Outsider in the White House (13 page)

In Vermont, we put together a strong office, which placed a great deal of emphasis on constituent services. Whatever else I and my staff would accomplish, I wanted the senior citizens, veterans, and working people of Vermont to know that if they were having trouble getting what they were entitled to from the federal government, our office would be there for them. While constituent services is not a very sexy issue, it's something that my office has always taken very seriously, and every year we respond to the concerns of thousands of constituents. Lisa Barrett, who had been a poverty lawyer for many years, did a great job in organizing that office. In recent years, David Weinstein has done an outstanding job.

Initially, I decided to break with congressional precedent and not hire a press secretary. Why should I pay someone to talk to reporters for me? It was a waste of taxpayer money and an ego trip. I would do it myself. Was I wrong! Six months later, I hired Debbie Bookchin, who had written for the
Rutland Herald
. Tina Wisell, who had done radio work in northern Vermont, eventually replaced Debbie and has been with me for several years.

In December, Jane and I borrowed some money from a friend (we were flat broke) and went to Mexico for a week. Away from the political turmoil, I was able to think about what my office would focus on, and how we could be most effective.

A delightful surprise of my first few weeks in Washington was the wonderful “Welcome to D.C.” party put on by the progressive community there. With Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader as the main speakers, some 500 people crowded into the Eastern Market. Clearly, for many of those people, I was more than the congressman from Vermont. All over the country there was a growing dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual and the two-party system, and the turnout reflected that.

Until recently, the House leadership sponsored a bipartisan orientation for incoming freshmen, usually held at Harvard. The purpose of this was to provide new members with boilerplate information on the workings of Congress as well as expert opinion from leading thinkers on the economy, social issues, and foreign policy. While there is a time and place to hear opposing points of view, this was not one of them. I personally was offended to hear from some of the leading scholars in the Reagan administration. I had not come to Congress to hear about the virtues of supply-side economics. Other new members, with different political perspectives, had similar objections. Ironically enough, it was Newt Gingrich who called a halt to the bipartisan orientations in 1994. He was quite right.

The orientation did, however, give me a first taste of my new status as a member of Congress. It was a bit heady, to say the least, to fly from Andrews Air Force Base via military transport into Boston, have my bags delivered by the military, and then ride to the hotel in a bus escorted by local police cars with lights flashing.

Although I didn't get much out of the lectures except for a few arguments, I did have the opportunity to establish friendships with members of my class, the 102nd Congress, including Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), Maxine Waters (California), Pete Peterson (Florida), Jim Backus (Florida), Bill Jefferson (Louisiana), Rosa Delauro (Connecticut), Chet Edwards (Texas), Jim Moran (Virginia), Bud Cramer (Alabama), Tim Roemer (Indiana), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), Collin Peterson (Minnesota), and John Cox (Illinois). While most of my congressional friendships, then and now, are based on shared political views, I have grown to like a number of members with whom I have very little in common politically.

As part of orientation, the new members were invited to the White House for a social occasion to meet with President and Mrs. Bush and Vice President and Mrs. Quayle. Both the president and his wife were gracious and friendly to Jane and me, and seemed quite familiar with my victory. Jane had a long chat with Mrs. Bush, who said something to the effect that “Oh, your husband defeated that man who was so rude to the president.” Go figure. On the other hand, Dan and Marilyn Quayle were decidedly unfriendly. Also, in case you're interested, the food was terrific.

My primary concern during the orientation period was how I would be treated with regard to committee assignments and seniority. I was the first Independent in forty years. What would they do with me? Committee assignments are sorted out by the parties, and I was affiliated with neither of them. Would I get on
any
committee? In Congress, the longer you serve the higher up you move in the committee structure. Would I move up if I were reelected or would I always be at the bottom of the pecking order—the last to speak, never gaining a chairmanship or ranking position?

During the campaign, I had publicly stated that I would seek entry into the Democratic Caucus, while remaining an Independent. I had spoken to some of the caucus leaders, and they were not unsympathetic to such an approach. Unfortunately, not all Democrats were in agreement. Charlie Stenholm of Texas, a leader of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, led the opposition. He was of the opinion that having a socialist in the caucus would not sit well with folks back home.

Stenholm distributed a document containing some of my less than flattering observations on the Democratic Party. Frankly, I was surprised by the quality of his research (my introduction to Lexis Nexis)—the quotes were accurate. Over the years I had been extremely critical of the Democratic Party and its tepidness about fighting for the working families of this country. While party liberals were willing to support my entry into the caucus, the conservatives dug in their heels. At this point I worked out a compromise with Speaker Tom Foley and Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, which remains in effect today: I would not become a member of the Democratic Caucus, but in terms of committee assignments and seniority, I would be treated as if I were a Democrat, as the last-ranking member of my class.

