“Fair enough. I wouldn’t think so. I’m not really sure how it works, but my check simply gets mailed direct to the Buckman Foundation, and then we cut a check to the Red Cross. If there was a problem I’m sure they would have let me know,” I answered.
“You don’t collect your paycheck?” asked Frank Riggs, incredulously. Around the room several other people stared as well.
I shook my head and shrugged. “All of my income from my books or public service goes to the Red Cross, but we are routing it through the Buckman Foundation. I’ll check with my accountants on this. Regardless, I won’t be having any problems on that score.”
Newt gave a noncommittal grunt on hearing this, and a few of my fellow freshmen just looked at each other in disbelief. John Boehner, on the other hand, had already seen evidence of my wealth, and just grinned back at me.
“Okay, so, if we are going to push this, and the Democrats are going to bury it, what do we do? I agree this will probably be helpful, but how do we make it work? The floor is open!” I finished.
At that pretty much everybody started talking at once, and Gingrich called things to order and went around the room. I had a pad and pen at hand, and started making notes. Some of the items were ‘Individual speeches’, ‘Push House Ethics Committee’, ‘Talk shows’, ‘Get Bush involved.’ It quickly became apparent that the House leadership would move to bury this thing in the deepest hole they could find. We needed to keep it front and center. That would do two things. First, by focusing on a Democratic House scandal we kept the heat on and would probably pick up some seats in Congress. Secondly, and almost as important, by focusing on Democrats misbehaving, we took the focus off the tanking economy and that would have to help President Bush’s re-election!
This technique hadn’t worked in the first time I went through, but that was before I recycled. Maybe I could help? Could I help defeat Clinton? Or would I hurt?
For the immediate future, we would need to focus on forcing the House leadership to respond to the report. This would take the form of impassioned speeches on the House floor, timed to catch the evening news, denouncing the ‘outrageous’ behavior involved. We would coordinate this with appearances on whatever talk shows we could handle, and hope to land on the Sunday morning shows. Try to get some tame reporters to lob a softball to the President about the ‘scandal’, and get him to comment how the House seems to need to clean up their act. Get reporters, and not just partisan Republican Congressmen, chasing down facts.
One idea I had was, “What about anything else with Congress? There are a lot of perks in this job. Now, I don’t want to get on my high horse, but are there other things going on we could slam them with?” I looked around the room. There had to be something to slam the Democrats with; they had controlled Congress for four decades! Unfortunately, I just couldn’t remember back to my past in enough detail. I knew that on the first go around, Clinton would hand Bush a defeat, and that in ’94 the Republicans would take Congress back. The details weren’t clear, though, and what would change with my actions this time? Was Clinton’s victory sufficiently large that nothing we did would help Bush and hurt Clinton? Was my involvement going to help or hurt taking back Congress?
The really big question was — was this helpful to the country? Clinton had been a very effective President, although on a personal level he had the morals of an alley cat. Shake his hand, but keep the other hand on your wallet, and then make sure to wash up. Oh, and don’t leave him alone with your wife or daughters! Then again, he actually managed to balance the budget, which was a big favorite of mine. Likewise, taking back the House resulted in gridlock, which Newt Gingrich had a major hand in. I wanted the Republicans to take back the house, because I believed it was the only way to force a budget deal, but did I want Gingrich to run riot over everything else? He did not play well with the other children. Could I help that?
You place your bet and take your chances. I was going to have to see how this played out. To a considerable extent, my recycle had not really affected anything important, other than my immediate family, for good or for bad. My business dealings had not changed the course of history very much. If I hadn’t invested in those companies, somebody else would certainly have stepped up. Now, though, with national politics, I could definitely affect things, and maybe not for the best. I was going to have to think about this!
Chapter 111: Dog Fighting and Legislation
Rick Santorum’s closing comment sounded true. “We are going to start a dog fight over this!” The agenda was that, beginning immediately, we would all get with our staffs and come up with ways to get a full blown investigation going through the House Ethics Committee. We would each start giving speeches in the well of the House, and with eight of us rotating, we should be good to give a speech every other week. We would start the beginning of the following week.
As the meeting broke, I offered the use of the house as a ‘War Room’ for anything related to this. In case anybody wanted to have a meeting away from one of the Congressional office buildings, just call and I would have security let them in. Then, as I escorted everybody out, I tapped Newt on the shoulder and he held back for a moment. “I need to see you about a piece of legislation I want to sponsor. When can I do that?”
An eyebrow rose. “And you’re meeting with me and not your committee chairman?”
“I’m sure I’ll meet with him soon enough, but he’s a Democrat, and I want to touch bases with you first.” One of Gingrich’s faults was a personal pride and sense of importance that could cause him to occasionally step on his dick. Better to be nice to him; he had the memory of an elephant!
He nodded in appreciation. “Have somebody call my office tomorrow. I’ll tell my assistant that you’ll be looking for some time.”
“Thank you.”
The next morning I started writing a speech to be given sometime next week. What most people didn’t understand was that when C-SPAN, the television network that covers Congress, is broadcasting a speech, there probably isn’t anybody listening. The cameras are rolling all day long, and Congress is officially in session, but the only time everybody really goes to the main chamber is when there is a vote going on. The rest of the time it’s mostly empty — except for the talking heads hoping to get a good sound bite on the news later in the day. Since everybody wants to make it to the news, and most speeches are predictable and boring, everybody is trying to figure out a way to get on the air.
My focus was going to be two-fold. First, “I used to be a businessman. If I ran a bank the way the Democrats run this one, the bank would be out of business, and I’d be in jail!” Second — “The Democrats say that this is very complicated. Well, every day, the voters have to balance their checkbooks. How complicated can it be?!” One way or another, keep hitting them with that message. It’s a business, and a business the voters understand. Some of my counterparts were going to focus on outrage and shame, and forcing the leadership to acknowledge the problem. We were also going to look into any other perks of the job, like the Congressional Post Office, and things like the gym and the barbershop.
I got fifteen minutes to see Newt the following Tuesday morning. When I got there, he had a television in the corner of his office, and it was tuned to C-SPAN. He waved me in, and then hit the volume control on the remote. “Come on, Boehner’s about to speak!” I turned to see my friend begin fulminating about the just released report, outrage spilling from his lips!