary said, “And then I’ll give you something.”

But in fact, she already had.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Of course, the above tale is fiction. But it is an accurate representation of how the H1N1 virus could spread across Capitol Hill.

The halls of Congress are a virtual Petri dish for the spread of the flu.

Aides and lawmakers are stuffed together in tiny offices. The entire Congressional campus is linked underground by a maze of tunnels. People breathe the same air. Everyone pushes the same buttons for the elevators and holds the same door handles. They dine in the same cafeterias. And of course, shaking hands is the coin of the realm on Capitol Hill.

It’s ironic that while health care reform is the preeminent debate in Congress, most of the chatter on Capitol Hill is about H1N1.

The Senate quarantined several pages in July after they came down with flu-like symptoms. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terry Gainer declared that they “most likely have influenza, quite possibly the H1N1 virus.”

It’s easy to be reminded of the threat. Congressional officials have posted dozens of hand sanitizer machines all around the Capitol and in the House and Senate office buildings. Some machines are used so frequently that they’re often out of sanitizer.

Perhaps the best advice came back in April when a reporter asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about the potential for a pandemic flu the U.S. hasn’t seen since 1918.

“Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands,” admonished Pelosi.

The advice you’d expect from a woman who has five children and seven grandchildren.

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s earned an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

- The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais of the House chamber. Lawmakers, reporters and aides often confer there during votes on the floor.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Spiked

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

15 October 2009

Remember on Sesame Street when they’d do the segment “Which of these things is not like the others?”

They’d show one group of kids, all jumping rope. And then another child, doing his own thing, playing football.

Well, time to play that same game again. Only Congressional style. Select the item below that doesn’t match the others.

The Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. National Work and Family Month. John William Heisman. The University of California-Irvine men’s volleyball team. The Apollo moon landing. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). And the University of Florida Gators.

The House of Representatives has voted to honor all of these people and events this year.

Except one.

The House commemorated the 98^th anniversary of Kappa Alpha Psi. It voted in support of October as National Work and Family Month. Lawmakers doffed their hats to John William Heisman for his contributions to the game of football. The House marked the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing. It saluted John Dingell for becoming the longest-serving House member. And the House congratulated the University of Florida for winning the national championship in college football.

Like Florida, the UC Irvine Anteaters men’s volleyball team won the national championship in their sport, too. But the House won’t fete its players, the same way it voted to honor Kappa Alpha Psi, National Work and Family Month, John William Heisman, the moon shot, John Dingell and the Florida Gators.

That’s not to say the House wasn’t planning on glorifying the Anteaters. It was.

Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) represents UC Irvine. He authored what’s called a “suspension” bill to laud the school for winning the men’s volleyball national title. Suspension bills are reserved for non-controversial legislation that doesn’t require much debate and will usually secure overwhelming support from House members.

What happens is the House “suspends the rules” required to handle most pieces of legislation and fast-tracks these bills to the floor. In exchange, the House grants only limited debate time to these measures and requires a two-thirds vote for passage. Bona fide policy issues are periodically considered as suspension bills. But the suspension process is tailored to name post offices and congratulate athletic teams. Like UC Irvine.

However, it was one of those pesky policy issues that the House planned to consider as a suspension bill that helped derail Congressional recognition for the volleyball team.

Two weeks ago, the House was poised to consider a water recycling bill for the Bay area near San Francisco. Crafted by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the plan would recycle 2.6 billion gallons of water in Contra Costa County and cities like Petaluma and Palo Alto.

Like the UC Irvine Anteaters, Miller thought he was serving an ace. But House Republicans leaped to the net and stuff-blocked Miller’s bill.

The vote on Miller’s legislation was 240 to 170, well above the majority necessary to approve most bills. But because Miller expected his plan to be non-controversial, the House considered it as a suspension. So it needed a two-thirds supermajority to pass. And with 410 House members voting, Miller’s water bill fell well short of the 273 voted required.

Miller seethed. He accused John Campbell and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) of helping organize a blockade against his legislation.

California is mired in a water crisis. And lawmakers like Campbell from southern California and Nunes, from the agricultural-rich San Joaquin Valley, thought it was only fair that the House direct water assistance to other regions of the state besides the Bay area. Campbell fretted that Miller’s legislation could slash water supplies to his part of the state.

So, Miller drew up a crosscourt spike of his own. Miller chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. With the blessing of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), he controls what bills pertaining to education make their way to the House floor. So since UC Irvine is a university, Miller exacted his revenge on Campbell by yanking the bill praising the volleyball team from the House schedule. When asked by FOX about why Miller pulled the bill, his spokeswoman said “that’s just the way it goes.” Campbell says Miller told him this was payback for engineering the effort against his measure.

