Commentary

Congressmen Hide What They’re Up To

By William A. Collins

Lightning feet,

Sleight-of-hand;

He’s your friendly,

Congressman.

Serving in Congress is a bunch of work, but the spoils are pretty special too. The pay and benefits are famously pleasant of course, but it’s the ego gratification that’s so super. Congressmen really are treated like princes. It could all go to your head. They also relish that the press back home has no clue as to how they vote.

This year though, it’s been a little different. The political tide has receded for the President and his war, leaving Connecticut’s three Republican representatives and a Democratic senator embarrassingly exposed. This has brought unusual amounts of money into challengers’ campaigns, some of which are spent to research voting records and to publicize them. We’ll see whether it makes any difference.

One sample of these otherwise invisible votes this year dealt with Medicaid. The House, as it often does, proposed further cuts to health care for the nation’s poorest. The bill passed 216 to 214. And wouldn’t you know, our own Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson provided the two critical votes for passage. You won’t find that in their campaign literature.

On the other end of the economic scale was the extension of tax cuts that benefit only the wealthy. Rob Simmons joined colleagues Shays and Johnson to support the president and their wealthy donors to make that happen. That one probably won’t make it into the campaign brochures either, though perhaps it will appear in a spiffy specialized mailing or two to big donors.

Another quiet bill to help those who should perhaps be more self-reliant went to the oil industry. It subsidized their deep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Nancy Johnson, out of step with the rest of her colleagues of both parties in most of New England, voted for it.

In fact, environmental issues like this one pose a great dilemma for nonprofit activist groups. The League of Conservation Voters for example, takes great pains to track the votes of every member on 20 to 30 high-value issues. If a few Republicans accumulate a decent record, the groups often endorse them for election. Chris Shays has been one. But there’s a problem. While Shays and others may vote right on specific items, they also do something much more environmentally destructive: They vote for the likes of Tom Delay, John Boenert, Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich, and Richard Pombo for their leadership. This assures that many bills disastrous to Mother Nature will come up for a vote. Our smiley-faced representatives may thereupon vote No, but to no avail. The damage had already been done when they picked leaders.

Those folk are very powerful. Take the tiny amendment to spend $500,000 specifically to study the effects of global warming on hurricanes and other nasty weather. Chris Shays joined the Democrats to vote for it, but Simmons and Johnson joined their pro-oil leadership to kill it. The bosses have a lot of clout.

Subtle differences arise in the Senate too. Joe Lieberman recently supported the president by voting for the US-Oman free trade agreement. Chris Dodd voted No. If the Oman treaty goes the way of the parallel Lebanon treaty, Taiwanese executives will soon open factories there, import near-slave labor from Bangladesh, produce phenomenally cheap clothes for US retailers, and ship them here duty-free. Since the accord contains no labor protections, the only ones to benefit will be the Taiwanese and the retailers. The Omanis will just be frustrated bystanders. You won’t read about that stuff in your local paper, much less the senator’s campaign brochures.

Thus, the war is not the only issue on which Lieberman and our Republican Congressmen stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the president. They do it every day. We just don’t hear about it much back home.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)