After breakfast I was stopped and invited to a luncheon by a defense contractor lobbyist, ‘especially appropriate considering your distinguished service in the military!’ I just smiled and nodded and promised to give it some thought.
As we rode upstairs in the elevator, I commented, “Well, at least we didn’t get hit on by the environmentalists. They’re probably off harassing the Democrats right now.”
“Unbelievable!”
I unlocked the door to our suite and led her inside. I sat down on a couch in the parlor, and then stood again so I could pull the invites out of my pocket. I set them down on the coffee table and sat back down again. “You need to be careful with this stuff, too,” I told her.
“Me? You’re the Congressman, not me!” she protested.
“Yeah, I know, but don’t be surprised when they start coming after me through you! Or our friends! What happens when the motorcycle lobby comes after me through Tusker? Or somebody offers you a great sounding job that you never actually applied for? Maybe I’m just being careful, but the money sloshing around this town could sink a battleship!”
“Huh! So, we aren’t going to any of those luncheons?”
I smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. Want to go to one and see what it’s like? ‘Luke, come to the Dark Side! We have cookies!’”, I intoned deeply. “I can’t be bought, but I might be able to be rented!”
“You’re hopeless!” she laughed.
“When I go to jail, will you promise to visit me? Conjugal visits?”
“Yuck!”
We went to the luncheon by the defense lobbyists, met the Cunninghams, and stuffed ourselves. Dinner that night was at the Smithsonian, and we were seated next to the Boehners. Despite our visiting the Bahamas regularly, that guy had a much better tan than we did. Tom Foley, Speaker of the House, was the speaker at the dinner. Then we had more drinks, turned down invitations to a late night ‘after party’ by two separate groups, and went back to the L’Enfant Plaza. We managed to get busy back in our room, and afterwards I teased my wife about whether she would be able to go an entire week without me. Her response was, to put it mildly, rude!
Chapter 107: Mister Buckman Goes To Washington
“Mos Eisley spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
Change the name from Mos Eisley spaceport to Washington, D.C., and you’ve got the idea! Even Obi Wan Kenobi would have despaired of this place! That doesn’t mean I was sorry I had run for office. It just made me want to be cautious.
Friday I managed to get lucky, and got a decent draw on office assignments. Basically names get pulled out of a hat, and afterwards you have 15 minutes to pick an office. There are three offices for the House of Representatives, Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon, all on Independence Avenue south of the Capitol. There is a definite pecking order in where you get to call home. It’s like back at Kegs, with Room Roulette, only not quite as organized, although probably more sober. Seniors outrank juniors, etc. The most coveted offices are in the Capitol building itself, but that is too small. Only really senior ranking people, like the Speaker or the leaders are in there. Most want to be in Rayburn, which is the newest building, and actually has an underground subway line over to the Capitol! Next down the list is Longworth, and then you have Cannon. Cannon is the oldest and you don’t want to be there. The offices are smaller and were designed before the current staffs got so big. Freshmen Congressmen end up on the top floors of both Longworth and Cannon, and in Cannon, half your staff is in what is known as “The Cages.” Quite literally, they sit in an open bullpen arrangement across a hall from your office, and are surrounded by cages which can be locked when unoccupied. It’s like Siberia, only not as congenial. There were actually two other Congressional office buildings, Ford and O’Neill, but these were only used by committee staff, and in the case of O’Neill, Congressional pages.
Brewster McRiley had told me about this, and told me to get an office anywhere but Cannon. When my name was called early in the process, I got one on the fourth floor of Longworth. It wasn’t the biggest office, but I would be able to keep my staff in one place without them feeling like second class citizens. Staffing would be difficult enough without having to put up with a two-tier system.
I wouldn’t be able to move in until sometime in December, during the lame duck session. Losers have to leave by the end of November. I wasn’t sure how you got to better offices if you moved up in seniority, but they had to have some sort of rules. My new office was still occupied by somebody who was voted out of office, so I decided to be polite and not check it out until after he had left.
I stayed through Saturday and met with Jacqueline Staymann-Huestis that morning. She seemed capable of meeting my needs, though snobby, which she tried to keep to herself but failed. Instead she tried for obsequious, considering she must have known about my money. Weird.
Marilyn and I had gone over our needs already, at least between ourselves. First and foremost, we wanted to keep our primary residence back in Hereford. It was close enough that I figured I could commute, if not every day, then every other day. We’d give that a shot before moving to Washington. Still we would need a place in D.C., and we wanted a home with a yard for the kids and the dog. The most convenient place, ‘for those who can afford it’, was in the Georgetown district or out near Rock Creek Park. She promised to line up some prospects. I could do a first cut on things, and then bring Marilyn down to make a final decision. One important feature I told her was the financing; I wanted a two year lease with an option to buy. I would be generous on the lease terms, since it was relatively unusual, but I needed an out if things didn’t work out.
My committee assignments weren’t all that great. The big committees, the powerful committees, were the ones like Ways and Means (in charge of taxes), Budget (in charge of, you guessed it, the budget), or Armed Services (again, pretty obvious). It was pretty unusual for a freshman to end up on any of these committees. I found myself selected for Science, Space, and Technology and on the Subcommittee on Science. My second committee assignment was Veterans Affairs, and the Subcommittee for Disability Assistance. The first because of my doctorate in applied math; the second because I was a veteran myself.
I wasn’t overly impressed, but I kept that to myself. Science, Space, and Technology had about half a dozen name changes over the years (adding and subtracting the words Space and Technology). Most of the time the committee played catch-up to whatever was happening out in the rest of the world. If they did manage to come up with something useful, you could count on them being overruled by one of the more powerful committees. Veterans Affairs was pretty much the same, and was relegated to being the outfit that supervised the Department of Veterans Affairs, which had only been created the year before. Generally, nobody paid any attention unless there was a scandal going on.
To the extent that I was ambitious, I needed to get off of these two committees, and onto something more interesting. With my recent background in political economics, Ways and Means or Budget would be good; with my military experience I wanted either Armed Services or Intelligence; with my knowledge of finance the House Financial Services Committee would be good (Andy Stewart’s old hangout). Even Transportation (Eat Your Peas! and infrastructure) might be interesting, although probably toothless.
That Saturday I made it home, and I spent the next couple of days getting to know my children again. Charlie was old enough to know what I was doing, but the twins were still a bit confused by it all. My schedule was full, though.