The Campbell-Miller spat infuriates UC Irvine men’s volleyball coach John Speraw.

“It’s crazy,” Speraw said. “Maybe Miller and Campbell have something going on. I’d prefer that they take care of it without hurting anybody.”

But Speraw held particular contempt for Miller since he chairs the Education panel.

“It makes it seem to me it’s even more petty on George Miller’s part,” Speraw said.

Since Miller failed to get the House to approve his water bill late last month as a suspension, he had to go through the regular process to resuscitate his legislation. That entailed a visit to the House Rules Committee, the panel that serves as the gateway to the House floor.

“This bill got sideways on the road on a partisan vote,” Miller told the Rules Committee.

But there, Nunes and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA) met Miller. The pair formulated four water and irrigation amendments that they wanted to hook onto Miller’s Bay area bill when it comes to the House floor.

But the duo also had a fifth amendment in mind: a proclamation honoring the UC Irvine men’s volleyball squad.

The amendment extolled everyone from players like Ryan Ammerman, Taylor “Bones” Wilson and Carson Clark for their play on the court to UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake for his leadership of the university.

The top GOPer on the Rules Committee, Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) expressed concern to Miller about his decision to torpedo the volleyball resolution.

“I just don’t get why I get a kick in the pants,” Miller answered. “So the idea to go up and gratuitously kick me in the pants…I don’t get it.”

Nunes then appealed to the Rules Committee that it attach his water amendments to Miller’s bill. He noted that the panel defeated him before.

“You’ve shot me down every time,” Nunes argued.

“That happens with non-germane amendments,” snapped Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

Meaning that if certain water-related amendments were non-germane to a water bill, surely an amendment honoring a volleyball team strayed too far from the primary subject matter, too.

Wonder how the UC Irvine amendment would have fared if it honored a team that played an aquatic sport, like water polo.

The committee went on to exclude the water amendments. And the volleyball amendment, too.

Coach John Speraw seemed even more exasperated Wednesday night that the House quashed yet another effort to salute the Anteaters.

“You would like the people who represent us to do the right thing,” Speraw said. “The right thing is to honor this team.”

So this year, the House has commemorated the canonization of Father Damien de Veuster to sainthood, recognized the strip of land running from Manhattan, KS, to Columbia, MO, as the “Animal Health Corridor” and saluted Pat Summitt for her stewardship of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team.

But there’s a drought in California. Not just one involving water. But one congratulating the UC Irvine men’s volleyball team for its national championship And John Speraw just wants Congress to recognize his team’s achievement.

“These guys are innocent bystanders to a water bill,” Speraw huffed. “It’s absurd.”

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-  The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais of the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Floor Watchdogs

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

13 October 2009

It’s long been the province of the minority party to assign a “watchdog” to the House floor.

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted “You lie!” at President Obama during last month’s Joint Session of Congress, the entire country became the floor watchdog, as it viewed the speech coast-to-coast on TV in living rooms and bars.

In 1837, the House adopted a manual penned by Thomas Jefferson as the official rulebook governing procedure in the institution. Jefferson’s Manual clearly states that a member of the House cannot accuse the president of “lying” or being a “liar.”

Had Wilson accused a fellow lawmaker of the same transgression during a regular meeting of the House, it’s likely someone would have moved to “take down” Wilson’s words. That’s an effort to penalize a lawmaker when there’s an potential breach of decorum on the House floor.

Certainly, the same could be said for two recent instances involving Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL). First, Grayson declared that the GOP’s health care plan was “die quickly.” For an encore, Grayson told the House a few days later that he was sorry for the “holocaust” caused by those who have died because they don’t have health insurance.

Grayson did not violate a House rule as specific as the one Wilson broke. But certainly a Republican lawmaker could have moved to sanction Grayson by “taking down” his words.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Republicans elected to go after Grayson in the press and YouTube.

Which possibly signals and interesting shift in House precedence.

For years, the minority party has assigned a lawmaker to patrol the floor, ready to pounce if the majority steps out of line. In the watchdog’s quiver is an arsenal of motions, demands for redundant votes and other procedural shenanigans. For the watchdog serves as a parliamentary pebble in the shoe of majority.

Republicans perfected this art in the early 1990s. Back then, Democrats tried the patience of the Republicans. So then-Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and former Rep. Bob Walker (R-PA) would spring into action and play havoc on the floor. They’d order a slate of votes on routine procedural matters. Such tactics can gum up the works and deeply frustrate the majority. But after all, that’s the role of the watchdog.

