Best gigs in Congress

The demise of one of the best gigs in Congress

Being a committee chairman ain't what it used to be. Just ask Rodney Frelinghuysen and six other top Republicans who've called it quits.

By JOHN BRESNAHAN

Relinquishing the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee once would have been an unthinkable surrender of congressional power. Rodney Frelinghuysen, with his decision this week to do exactly that, showed just how much cachet the role of committee chair has lost.

Hemmed in by term limits, a domineering party leadership, bitter partisan feuds and a GOP base that automatically loathes anyone in power, seven Republican committee chairs have decided to leave office at the end of this Congress, a remarkable level of turnover by any measure. Another committee chair, Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, is running for governor and will give up her gavel at the Budget Committee (the panel has had three chairs this Congress alone.) And Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who led the House oversight panel, quit Congress last year to become a regular on Fox News.

While term limits are behind most of the departures — Frelinghuysen, who had four years left in his chairmanship but faced a tough race for reelection, is the exception — it’s also true that being a committee chair has lost a lot of its allure.

“Times aren’t like they used to be,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said. “Yeah, leadership needs to give direction, but the committee chairmen aren’t what they used to be.”

The story of the decline of the committee chairmanship is two decades in the making. When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the House in 1994 following four decades of Democratic control, one of the most important reforms they initiated was reining in the power of individual chairmen. Gingrich instituted a six-year term limit on chairmen, and he created a steering committee dominated by leadership to choose the nominees for those posts.

Contenders for the committee posts would have to lay out their legislative agendas before they were handed a gavel, and they were forced to toe the party line as never before.

The idea was designed to make the committees more accountable to leadership, and ultimately, to the American public. It was a concept that enjoyed wide support within the Republican-controlled House, even if it meant an end to the prized “seniority system” on committees, where chairmanships were awarded to members who successfully rose through the ranks.

"There was a huge nationwide hue and cry for term limits," former Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) told The Washington Post in 1998. "There was a sense that maybe by having [committee] term limits for chairmen, we could assuage the national appetite."

Yet Gingrich’s well-intentioned reform has contributed to the paralysis now gripping the House. Committee chairs are influential and they get on TV. But they have no real deal-making authority, especially on high-profile legislation.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other party leaders get involved even in minor policy fights that were handled in the past at the committee level by Republicans and Democrats who had served for years on the same panel and had valuable expertise on their issues. Now, every decision is evaluated in the never-ending struggle by party leaders to one-up the other side. Often bills are more about messaging and tribal warfare between the parties than addressing the country’s needs.

"I don't disagree with the concept of term limits," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who thinks the six-year limit is far too short. Hensarling is retiring after being forced to give up his post atop the Financial Services Committee. "I'm not sure that three terms is quite enough. I sense 20 terms is probably too many. There may be a happy medium there."

Hensarling added: "Are term limits playing a role in an exodus of chairmen, along with collective years of wisdom? Of course it is."

Another huge problem for Republicans is that the past two GOP speakers, Ryan and John Boehner, have been hobbled by deep ideological divides within their own party. The House Freedom Caucus and other hard-line conservatives, aided by right-wing media outlets whose raison d'etre seems to be hammering GOP leaders, give senior Republicans and committee chairmen far less room to maneuver on legislation than their predecessors enjoyed.

Before cutting any deal with Democrats, top Republicans must account for whether the Freedom Caucus or some other group will try to oust the speaker. Being ideologically pure is more important than being effective.

All of which leads to the worst possible outcome for the House: weak speakers overseeing weak committee chairmen. It’s a perfect prescription for inaction and dysfunction.

“I respect my management team — the leadership — but this model that was given to us in 1995 has not helped the institution,” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), former chairman of the Agriculture Committee. “It has not helped the quality of the work product. If anything, it’s made it more difficult.”

Republicans argue that term limits for chairmen prevent individual lawmakers from exerting excessive control over legislation and give more junior members a chance to move up. Republicans point to the stagnation atop the committees among House Democrats — who don't impose term limits on top committee posts — as evidence that their system works better.

For instance, former Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) spent 28 years as chairman or ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee before being ousted by ex-Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) after the 2008 elections. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who retired in December in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal, was the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee for more than a decade, despite the fact it was clear to party leaders and his colleagues that he was no longer capable of doing the job.

"Remember, a lot us wouldn't be committee chairs if there were not term limits to begin with," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who has been term limited out of the Judiciary and Science panels. "I believe in term limits. Yes, it was part of the reason not to run for reelection. But I think it's good to have turnover in the committees. And it's good not to have one person amass such power that they can throttle any legislation they want to for 30 years."

Another related problem for Republicans — one they will admit to only privately — is the ban on earmarks.

When Republicans won back the House in 2010 after four years in the minority, they eliminated earmarks from spending bills. The practice had become rife with abuse: Gingrich had expanded the use of earmarks as speaker, and the system eventually spun out of control as annual appropriations bills were larded up with thousands of legislative favors that never received any congressional or public review. The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska and the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal helped bring an end to the practice, and it's highly unlikely it will ever come back as long as Republicans are in power.

But as with term limits on chairmen, there were unforeseen consequences from a needed reform. Lacking earmarks to smooth the passage of annual spending bills, the appropriations process has all but ground to a halt. Each year it seems to get worse. After a three-day shutdown earlier this month, the federal government is now operating on a short-term continuing resolution — the fourth enacted so far this fiscal year — that expires on Feb. 8. At least one more will be needed to get through September.

And a broader deal to raise budget caps still eludes House and Senate leaders, mixed up in a bitter partisan struggle over immigration.

House Republicans blame the Senate for much of the breakdown in the appropriations process, and there's some truth to that. It’s become all too common for the Senate to forgo an annual budget resolution — making it harder for the Appropriations Committee in either chamber to do its job — or to drag out the process of passing spending bills in order to put pressure on the other side to cut deals on unrelated legislation.

Funding the government has become a political weapon to batter political opponents, rather than a bipartisan exercise in governance.

The situation is similar in the Senate, where party leaders have also become far more powerful at the expense of committee chairmen, making life more difficult for individual senators.

All of which leads back to Frelinghuysen. In his statement announcing his retirement, the New Jersey Republican — the sixth Frelinghuysen to serve in Congress, including his father, a member for 22 years — vowed to finish up the annual spending bills in “regular order,” congressional parlance for abiding by the committee and subcommittee process.

But given the state of affairs in Congress when it comes to exercising its power of the purse, that vow looks like little more than a pipe dream.

“I think it’s fair to say the leadership exercises a lot more control on chairmen than they did in the bygone era,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a member of the Appropriations Committee who is retiring this year as well. Between the failure to pass a budget providing overall guidance to appropriators and the elimination of earmarks, Dent added, "That is all a recipe to weaken the committee."