Freshmen members are entitled to pick one “major” and one “minor” committee. I selected Banking and Community Development (very major) and Government Operations. I made those choices because both committees were chaired by progressive Democrats, and more importantly, because their jurisdictions dovetailed with my interests. The savings and loan fiasco had figured largely in my campaign speeches: it was my opinion that working people should not have to pick up the tab for the bailout, and that legislation should be passed to protect them. As a former mayor, I was also interested in creating affordable housing, maintaining community development programs, and developing other progressive initiatives for cities and towns. All of this fell within the domain of the Banking Committee, which was chaired by Henry Gonzalez, one of the strongest progressives in Congress.

The Government Operations Committee has oversight responsibility for all departments and agencies of the federal government. This committee can determine whether and why a department or agency is not adequately performing its mandate. It has wide investigative capabilities. Government Operations was then chaired by John Conyers of Michigan, with whom I had shared podiums as mayor of Burlington. I respected John, a longtime progressive, and looked forward to working with him.

Most Americans don't know the seating arrangements for members of Congress. I didn't before I arrived. In the Senate, each member has his or her own desk, and the Republicans and Democrats are on different sides of the room. I assumed the House was organized in the same way, and wondered whether a new section would have to be created for me. But House members are not assigned permanent seats; we sit wherever we want. The Democrats usually face the Speaker's chair on the left side, while the Republicans take the right. I sometimes hang out with the Illinois crowd on the Democratic side.

The Democrats and Republicans each have a “cloakroom,” located just off the floor. I use the Democratic room. It's a place where you can make a phone call, grab a sandwich, watch TV, or sack out on the couch if it's 2 a.m., you need a nap, and you don't want to make the trek back to your office.

Posted on the walls of the Capitol and House office buildings are directories listing the rooms and phone numbers of members of Congress. Question: How do you tell a Democrat from a Republican from an Independent? Answer: The Democrats are in roman type, the Republicans are in italic, and there I am, all by myself, in
SMALL CAPS
. My election also created problems for C-Span. They had to add a new line to their congressional record graphics. Now, when C-Span records House votes, there is a line for Democrats, a line for Republicans, and a line for the Independent. Back home everyone says, “Bernie, we always know how
you
vote.” Lucky me.

On August 2, 1996, the House finally gets a chance to vote on raising the minimum wage, and the measure passes overwhelmingly.

After months and months of dealing with destructive and reactionary legislation—slashes in Medicare, Medicaid, and education; the evisceration of important enviromental legislation; limiting a woman's choice regarding abortion; and punishing children—the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed something to
improve
the lives of tens of millions of Americans who are in desperate need of help.

I have worked to raise the minimum wage from almost my first day in Congress. In 1993, I introduced a bill which would have immediately raised the minimum wage to $5.50 an hour and indexed it to inflation. The only other person in the House to introduce similar legislation at the time was Marty Sabo of Minnesota.

It's easy to forget what real life is about when you make $133,000 a year as a congressman. It's easy to forget what low-income workers feel when you're one of the twenty-nine millionaires in the Senate. It's easy to forget that most people don't drop $50 on lunch when you hang out at the country club with people whose income makes
you
look like a minimum-wage worker.

But there are 12 million American workers earning less than $5.15 an hour, or $10,712 a year. And no, these are not all middle-class teenagers earning a little mad money. Three-quarters of them are adults, mostly women, trying to keep themselves and their families alive. These are people who take on two and three jobs, because forty-hour-a-week jobs are hard to come by, who have to walk to work or wait long periods for a bus because they can't scrape together enough money to buy a car, who sleep in emergency shelters or in campgrounds because they can't pay the rent.

The national minimum wage today, in terms of purchasing power, is 26 percent less than it was twenty years ago. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation from 1968, it would be $6.45 today. The increase passed by Congress—$4.70 on July 1, 1996, and then to $5.15 on July 1, 1997—is totally inadequate, but it is at least a step forward. Further, millions of workers making slightly more than the minimum wage—$5.00 to $6.00 an hour—will also get a bump upward.

Since the 1930s, when minimum wage legislation was first enacted, much of the business community and their representatives in Congress have fiercely opposed raising the minimum wage. Executives make millions of dollars a year in income, and yet they oppose a $2,000 a year increase for a fellow American making $8,840. They send forth their lobbyists to do battle—from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, from the National Association of Manufacturers. Pathetic.