House Democrats were reeling when Republicans seized control of the House in 1995. While they didn’t officially appoint a floor watchdog to keep an eye on the GOP, former Rep. Harold Volkmer (D-MO) made the role his own.

First elected to Congress in 1976, Volkmer scored few headlines before 1995. A moderate Democrat from Hannibal, MO, Volkmer operated as an obscure backbencher who focused primarily on livestock and poultry issues.

But Volkmer enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame when he started policing Gingrich and his lieutenants on a host of parliamentary issues as the the Democrats’ floor cop.

Volkmer, who had a visceral dislike for Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), would patrol the center aisle of the House chamber. He’d challenge whether the speeches of GOP lawmakers were in order. He’d move to adjourn. Even ask to “strike the enacting clause.” The “enacting clause” is the boilerplate language at the top of legislation which, if adopted and signed, gives the measure the force of law. In other words, if Volkmer successfully struck the enacting clause, the House could go on to approve a bill. But it would be stripped of any muscle.

Dispatched the minority after enjoying 18 years in the majority, Volkmer needed to feel relevant.

“There’s less responsibility. You do have more time on your hands… I get my work done at the office and come over to the floor,” he told Roll Call at the time.

Volkmer conceded to me years later that he viewed his role as an agent provocateur. He’d offer his offbeat motions just to keep the upstart majority on its toes. Volkmer likened it to playing basketball where one player antagonizes the other team with trash talk. The Missouri Democrat said he knew who the “hotheads” were on the other team and would try to goad them into drawing a technical foul.

A former member of the House Republican leadership team at the time told me that if he sniffed a note of gin on Volkmer’s breath as they entered the House chamber, he knew it was going to be a long night.

When Democrats won control of the House in 2006, there was much discussion as to who would seize the mantle as the Republican floor watchdog. I joked with Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-MO) at the time that he should take on that role since he defeated Volkmer in 1996. But Hulshof was already focused on running for governor and retired in early 2009.

In 2007, Republicans launched sort of a tag-team approach to floor watching. In baseball, teams used to have their starting pitchers go deep into the game and then hand off to a reliever or two to finish. But baseball’s modern approach is “bullpen-by-committee.” That’s where five or six relievers could see action in any one game. That’s the tactic the GOP now uses, deploying its Floor Action Team.

The GOP started rotating groups of lawmakers to the floor to keep an eagle eye on the Democrats. Over the past few years, Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Phil Gingery (R-GA), Tom Price (R-GA), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Campbell (R-CA) and several others have played major roles in bird-dogging House floor activity. 

But none have been as hyper-vigilant as their Republican predecessors Newt Gingrich and Bob Walker or Democratic-watchdog extraordinaire Harold Volkmer.

To wit: In October of 2007, the House debated a bill to widen coverage offered by the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan, or SCHIP. Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) managed the debate for the Democrats. President Bush galled Stark in his opposition to bolster SCHIP. While arguing in favor of the plan, Stark thundered that Mr. Bush wouldn’t pay for SCHIP but allowed service members to fly to Iraq to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

No Republicans challenged Stark’s incendiary allegation.

A few minutes later, Stark said something similar, but not nearly as provocative. At that point, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) leaped to his feet and demanded that Stark’s “words be taken down.”

In House parlance, “taking down words” is kind of like an indictment. A lawmaker may have broken the rules of the House. But they’re not sure. So everything comes to a screeching halt while the clerk goes back and “takes down” the potentially offending words. The parliamentarian then determines whether the words are in order or out of order. In the latter incident, Stark’s language was ruled to be in order. However, had they been ruled out of order, the House could have banned him from speaking on the floor for the rest of the day or he could have offered a mea culpa and withdrawn his speech.

But here’s the rub: it’s likely the House would have penalized Stark for the first remark about sending troops to Iraq to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” Yet in that instance, no one challenged Stark. And House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) later conceded that his party was slow to the switch.

Which brings us back to Joe Wilson and Alan Grayson.

The day after the Wilson episode, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she was prepared to move against the South Carolina Republican had his disruption continued. And a week later, the House voted to officially disapprove of Wilson’s high-profile interruption.

Certainly, the House could have tried to discipline Grayson on the spot during both of this incidents. In fact, Reps. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) immediately criticized Grayson on the floor. But neither moved to take down Grayson’s words. And no one did the same a few days later when he uttered the “holocaust” line.

