Outsider in the White House (14 page)

Here was a controversial piece of legislation—challenging corporate America, and in particular the right of the wealthy to pay themselves handsomely for eliminating the jobs of working people—which was being endorsed by both parties. The truth is, nobody wanted to defend, either on the floor of the House or especially to constituents, the government's use of taxpayer money to pay bonuses to executives (already making millions) who had just laid off thousands of American workers.

In politics, if you are not continually learning, you lose ground fast. I learned something from that success, both about the political process and about the rivers of “corporate welfare” that pour out of the Pentagon. Those lessons, along with some excellent work on the part of my staff, later enabled us to pull off another truly significant coup.

We learned, after much probing, that the Pentagon bonuses to Lockheed-Martin executives were merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of corporate welfare for the defense industry. Clinton's secretary of defense, William Perry, had instituted a new policy under which the Pentagon provides “restructuring costs” to companies that undergo a merger. Through this policy, the federal government offers corporations huge sums of money to encourage mergers in the defense industry. Corporate “efficiency” is the ostensible goal; there is no concern with the mergers' inevitable result, the laying off of many thousands of American workers.

Further, there is absolutely no evidence that fewer companies and diminished competition within the defense industry will save taxpayers one nickel. Lockheed-Martin already controls a dangerous 32 percent of defense business. Increased concentration by large companies will not lower our taxes, nor enable the Pentagon to purchase products for lower prices.

In any case, this is a perverse sort of government involvement in the economy. I subscribe to the concept of industrial policy, where the government plays a role in
creating
, with the private sector, decent-paying jobs. I do not believe that the government should offer incentives to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

In studying this issue, we learned that Lockheed-Martin alone had close to a billion dollars of “restructuring costs” in the pipeline. Another company had already received $200 million, and there were thirty-two other corporations in the process of applying for money to subsidize “restructuring.” Needless to say, despite the huge amount of money involved, this was an issue that had not received much attention, either by Congress or the media.

We managed to create a very interesting left-right alliance on the issue. New Jersey representative Chris Smith is a conservative Republican with whom I had been only slightly acquainted. He is best known as one of the foremost opponents of abortion rights in Congress. But Lockheed-Martin closed down a plant in his district, a plant that had employed 3,000 workers. Smith believed that the shutdown was encouraged by the Pentagon's financial assistance. After I introduced an amendment to end the incentive program, Smith supported it. That made it the Sanders-Smith amendment. Then a moderate Democrat, David Minge from Minnesota, a progressive, Peter DeFazio from Oregon, and others, signed on as original cosponsors. The amendment would come before the House with truly broad-based support.

Again, both John Murtha, ranking Democrat on the Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and the Republican leadership accepted the amendment without a fuss. Nobody wanted to oppose such a sensible amendment—not on the floor, in any case—especially with tripartisan support. Nobody wanted to have to explain how using taxpayer dollars to lay off workers would benefit America.

The only controversy regarding the amendment was what it would be called. Would it be the Sanders-Smith amendment, or the Smith-Sanders amendment? Smith's version was similar to mine, but mine was stronger. But Smith is a Republican in a Republican-controlled House. We agreed that my version would be adopted, but it would be called the Smith-Sanders amendment. The legislation attracted significant attention. A substantial article in the
Los Angeles Times
called it a “major defeat” for the defense industry. Of course, getting it through the House was only the first step. It had to survive conference committee and pass the Senate. The next day, to my delight, my office received four calls from senators requesting information on the amendment: Barbara Boxer, John McCain, Chuck Grassley, and Tom Harkin. Two Republicans and two Democrats—a good sign.

By developing that amendment, I touched on a major issue that had been well hidden, and that had apparently never before been discussed on the floor of the House. To my mind, I was doing what, as an Independent, I had been elected to do. I have come to understand that one of the most important roles I can play in Congress is to raise issues that, for a variety of reasons, other people choose not to deal with. Just shifting the framework of debate can have enormous consequences.

Frankly, the big money interests do not intimidate me—not the medical-industrial complex, not the military-industrial complex, not Wall Street or the American Bankers Association. Exposing the outrageous practice by which the Defense Department subsidized corporate mergers and the laying off of tens of thousands of workers is precisely what I was elected to do.

Still, when the total Defense Authorization bill came to the floor, I ended up voting against it, even though it included the Smith-Sanders amendment. Sometimes it's difficult to explain this sort of action to people who do not follow Congress. Simply put, I try to make each and every bill better by drafting and, hopefully, passing good amendments. When the final bill comes up, I weigh the good elements against the bad and, sometimes, even if I've improved it with amendments, I still end up voting against it. In this instance, the bill contained far too much money for the military—$10 billion more than the president had wanted, and he wanted too much.

Susan Sweetser's new Federal Election Commission report has just been made public. Lockheed-Martin has contributed $10,000 to her campaign, the maximum allowed by law. What a shock.

So much to do. So little time to do it in. On Friday, after the week's battles in Congress, I fly from Washington to Hartford, Connecticut, where Phil Fiermonte picks me up and we drive to Brattleboro, in southern Vermont, for the second of my campaign announcements. This one is much like the Burlington event, but features speakers from Windham County. All the seats are filled in the Town Hall by a crowd of about sixty or seventy people. A good sign. Also, the media coverage is good.

The highlight of the Brattleboro event is an electrifying speech delivered by a young high school student, Acacia Fanto. I am so engrossed by what she says that I don't mind being upstaged.

I first met this young woman when she came to the Vermont youth conference sponsored by my office last year. The conference brought together students from ten different high schools to give talks on issues they felt Congress should be addressing. The presentations, which in a number of cases required substantial research by the students, were excellent. The idea for the student hearing came from Tim Kipp, a personal friend who teaches social studies at Brattleboro Union High School. Acacia was his student, and her message is simple but profound: in order to preserve democracy, it is imperative that young people be actively involved in the political process. Without them, democracy will not survive. Her short speech is cogent and deeply touching.

