To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > News April 5, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/04/05/contract Broken contract Republicans find populism is easier when you don't have any power. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jake Tapper Freshman Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., strode to the front of the House floor, full of pride and promise. It was March 29, 1995, and Nethercutt was debating that day's "Contract With America" pledge: a constitutional amendment limiting the number of terms a member of Congress could serve. Term limits were a big deal to Nethercutt. His surprising 1994 victory against House Speaker Tom Foley was due in no small part to the issue. In stark contrast to the 30-year incumbent he was trying to fell, candidate Nethercutt pledged to serve only three terms. A Wisconsin political action committee, Americans for Limited Terms, ponied up $320,000 in "issue" ads against Foley. "It was not just a major issue in his race, it was the issue," says Paul Jacob, national director of U.S. Term Limits. When Nethercutt's fellow freshman Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., offered a hard-line amendment -- one that would limit a member's tenure to six years, or three two-year terms -- Nethercutt wasn't afraid to take the bold step and support Inglis. "The Inglis amendment not only reflects the will of my constituents and the American people, it returns the House of Representatives to the role the Founding Fathers intended: 'the people's House,'" Nethercutt said that day. "Six years provides us enough time to come to this great body, pass laws on behalf of our constituents and then return home to live under those laws." But a funny thing happened to Nethercutt on the way to his retirement party: He changed his mind about term limits -- for himself, anyway. "Experience has taught me that six years may be too short a time to do the job the people ... elected me to do," Nethercutt has said. A Nethercutt spokesman says that the congressman is spending time in his district, hearing from the voters what they want. U.S. Term Limits' Jacob, of course, is outraged. He says Nethercutt's pledge to leave the House after three terms "was up on his Web site till last summer. Then one day it mysteriously disappeared." The term-limits promise was deleted at around the same time that Jacob was chagrined to hear that the congressman had purchased a house in the D.C. area. Five years after they stormed into the majority on their "Contract With America," some of the Republican congressional majority seem to be waffling about fulfilling their populist, anti-government agenda. It's not just backtracking on term limits: There's a decent chance that House Republicans will cut a deal with their Democratic counterparts to ensure that the annual congressional cost-of-living increase, which is usually voted down ceremoniously, somehow slips past the goalie this time. Another endangered populist reform is more obscure but probably more significant: rotating committee chairmanships. It's not just Republicans who are capable of breaking promises, of course. On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., has long been a term-limits supporter. Before knocking off an incumbent Democrat in his victorious 1992 campaign, Meehan had pledged a self-imposed limit of eight years of service, or four two-year terms. When the Republicans seized control of the House, Meehan supported their term-limits cause. He was the sole Democrat in a group of nine congressmen who sent letters to the clerk of the House instructing her to remove their names from roll call if, somehow, they outlasted their self-imposed limits. When term limits were defeated in 1995, Meehan was livid. "The whole exercise was nothing more than a big political show designed to confuse people into thinking that House Republicans really support term limits ... I have always been skeptical of the legislators who claim they are for term limits but have been in office for 15 or 20 years. The best test of any politician's credibility on term limits is whether they are willing to put their careers where their mouths are and limit their own service." But now word is out that Meehan is planning to run for a fifth term. A Meehan aide says that the congressman's work on campaign finance reform is of such importance he needs to stay in the House. Two other Republican term-limits crusaders -- Florida's Tillie Fowler and Colorado's Scott McInnis -- have also failed to follow through on their pledges to leave. There are at least eight term-limit promise keepers in all: Oregon Democrat Elizabeth Furse and South Carolina Republican Inglis have already departed; Republican Reps. Matt Salmon of Arizona, Charles Canady of Florida, Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Jack Metcalf of Washington are planning to. To Paul Jacob, the surrender of Nethercutt and Meehan underscores the problem term limits are intended to rectify: the arrogance of power. The only members who buck the system are newcomers who aren't as invested in it, he says. Of the 13 Republicans who refused to back a GOP motion to increase House committee funding in '96, for instance, 12 were newish members who had promised to limit their terms. Other Republican reform measures are on shaky ground. In January 1995, the House voted to limit committee chairmanships to three terms. That means that time is running out on the reigns of Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer of Texas and Foreign Affairs chieftain Ben Gilman of New York. And guess what? Now the GOP Conference is having second thoughts about the wisdom of rotating committee chairs. "Whether [retiring term limits supporter Rep. Mark] Sanford is here next year isn't as important as whether Henry Hyde is in charge of Judiciary," one House Republican staffer says. "This whole self-limited terms things makes a great political football but it does little for systemic reform. That the chairmanships are term-limited is far more important." The backtracking on rotating chairs is part of the same political cancer that Jacob hoped the GOP Congress would whack with chemo-populism. He's been enormously disappointed. "Congress has created such a wonderful system of pay, health care, benefits, pension -- it's a great job," he says. "Clearly it's the best job most of them have ever had." "You have to remember that the folks that we elected in '94 didn't take power," Jacob continues. "Newt Gingrich had been here for two decades. The average committee chairman has been in office for more than 20 years. So the power went from the old bull Democrats to the old bull Republicans." But new Republicans can become old bulls rather quickly. Ask Rep. Tillie Fowler. The steely Floridian was elected in the much-ballyhooed Year of the Woman, and was a strong supporter of Florida's "Eight Is Enough" state term-limits initiative. "The 1998 election will be my last, and, should I win another term in 1998, I will retire from the House at the end of the 106th Congress," she wrote to Jacob in February 1998. But like any number of righteous efforts -- monogamy, sobriety and humanitarian military intervention -- term limits may sound better in theory, and when applied to others, than they do in practice, and when applied to oneself. One year later, Fowler clearly is no longer so sure that her pledge was a good idea. Her turnaround is certainly understandable. As the new vice chairwoman of the Republican Conference -- as well as a member of both the Armed Services and Transportation and Infrastructure committees -- Fowler will unquestionably be able to serve her Florida district far better than as just another Sunshine State attorney with a degree from Emory Law School. Call it the impotence of being earnest: Fowler's having honored her promise won't mean much to her constituents when it comes time for the next round of base closings. Likewise, Marty Meehan can defend staying to fight the good fight in a Congress that increasingly turns a blind eye to the needs of the most disadvantaged, where few other members will be willing to take up the fight for campaign finance reform, and where broken term-limits pledges are as common as screwed-over interns. On the other hand, their constituents will be forgiven for wondering if they ever cared even remotely about term limits other than as a means to get elected and/or power and/or on TV. And of course there's an even bigger concern for both parties. Republicans making calculations for November 2000 are now suddenly forced to contend with the math of term limits. The imminent departures of Salmon, Canady, Chenoweth, Coburn, Sanford and Metcalf has caused many Republican strategists to lose patience with Jacob of U.S. Term Limits, whom they view as intransigent. Rep. Tom Davis, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, has said that the loss of the six term-limiters, combined with the GOP's existing five-vote majority, means that it's a tossup as to whether January 2001 will mean a second term for GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert or the election of new Speaker Richard Gephardt. Still other Republican professionals are peeved that the media is interested in this story at all. "Where were you when term limits were being debated?" one House Republican staffer asks. "This catches how many members? Four? The issue of term limits wasn't on anyone's radar screen in 1995 when we were actually trying to pass them. "George Nethercutt not coming back next Congress won't affect the [term limits] law one iota. In fact it might hurt it, since he might be replaced by someone less helpful to the cause." salon.com | April 5, 1999