On one hand, it could be argued that the minority is again slow to respond, just as Boehner admitted that Republicans were after Pete Stark’s remark. But as message strategy and technology changes, so does floor vigilance. In both of the Grayson cases, Republicans blasted out his speeches via email, Twitter and Facebook, excoriating what him for his remarks and parading it around for all to see.

Now the minority doesn’t need someone bird-dogging the floor in person. Today, the minority has teams of aides who either officially or unofficially track action on the floor, unseen from their offices or even via BlackBerry. The technology enables these staffers to then alert millions to a potential transgression, without going through the floor high jinks.

So this technological phenomenon creates a conundrum for the minority party, be it the Republicans or Democrats. In fact, they may ask “WWJD?” In this case, it’s not “What would Jesus do?” But “What would Jefferson do?” Will they decide to tweet and email about broaches of House decorum? Or will they instead turn to the procedures and customs that Thomas Jefferson laid out for the House nearly 200 years ago?

 -         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

 -         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate hallway behind the dais in the House chamber where lawmakers, aides and reporters often confer during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Wrangling Rangel

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

08 October 2009

Congress often laments that the federal government should do more with less. Tighten its belt. Cut the fat. Eliminate duplication.

So Wednesday, Rep. John Carter (R-TX) introduced a 2,044 word resolution designed to remove House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) from his post until the Ethics Committee finishes probing the Harlem Democrat for a host of alleged misdeeds. Carter punctuated the resolution with 39 paragraphs that begin with the word “whereas.” He began reading the sonorous resolution to the House at 12:53 pm.

“Whereas these most recent revelations by Representative Rangel have resulted in heightened national news media coverage of alleged impropriety and potentially criminal conduct,” Carter droned.

“Whereas at various times during the past twelve months Representative Rangel and Speaker Pelosi have made public statements asserting that the ongoing investigation of Representative Rangel by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct would soon be concluded,” he continued.

Until 1:14 pm.

At which point, Carter finished presenting his special resolution to the House. And now it was the turn of the House reading clerk to read precisely what Carter read aloud, all over again.

Until 1:25 pm.

Just in case lawmakers missed it the first time.

You know, that whole business about “not reading the bills” and all of that.

Rangel did not flinch during this exercise. He sat in the front row of the House chamber and stared straight ahead. Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Sander Levin (D-MI) flanked him.

At 1:26 pm, the House voted on whether to take a vote to refer Carter’s resolution to the Ethics Committee. Which would presumably do nothing with Carter’s complaint. After all, the Ethics panel has investigated Rangel since last July. Just before Thanksgiving last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the committee “assured” her that “the report will be completed by the end of this session of Congress, which concludes January 3, 2009.”

And after the House voted in favor of taking a vote, it voted again. To send Carter’s request to the committee that was already evaluating Rangel’s conduct.

The whole sortie concluded around 1:56 pm, consuming slightly more than an hour of the House’s time.

And accomplished very little.

Certainly Republicans argue that point. The GOP has embraced Rangel’s alleged ethics woes as a cause célèbre. They’ve tried to morph Rangel into an icon of Democratic inconsistency. After all, Pelosi and the Democrats seized control of the House on the heels of sullied Republican figures like former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Duke Cunningham (R-CA). Ney served time and is now free. Cunningham remains in jail. Pelosi pledged to “drain the swamp” under her watch.

Meantime, the Ethics Committee is studying whether Rangel failed to report as much as $600,000 in income on his financial disclosure forms; whether he may have improperly used Congressional letterhead to ask for donations to a public affairs school that bears his name at City of College of New York; and whether he failed to pay taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

Rangel has now made good on the unpaid taxes. But Republicans found it ironic that the chairman of the House’s tax-writing panel had tax trouble.

John Carter says it would “at least make more sense” if Rangel suffered tax issues and chaired a different committee besides the one that governs U.S. tax policy.

This is the third time in 13 months that Republicans have tried to sanction Rangel. The GOP efforts have enjoyed little success on the floor. But their efforts commanded headlines and filled media airwaves for months. The buzz has forced Rangel into a particularly vexing spot as Congress wrestles with health care reform. After all, Rangel’s Ways and Means panel is one of the committees charged with crafting the health care reform legislation.

A Rangel spokesman focused on this dynamic amid the health care negotiations.

“Let’s look at this resolution for what it really is,” said the spokesman who didn’t want to be identified. “(It’s) a highly-partisan effort designed to undermine the important work in Congress on health care reform.”

The GOP’s attempt to strip Rangel of his gavel, at least temporarily, triggered a few moments of consternation on the House floor.