The way the debate on the House floor shaped up was nothing new. Same old lies. Same old bullshit. Same old empty sound-and-fury. Suddenly Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, and others who had received millions in contributions from corporate America and the rich were deeply concerned about the well-being of low-income workers. Raising the minimum wage, they declaimed with melodramatic handwringing, would
hurt
the poor, not help them. So deeply pained were they by the plight of low-income workers, they could barely hold back the tears. The right-wing think tanks, which are funded by corporate America, had come to the same conclusion, based on “scientifically” assembled empirical data: raising the minimum wage would result in job loss. Companies would not be hiring young workers.

After these same congressmen had just passed legislation to throw millions of poor people off welfare, to make major cuts in food stamps, to slash affordable housing, forgive me for thinking that their sudden display of concern for low-income workers seemed a bit insincere. The theatrics bordered on the comic. Armey vowed to fight an increase in the minimum wage with every fiber of his being. And he did. The Republican leadership stalled a vote for as long as possible. John Boehner, chairman of the House Republican Conference, threatened to kill himself if a minimum wage increase was passed. He didn't. Where is Republican honor when you really need it?

But there was a new, even more insidious, element in this year's debate. In 1989, President George Bush signed a minimum wage increase that had the support of most Republicans, including Newt Gingrich. It was a reasonably bipartisan effort. It is an indication of how fast and far Congress has veered to the right that in the early phase of the 1996 debate virtually no Republicans would back a minimum wage increase. Even more incredible, there were now a significant number of Republicans who wanted to
abolish
the concept of the minimum wage altogether, and grant American workers the “freedom” to work for $3.00 an hour. What had once been the dream of the lunatic fringe had now moved into the mainstream of the Republican Party.

The law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. Employers want to pay workers bottom dollar, and workers are too desperate to refuse. Voilà. The “magic of the marketplace” at work, brought to us by people who make $133,000 a year. How very civilized.

Millions of Americans are now working for starvation wages. To add insult to injury, these low-wage jobs cost
taxpayers
huge amounts of money in corporate welfare. When fast-food chains, grocery stores, and service industry employers pay $4.50 or $5.00 an hour, their employees often need additional support in order to eat, pay the rent, and take care of their kids. These are the workers who receive Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and other resources through government programs.

In 1993, when I introduced my minimum wage legislation, I was only able to secure fifty cosponsors, almost all progressive Democrats. No Republicans signed on. President Clinton was also opposed, as I discovered at a meeting with him in the Oval Office. Clinton confers regularly with the congressional leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties. In a phone conversation, I suggested it might be appropriate for him to meet with the leadership of the “Independent Caucus” as well. He was kind enough to schedule me for a fifteen-minute session. I stayed for half an hour.

Our discussion centered on three issues. First, I tried to win his support for raising the minimum wage. He said that he was not unsympathetic to the idea, but that it couldn't be done while his health care proposal was being debated. Second, I commiserated with him about the savage attacks he had been receiving from the media. He and Mrs. Clinton were being ripped apart by Rush Limbaugh and other right-wingers every day of the week. I asked him to think about the very serious problem of corporate control of the media and what, if anything, could be done about it. Lastly, I asked for his support of the Northeast Dairy Compact, which would greatly assist Vermont's dairy farmers. Vermont farmers are going out of business in large numbers because they receive a very low price for their milk. The Compact, which is supported by all six New England states, would allow the Northeast region to set a fair price for the milk their farmers produce. Clinton understood the concept and indicated that he was not unsympathetic.

Despite the importance of the issue and the desperate straits of a core constituency of the electorate, there was practically no discussion in 1993 by the Democratic Party about raising the minimum wage. Now, in 1996, with a presidential election coming up, and tired of being on the defensive over the Republican agenda, the Democrats finally recognized it as a good political issue: polls showed that over 80 percent of the people were sympathetic to raising the minimum wage. The Democrats correctly perceived that making a pitch for low-wage workers would boost their campaign against Gingrich and Bob Dole, and their woeful record on the needs of working people.

To give the Democrats due credit, once they decided to push the issue, they did a very effective job. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt organized an impressive press conference at which low-wage workers had an opportunity to air their views. It was unusual and refreshing for workers to have a platform on Capitol Hill. Ted Kennedy, Paul Wellstone, and a few other senators spoke, as well as a number of us from the House.

From then on, the Democratic leaders placed the issue at the forefront of their agenda. They had members raise the issue during the “one minutes” at the beginning of the day, and worked hard and creatively to get the legislation attached to various other bills that the Republican leadership was bringing up. For once, they were focused and determined to press a piece of legislation to its conclusion.