Traveling through Vermont, I try to schedule opportunities to speak in the schools whenever I can. Over the past five years, I have spoken in almost every high school in the state as well as many elementary schools. It's important that young people get a chance to talk to their congressman, to express their concerns and opinions. Many of these students have very little understanding of the relationship of politics and government to their lives. Teachers tell me that it is surprising how many kids become more interested in the political process after meeting their congressman face to face.

Peter Shumlin, the Democratic minority leader in the state senate, endorses my candidacy at the Brattleboro meeting. Peter has not been publicly supportive in the past, but feels it is important to play a role in defeating the Gingrich agenda. After spending the night with Tim Kipp and his wife, Kathy Keller, at my longtime home away from home in Brattleboro, Phil and I drive to Bennington on Saturday morning for another opening announcement. Bennington and Brattleboro, the two major towns in southern Vermont, are only forty miles apart over the Hogback mountains, but they are as different as night and day. Brattleboro is the most countercultural town in the state, while Bennington is solidly working class.

The turnout at the meeting in Bennington is respectable, especially considering it is the kind of beautiful spring day when Vermonters hate to be inside. After a long Vermont winter, indoor meetings on a beautiful spring day are not usually a big draw. A highlight of the announcement is the talk by Mark Santelli, the former president of the UAW local at the Johnson Controls battery plant in Bennington.

On a Sunday in August 1993, I had marched with the UAW at the Battle of Bennington parade. The next day, workers learned that Johnson Controls was closing their plant, and 269 decent-paying union jobs would be lost when production was shifted to Mexico. Mark's valiant effort to keep the plant in Vermont had failed. My office was helpful in getting the laid-off workers some additional benefits under the NAFTA legislation. Mark is not only a respected union leader, he is also active in the hunting community and, like me, does not believe hunters need AK-47s to kill a deer. His support is much appreciated.

Next stop, Rutland. A political campaign is always full of surprises. This time it is a veteran, Jeffrey Hatch, who gives a terrific speech. As it happens, I had never met him before. He is very articulate and direct. “I'm a Republican, I'm a veteran, and I'm supporting Bernie Sanders because he's been good on veterans' issues.” In Rutland, the speeches are wonderful, but the turnout poor.

Now it's on to St. Johnsbury, the third and last stop of the day. St. Johnsbury is the “capital” of the Northeast Kingdom, the most rural, the most rugged, the poorest, and in some ways the most beautiful part of Vermont. Our activist support in the Northeast Kingdom is almost all working class: low-income advocates, family farmers, veterans. Two couples, Bob and Kay Perkins and Marvin Minkler and Mary Strole, organized the event. A number of seniors attend, but the crowd is small. One of my favorite people in the state, Jenny Nelson, a farmer from Ryegate, gives a terrific speech. Jenny and her husband, Bill, own a beautiful farm, which has been in the Nelson family for generations. Like many other Vermont farmers, they work incredibly long hours and are fighting hard to hold onto their land. Jenny, who is one of the leaders of Rural Vermont, a progressive family farm organization, talks about how we have worked together over the years on a number of projects to save family farms.

Phil and I rack up 500 miles on the odometer that weekend. Every mile is worth it. The campaign kickoffs in Brattleboro, Bennington, Rutland, and St. Johnsbury bring our supporters together and receive generally good news coverage. But they are also important because they remind me on a deep, emotional level why I am a congressman, and how fortunate I am to have such great people behind me. Having all those people supporting our effort is a source of great pride. It sustains me when I go back to the inside-the-beltway mentality of Washington.

Along with 434 others, on January 3, 1991, I was sworn in as a member of the United States Congress. On that day, as is customary, new members hosted receptions in their offices for friends and family who came by to wish them luck. We held a reception in our office, too. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. I was at meetings trying to prevent a war.

On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein, a former ally who was well supplied with American equipment, invaded Kuwait. On August 9, U.S. troops sent by President Bush began arriving in Saudi Arabia to prevent further Iraqi aggression. Now, in early January, Bush was seeking congressional authority for an all-out war with Iraq. I was opposed to giving him that authority.

From the very beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis, I was of the belief that the United States could push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait without having to resort to war. Diplomacy, economic boycott, isolation, financial leverage: we had many means for reversing the invasion. I was not only opposed to the war because of the potential destruction and loss of life, but also because I believe it
is
possible for the major countries of this planet, and a virtually united world community, to resolve crises without carnage. If this matter could not be solved without massive bombing and killing thousands of people, then what crisis could ever be solved peacefully?

Further, I was angry that the Iraqi situation was deflecting attention from the serious domestic crises that we faced, problems that I was anxious to tackle. (Some would argue that deflecting attention away from domestic injustice is one of the major functions of war.) Twenty percent of our children live in poverty, millions of Americans lack decent housing, workers' standard of living is in free-fall, and we need a major overhaul of our health care system to ensure affordable medical care for everyone. And now we were going to spend months engaged in a war with a two-bit tyrant.

In those early days of the 102nd Congress, several members, among them Ron Dellums and Tom Foglietta, organized an antiwar caucus in the House. What should our overall strategy be in trying to prevent the war? What alternatives were available to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait without bloodshed? How could we affect public opinion? How could we win more votes in Congress for our position? These were some of the questions we wrestled with at meeting after meeting in the first days of the new Congress.

In Vermont, I spoke at a large antiwar demonstration at the state capital. About 1,500 people attended. In Washington, I was appearing in the national media as a critic of the drift toward war.