Carter’s labored reading of his resolution seemed to exasperate Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY). Ackerman interrupted Carter with a question to Speaker Pro Tempore Tim Holden (D-PA).

“Can any member of this body claim the privilege of the House for an hour, based on something they read in the newspaper, at any time they want?” Ackerman asked.

And then there was confusion over the votes.

The first vote tied to Carter’s resolution was on “Ordering the Previous Question On the Motion to Refer.” In Congressional parlance, this is a procedural maneuver, often called the “PQ.” Despite its abbreviation, the PQ has nothing to do with the separatist “Parti Quebecois” in Canada. The PQ is simply a vote to tee-up the next vote. But most news organizations mistakenly reported the PQ vote as the actual vote to dispatch Carter’s resolution to the Ethics Committee. And even so, there was a slight difference in the total of the procedural vote (246 to 153 with 19 members voting present) than on the actual vote to direct Carter’s resolution to committee (243-156 with 19 members voting present).

After the votes, Rangel huddled for more than an hour with Ways and Means Committee Democrats in his hovel not far from the House floor. A phalanx of reporters teamed in the hallway in hope of chatting with Rangel after the meeting broke. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped by the chairman’s conclave. Then came an entreaty by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT).

Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) is the lawmaker the Democratic leadership team asked to refer John Carter’s resolution to the Ethics Committee. Reporters descended on Crowley when he emerged from the meeting.

“I believe the resolution was steered properly (to the Ethics Committee)” Crowley said.

The scribes continued to pepper Crowley about Rangel. Finally, Martin Vaughan of Dow Jones Newswires piped up.

“On excise taxes…” Vaughan began.

“Wait. You don’t want to talk about Charlie Rangel?” Crowley inquired of Vaughan. “I love you, man!”

Crowley, who stands well over six feet, proceeded to give the 6’5” Vaughan a hug.

Everyone laughed.

As the afternoon crawled along, the other lawmakers drifted out. Pelosi walked back to her office. Baucus retreated to his hideaway office in the Senate. Finally Rangel materialized. The reporters badgered him with questions about health care and the economy as he walked past the House chamber and into Statuary Hall.

Rangel told the assemblage he planned to submit the House Democrats’ health care bill to the Congressional Budget Office for analysis on Friday. The chairman then ducked into the Speaker’s office.

The reporters started to leave. But then Rangel spun around and returned for just a moment.

“And thanks to all of you for not asking about the other thing,” he said, referring to Carter’s resolution.

“Well, tell us about the ‘other thing?’” I queried.

And with that, Rangel fell silent and disappeared back into the Speaker’s Office.

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s earned an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-  The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate corridor that runs behind the dais of  the House chamber. Lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Pulp Fiction

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

04 October 2009

The D’Alesandro brothers must have been the envy of everyone growing up among the row houses of Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood.

Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, other boys probably horded scores of comic books under their beds. Flash Gordon. Batman. The Green Arrow. Perhaps someone even possessed a coveted copy of Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman. The issue depicts the “Man of Tomorrow” hoisting a roadster above his head and smashing it into the side of a cliff.

But such tripe couldn’t be found under the beds of the D’Alesandro boys. No. Stowed beneath their beds, among the biscotti and cannoli crumbs, rested publications that were even more precious. 

“I remember as a little, tiny girl and then growing up that my mother used to have the Congressional Records under my brothers’ bed,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), nee D’Alesandro. “Nobody I know had a library of Congressional Record statements under their brothers’ bed and could read about any subject at any time.”

I’m sure that compelled the Little Italy kids to shun stickball games in the street to clamor at the D’Alesandro’s door just to read what lawmakers were saying about the Bretton Woods Agreement.

When Pelosi was born, her father Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was a Member of Congress. The speaker says her dad would often leaf through the Congressional Record at home. Her mother crafted a system of storing the Congressional Record under the beds so he could easily locate the copy he wanted.

“I had five older brothers and they used to jump on the beds and break the springs. But the Congressional Record was there,” Pelosi said. “It was not only our library. But a way to have the beds be more sound.”

As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.

Pelosi invoked her brothers’ antics of jumping on the beds during her announcement that the Congressional Record is now printed on 100 percent recycled paper. Environmental preservation is one of the speaker’s primary policy issues. Since becoming speaker, Pelosi has specifically implemented steps to “green” the Capitol. Those efforts have ranged from the installation of more energy-efficient light bulbs to the introduction of corn-based, compostable forks in the House cafeterias.

So now, every single word uttered by Members of Congress will be printed on recycled paper. A chronicle of the hot air steaming up from the Capitol Dome.

