GOP Leaders Tighten Hold In the House
Hastert, DeLay Reward Loyalty Over Seniority
By Jim VandeHei and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page A01
washingtonpost.com.
House Republican leaders, through a series of little-noticed rule changes and key appointments, are dramatically tightening their hold on power as they prepare to push for new spending cuts, bigger tax breaks and a more ambitious social agenda.
Since padding their majority in the November elections, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) have circumvented the seniority system to reward their most loyal allies with important chairmanships. They have systematically changed internal rules to seize greater authority over rank-and-file members, and they unexpectedly scrapped the eight-year limit on Hastert's reign.
They also are cracking down on wayward members who frequently oppose party leadership positions. Last week, for instance, Hastert privately called in Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) and scolded him for challenging the speaker over new bankruptcy laws and other measures, according to members familiar with the meeting.
"Hastert has been able to get more influence and is poised to exert even more power over the process," said John Feehery, a spokesman for the speaker.
By centralizing power and demanding discipline, House Republicans are positioning themselves to push President Bush's agenda through the House and apply greater pressure on the closely divided Senate to adopt more conservative economic and social policies. The new House has 229 Republicans, 205 Democrats and one left-leaning independent.
In some cases, the Hastert-DeLay team wants to go beyond the Bush agenda. DeLay says the House should push for deeper tax cuts than the White House has proposed, even though several Republican senators say Bush's plan already goes too far. The Hastert-DeLay team also is mulling as many as six measures to curb abortions.
They had great success passing Bush's agenda over the past two years, and they begin the 108th Congress with a slightly more conservative House and Senate to work with. Bush, looking toward the 2004 presidential election, will feel pressure to appeal to swing voters by de-emphasizing some controversial social issues -- such as abortion, perhaps -- and being open to compromise on tax and spending measures.
Senate Republicans, who hold a two-vote majority, will have a hard time passing any legislation without winning over several Democrats. So Hastert and DeLay are looking to pass as bold an agenda as plausible, knowing they will be forced to compromise with Bush and the Senate in the end, House insiders say.
To strengthen their hand, they know they will need to keep their own members from straying, a sometimes-tricky proposition with the eclectic GOP caucus.
Shortly after the fall elections, Hastert implemented a new Republican rule to strongly warn the 13 House appropriations subcommittee chairmen -- known as the "cardinals" -- against pushing for greater spending in their jurisdictions than top party leaders support. In the past, some cardinals, who control the purse strings on everything from local water projects to federal education programs, have defied party leaders by seeking big spending increases and breaking with their GOP colleagues on key votes.
Hastert now requires them to be elected by a leadership-dominated panel, instead of claiming the influential positions on seniority alone. This could change how business is done in Washington. A top business lobbyist, for example, said he is now counseling his clients to work more closely with Hastert's inner circle and to hire former aides of the speaker and majority leader.
"By abandoning the seniority system, the leadership was able to ensure that it had its team on the committees," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), a key leadership ally. "It reinforced the idea that chairmen are not autonomous. They owe their allegiance to the leadership."
But Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said his Republican counterparts were privately worried about the leadership's decision. "I think it scared the hell out of them," he said.
Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Hastert team's action "is significant, simply because it's a sign of an assertion of leadership and a clear signal that Hastert and DeLay wanted to send. It's shaking things up."
Hastert didn't stop with the Appropriations Committee's cardinals. In private meetings last week, he and DeLay tossed aside the seniority system that historically has played a big role in the selection of all committee chairmen. The two men, plus a few lieutenants, interviewed candidates for chairmanships and routinely questioned them about their loyalty to the "team," according to several sources who attended the meetings.
They infuriated several rank-and-file members by elevating Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), a young ally of DeLay who is opposed by environmental groups, to chair the Resources Committee. Pombo leapfrogged several GOP members with greater seniority to get the job.
"That kind of took my breath away," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.). "Seniority provides some stability. When you break it up, there will be some anxiety and some real discontent."
Shays may have particular reason to gripe: Hastert denied him the chairmanship of the Government Reform Committee because of his crusade over the past few years to enact new campaign finance laws, which Hastert and his top allies opposed.
Shays is the committee's senior member. But the job went to Davis, a Hastert associate who helped mastermind the party's six-seat gain last fall as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Although Davis has not always seen eye to eye with DeLay, the Virginia Republican is considered less of a loose cannon than Shays, according to other members of the leadership.
Davis beat Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), another leadership "darling," as one lawmaker called him, for the job. Cox is considered a dutiful soldier, having chaired the House GOP Policy Committee for several years and headed a select committee that investigated whether China stole U.S. nuclear and military technology. As a consolation prize, Cox will head the newly created Committee on Homeland Security.
Cox and all other chairmen will now report directly to DeLay, who has privately warned several to think twice about taking positions that may harm the party.
Although a few strong-minded and independent-thinking chairmen remain -- such as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) -- Cox said committee and subcommittee chairmen understand that "we're going to be operating as a single leadership team."
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