In one of the few instances since Gingrich ascended to the Speaker's chair, the Republicans couldn't hold their members in line. Faced with the unpleasant task of explaining to low- and moderate-income workers in their districts why they were not willing to support a long overdue increase in the minimum wage, six northern Republicans broke away from Gingrich and backed the legislation. Soon after, another fourteen Republicans were prepared to bolt, with more waiting in the wings. Finally, a majority of the House supported raising the minimum wage—and Gingrich and Armey, kicking and screaming, were forced to call a vote.

The debate itself was quite extraordinary. In effect, Republicans argued that miserable wages are good for America because they keep the country competitive. For workers, of course, this “competition” means a race to the bottom: responding to wages paid in China, sometimes as low as twenty cents an hour.

But the major battle on the floor involved the Goodling amendment, designed to exempt businesses with $500,000 or less in profits from paying the minimum wage. By itself, this amendment would have taken away minimum wage protection from new applicants for some 10.5 million jobs. More importantly, it would have paved the way for the eventual elimination of the minimum wage concept altogether. The proposal to remove minimum wage requirements for small businesses was defeated on a close vote of 229 to 196. One hundred and eighty-nine Republicans voted for it.

During the debate, the only valid point that the Republicans made was to ask why the Democrats, if they were so concerned about low-wage workers, had not passed a minimum wage increase two years earlier when they had the majority in the House and Senate? I agreed, and got some time from Scott McInnis, a Republican from Colorado, to express my views.

While Republicans were incorrect in claiming that a small increase in the minimum wage would lead to job loss, their argument hid a more important issue. The major crisis of the current period is not unemployment, but the rapid decline in working-class wages. While unemployment remains too high—and it is far higher than “official” statistics indicate—the more serious problem is that real wages for American workers have declined by 16 percent over the last twenty years. In 1973, the average American worker was earning $445 a week. Twenty years later, that worker was making $373 a week in real dollars.

The situation is even more acute for low-wage workers and workers who lack a college degree. Real wages for male high school graduates in entry-level jobs plummeted a full 30 percent in the past fifteen years, while wages have fallen 18 percent for young women. During the 1980s, about three-quarters of the new jobs created in America were poverty-level jobs, many temporary and part-time.

“Welfare reform” has deepened the crisis. What happens to wages when millions of the working poor lose their safety net and are forced to compete with other low-wage workers? What happens to public employees and their wage scale when they are replaced by former welfare recipients forced into workfare programs?

The minimum wage bill passed by a vote of 354 to 72. Interestingly, 160 Republicans ended up voting for the bill, when just a few months before none of them had supported it. Many people might find this conversion puzzling. In fact, it is the predictable result of an important political dynamic.

The forces of reaction work most effectively behind closed doors, hidden from public scrutiny. When debate on an issue is pushed into the open, in this case, onto the floor of the House, when the close link between special interests, the wealthy, and their “representatives” in Congress is threatened with exposure, the opposition will often surrender rather than resist.

Force a vote, so that the public can see the position of their representatives, and often the common good will prevail. This is what happened, to my great surprise, with an amendment I introduced in September 1995, seeking to eliminate outrageous corporate bonuses at Lockheed-Martin.

One of Burlington's largest employers was Martin Marietta. When that defense contractor merged with Lockheed to form Lockheed-Martin, I was more than usually attuned to the implication of that deal—the downsizing of 17,000 American workers. For making the “tough decision” to fire all those workers, the executives of the newly merged company decided to pay themselves $91 million in executive bonuses. Ninety-one million dollars as a reward for obliterating 17,000 jobs.

Some of the major recipients of that bonus were the CEO of the company, Norm Augustine ($8.2 million); former Tennessee governor and presidential aspirant Lamar Alexander ($236,000); former secretary of defense Mel Laird ($1.6 million); and retired general and former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Vessey ($372,000).

Now, a $91 million bonus for executives who were laying off 17,000 workers is obscene enough. Even worse, Bill Goold, my legislative director, discovered that fully one-third of that money, $31 million, was to come from the Pentagon as “restructuring costs.” As soon as I learned about this outrageous federal give-away, I drafted an amendment to prevent the Pentagon from paying the bonus. Imagine: workers thrown out of their jobs paying taxes so that the bastards who fired them could stuff their pockets. Bill termed the legislation the “payoffs for layoffs” amendment.

When I brought that amendment to the floor, I thought I'd have a very hard fight on my hands. But to my surprise, John Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Committee and consequently the person responsible for Democratic strategy on the bill, said they were going to support it. He discussed the amendment with Bill Young, the Republican chairman of Military Appropriations, who signed on without hesitation. The amendment passed by voice vote.