Talk about global warming.

But Pelosi says this effort will slash the emission of 1.4 million pounds of greenhouse gasses each year.

One wonders how much they’d help the environment if they printed all of the different  health care reform proposals on recycled paper.

The Government Printing Office produces more than 4,100 copies of the Congressional Record each day. That’s down from 15,000 copies in the mid-1990s. And never mind that the Congressional Record is available online. Congressman D’Alesandro may have had to scrounge through old copies of the Congressional Record to read what a colleague said. But today, most people who monitor Congress can almost instantly trace the material they want online. Congressional Quarterly, C-SPAN and squadrons of bloggers upload either the text or video of floor speeches and committee hearings constantly.

A case study in this came last Tuesday night.

The House had concluded its legislative business for the day and moved to Special Orders speeches. Special Orders are when lawmakers take to the House floor for anywhere from a minute to an hour and pontificate about anything.

Few pay little attention to what’s said during this part of the House’s day. In fact, Politico’s Jonathan Allen was about to depart the Capitol when he noticed Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) railing on the House floor about something controversial someone had just said. Within a few minutes, Allen was able to locate a transcript and video of what offended Blackburn and Duncan. As many know now, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) had taken to the floor to declare that the GOP’s approach to reforming health care was “die quickly.”

Using the traditional, printed Congressional Record, Allen would have had to have waited at least a day to uncover specifically what Grayson said. By getting the transcript, Allen posted an online story about the Grayson kerfuffle later that night. In fact, I learned about the incident when a senior Republican aide emailed me a YouTube clip of Grayson’s speech while I was at the gym. The technology helped propel the Grayson incident to one of the most-compelling stories of the week.

So in the digital age, why maintain a printed version of the Congressional Record?

First of all, one-third of the federal government’s annual business is documented in the Congressional Record. It represents a permanent, printed archive of Congressional activity. If lawmakers completely digitized the record, Congress could face a credibility problem. Computers can be hacked. Words can be altered and changed. But a physical, printed copy is irrefutable proof of what senators and representatives have said and done. People are skeptical of government these days. And a concrete repository published regularly for posterity could dispel fears, however paranoid they may be, that Congress would try to pull a fast one.

So for now, Congress spits out more than 4,000 copies of the Congressional Record every day it’s in session. That’s still a lot of pulp, recycled or not. The printed Congressional Record isn’t going away any time soon. And that means the ideas of a paper-less Congress remain the dreams of “pulp fiction.”

-         Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

-         The Speaker’s Lobby refers to a long, ornate corridor that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. Reporters, aides and lawmakers often confer there during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: “You die!”

By: Chad Pergram, FOX News

01 October 2009

The Grim Reaper visited Capitol Hill this week.

“You lie!” may have been the rallying cry a few weeks ago.

The new catchphrase could be “You die!”

Oh, Death has cavorted about Washington in a veritable Danse Macabre for months now. Specifically around “end of life” provisions in the health care reform bills clanking around the Capitol.

Death pranced around town hall meetings as constituents posed questions about end of life issues during the August recess. It donned its cloak during a visit to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page for her post about people standing “in front of Obama’s ‘death panel.’” The Grim Reaper even toted his scythe to the cornfields of Iowa where Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) declared “we should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

But this week, the angel of death specifically haunted the House of Representatives.

Late Tuesday night, long after most lawmakers abandoned the Capitol for their apartments or the bar, freshman Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) offered his take on the GOP approach to health care reform.

“Republicans want you to die quickly,” Grayson said. He punctuated his remarks with a giant poster board situated behind him. The sign read “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”

Republicans joined the battle. They plastered Grayson’s remarks on YouTube and blasted his comments to reporters.

But the GOP offensive was about more than just Alan Grayson. Republicans are still smarting from the “shout heard ‘round the world” several weeks ago.

Democrats chastised Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) for hollering “You lie!” at President Obama during a Joint Session of Congress. Wilson apologized to Mr. Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. But Democrats didn’t think that was enough. After all, Wilson violated a specific rule that prohibits lawmakers from accusing the president of lying. So they admonished Wilson with a “resolution of disapproval.” But most GOPers felt the Democratic-backed sanction was an over-reach.

Republicans waited for their opportunity. And pounced when Alan Grayson came along.

Just as Democrats did with Wilson, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) concocted a “resolution of disapproval” to condemn Grayson. Price waved it around on the floor and threatened to call up the resolution unless Grayson apologized.

Meantime, Democrats took pains to remind reporters that when it came to health care reform, the House and Senate floors were already something of a death zone. The Democrats hastily prepared charts that showed reporters the frequency the GOP invoked the specter of death on Capitol Hill.

“Last week Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors ‘drop dead,” said Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) on the House floor in late July.

In mid-July, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) argued that government-operated health care would “end up killing more people than it saves.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) predicted that one in five women “is going to die because we go to socialized care.”

By midday Wednesday, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-CT) said he didn’t think it was worth the effort to single out Grayson for punishment.

“If that’s the case, then we would have to have Ginny Brown (Waite), Tom Coburn, and Louie Gohmert apologize for similar things that they said,” Larson said.

Larson said he thought lawmakers from both sides of the aisle should use more temperate language in the health care debate. But he noted he “wouldn’t have used the words Mr. Grayson has.”

“I would encourage Alan to apologize,” Larson said.

No one heard much from Grayson until mid-afternoon. Most figured the contretemps was over. A passel of reporters hunted for the Congressman during a series of votes on the House floor. And that’s when Grayson stoked the embers of the night before.

First, Grayson announced that he stood by what he said Tuesday night. He also contested the context of what Larson said regarding an apology.

“He did not ask me to apologize,” Grayson tendered.

Then Grayson joined me outside the House chamber for his first TV interview since Tuesday night’s dustup. And the chill of Death returned to Capitol Hill.

“I think that the Democrats are sick and tried of being kicked around by fake arguments with death panels,” Grayson said. As a freshman Democrat representing a swing district historically held by Republicans, Grayson said he thought the GOP was targeting him for the political gallows.

“They simply attack me. Which means they’ve got nothing,” Grayson added.

After our interview, I chatted with the Congressman for a few minutes off-camera and walked with him down a corridor to the House chamber. We said goodbye and he ducked into the Speaker’s Lobby. I thought the political firestorm had passed.

Grayson then returned to the well of the House chamber where the conflagration roared the night before. And he promptly reignited the inferno.

Grayson said that “several Republicans asked me to apologize.” But he didn’t offer the apologies the GOP sought. And Death again joined Grayson on the floor.

The Congressman cited a Harvard University study which discovered that 44,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance. He argued that approving the Democratic-crafted health care reform bill would stem that tide of death.

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” Grayson said.

The Republicans howled.

Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee charged Grayson with “doubling down on his despicable remarks.”

“This is an individual who has established a pathological pattern of unstable behavior,” Spain charged.

And so it goes as Death makes its rounds on Capitol Hill. It’s often said you can’t cheat Death. And it’s likely to linger as long as lawmakers toil with this supercharged health care reform bill.

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

 - The Speaker’s Lobby is a long, ornate hallway behind the dais in the House   chamber where lawmakers, aides and journalists often confer during votes.

The Speaker’s Lobby: Fall Follies

By: Chad Pergram

27 September 2009

Autumn has arrived. And so too have the fall follies that accompany the equinox.

But we start with a rather serious newsflash.

Washington is in crisis.

Not because the economy. Staggering deficits. ACORN. Cap-and-trade. Health care reform. Terrorist threats on mass transit systems. Or a nuclear-armed Iran.

At a time when the nation’s auto industry is in shambles, perhaps it’s only appropriate that one of the greatest debacles in Washington football history unfolded in the Motor City Sunday. The Obama Administration may have replaced Rick Wagoner as the head of General Motors earlier this year. The move called into question whether Washington was running the auto manufacturer. But it was clear that Detroit owned Washington on the gridiron Sunday. 

The town’s beloved Washington Redskins fell to the woeful Detroit Lions, 19-14. This the same Detroit squad who lost their previous 19 games dating back to late 2007. The losing streak spanned parts of three seasons.

To put it in political terms, the Lions last won a game before Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Back when Hillary Rodham Clinton was the odds-on favorite to be the Democratic nominee and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was flailing behind Mitt Romney in the GOP contest.

Think the Redskins would qualify for cash for clunkers?

Democrats and Republicans alike can’t agree on much in Washington. But whether they hail from a blue state or a red state, the city’s political establishment lives and dies with the burgundy and gold.

Few expected much from the Redskins this year. But a loss to the Lions will make Washington apoplectic. Expect a host of long faces exiting the Capitol South Metro station Monday morning. And you can count on lots of folks cutting off other drivers as they try to merge at the Beltway’s Mixing Bowl.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that the Lions vanquished the Redskins before sundown Sunday. That’s when the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, or “Day of Atonement” began. And after this wretched loss, the Redskins seemingly have much to atone for.

Fall not only means football. But the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

President Obama made his inaugural visit to the U.N. a few days ago. As is custom, the U.S. president and a score of others spoke. World leaders and representatives from the 192-member nations listen as the U.N. simultaneously translates the speeches into multiple languages.

Translating is a hard job. One U.N. translator even collapsed after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi blew past his 15-minute time limit and spoke for 75 minutes.

While the translation staff labored over Gaddafi’s remarks, they didn’t have to work as hard on Mr. Obama’s presentation. Fortunately the translators didn’t find themselves uttering “E Mentira” in Portuguese, “Ban noi doi” in Vietnamese, “Yalan” in Turkish, “Je ligt” in Swedish, or “Vi si trovano” in Italian. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) did not attend President Obama’s speech and no one shouted “You lie!” from the U.N. peanut gallery.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) is back this week for another turn on “Dancing with the Stars.” Known for his brass-knuckle tactics to win votes on the House floor, there’s buzz on Capitol Hill about what methods DeLay might employ if he’s in jeopardy of getting booted off the show.

During an informal chat, a few veteran Congressional reporters concocted several scenarios for DeLay to preserve himself.

One potential maneuver would be to hold open the vote for nearly three hours until DeLay can round up enough votes to stay on the program. In November, 2003, DeLay and the rest of the House Republican leadership team held a vote open a record two hours and 51 minutes to approve a prescription drug bill. The vote started at 3 am and ended just before 6 am on a Saturday.

Another option would be to drive the rest of the contestants to Oklahoma.

In 2003, Texas state legislators tried to draw new Congressional districts. DeLay spearheaded the plan. The lines would be drawn in a way to help Republicans get elected to Congress and imperil the Democrats who occupied those seats at the time. In order to prevent the legislature from having a quorum, and thus block adopting the redistricting measure, a number of Democratic members of the Texas legislature drove to a motel just across the state line in Oklahoma. Texas authorities aren’t authorized to “arrest” their lawmakers if they’re out of state and bring them back to Austin.

Finally, if DeLay gets voted out, the Congressional reporters suggested he just blame the whole affair on his long-time arch-nemesis Ronnie Earle. Earle was the legendary Travis County, Texas, District Attorney who empanelled a grand jury to indict the former Majority Leader. DeLay was charged with violating state election law. A judge later tossed out the indictment and DeLay’s case never went to trial.

The next item comes from the file labeled “Congressional misinterpretation.”

Several years ago, Lynne Truss penned the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.” It’s a tome about how punctuation influences the meaning of language. The title of Truss’s book stems from a story about a panda who eats a sandwich at a restaurant, opens fire and then departs. A report about the incident said the panda “eats, shoots and leaves.” But if you look up the diet of a panda, you’ll discover that it “eats shoots and leaves.”

Members of Congress speak to an array of diverse groups each week. Think tanks. Universities. Trade organizations. But the ambiguous grammatical construction of a press release e-mailed a few days ago by the office of Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) produced confusion as to who the Congressman was speaking to.  

The title of the Congressman news release? “Cao Addresses Chinese Drywall.”

Of course, what Cao’s office was really trying to say is that he spoke about safety issues posed by Chinese drywall. The Louisiana Republican did not do as Pyramus and Thisbe did when they chatted up one another through a gap in a wall in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.” In fact, Cao talked at a meeting of the Congressional Contaminated Drywall Caucus.

As fall arrives, the leaves are now turning. But the topics aren’t. It appears that the issue that perplexed Congress for so long this summer will bedevil lawmakers throughout autumn: health care reform.

The coming days could prove to be pivotal as House Democrats hope to mix together three health care reform bills into one. And the Senate Finance Committee is edging closer to completing its version of health care legislation.

The negotiations have produced a lot of anxiety and heartburn. Lawmakers are popping TUMS to stave off upset stomachs amid the talks.

But a flight home to Arkansas by Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR) seems to encapsulate the entire state of affairs.

While in the air, a businessman passed Snyder a note about the need to approve a health care reform measure. The businessman scribbled to Snyder that he can’t keep paying the premiums and provide insurance to his workers.

The businessman didn’t write his note on a scrap of notebook paper or even a drink napkin. The businessman penned Snyder’s health care missive on an airplane barf bag. 

- Chad Pergram covers Congress for FOX News. He’s earned an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Joan Barone Award for his reporting on Capitol Hill.

 - The “Speaker’s Lobby” refers to a long, ornate hallway that runs behind the dais in the House chamber. It’s a place where Members of Congress, aides and journalists often chat during votes on the House floor.