january 23, 2006

The Next Majority Leader?

This morning, I had a conversation with Congressman Roy Blunt, the acting House Majority Leader. The race to fill Tom DeLay’s shoes ends with a vote by Republican members of the House on February 2. My story will air next Wednesday, February 1, but here’s some of that interview.

David Brody: On the House Leadership race, Tell me where you’re at right now, where you feel, your confidence level, and where you think it’s going from here.

Rep. Roy Blunt(R-Mo): Well, David I feel good about this. I think nobody has a better likelihood of counting the votes in the House than I do. I’ve been the Whip or the Deputy Whip the last seven years, so my job is to know the Republicans in the building better than anybody else and frankly know the Democrats better than any other Republican. [I’m] always trying to figure out what we can do to try and get those handful of Democratic votes that make something more possible for us to have a more private sector oriented, more positive conclusion for the American people.

Brody: Where do you want to take the GOP here post Tom Delay?

Blunt: As the majority matures the way you lead the majority changes as well. I think we have to listen more as we did last year than we ever have before, and by listening more we produced better results. We were able to do things in the spending side of the budget that we hadn’t done ever before or hadn’t done in almost a decade.  We looked at the mandatory programs for the first time in eight years and put some reforms in that saved money that I think are going to perform even better in terms of serving people. In the non defense discretionary part of the budget last year, we appropriated money at a level at or below the level two years ago and at or below the level of the previous year. That’s a big deal. At the end of that process to try and help pay for Katrina, we even took an across the board cut of all the discretionary spending. The record we set last year is a record we need to move forward with. We obviously now [have] more spending controls, budget reform, and also we need a commitment to look at those mandatory programs annually-- not just once every 10 years, because that’s really where the growth in spending in the government is.

 Brody: Congressman Shadegg and some others have brought up this prescription Medicare Bill and No Child Left Behind. Big government. The spending getting out of control. Your contention is to see the big picture here?

Blunt: I do think you have to look at the big picture. I also think you have to look at where we are in healthcare. If you’re going to continue to have Medicare, you can’t continue to suggest that prescription drugs are no longer a part of that. They are a rapidly growing part of that. But what we saw was to find a private sector solution rather than have the Democrats and a few Republicans join together and find a totally public sector solution. There are 24 million people that have taken advantage of the Prescription Drug Bill, and so far all the costs are less than anticipated because the competition out there to provide those services is greater than anticipated. Competition, free enterprises are critical Republican priorities.

Brody: There have been conservative critics who have said that the GOP has gotten away from their view of limited spending in Government.

Blunt: Well, there are always critics. I think it was General Lee during the Civil War who said unfortunately all our best generals became newspaper editors. It's easy to be a critic if you haven't been responsible for making this process work.

 Brody: How much of a priority is lobbying reform not just now because of the headlines but in the future come 2006?

Blunt: Well, the first lobbying reform, the major lobbying reform in the history of the country was when Republicans took over the Congress, I wasn’t here yet in 1995, but others were and we began to have disclosure of lobbyists for the first time ever. Clearly, it’s takes a while to figure out how you get around those disclosure requirements. Now it’s time to clearly up the ante to make lobbyists have more of the penalties that members have always had, to make lobbyists do more of the reporting and to do it as soon as possible. If a lobbyist buys a staffer or a member a lunch, it's fine with me if it’s posted on the Internet that day. You can see what that staffer was working on, see why he or she needed to go out with that lobbyists, and see what the lunch cost, though I think we’re going to go to limits that frankly in Washington that make a lunch unlikely but maybe a cup of coffee possible.

Brody: So the accentuation is on disclosure here. Disclosure is very important.

Blunt: Disclosure is very important, and on the travel area, virtually all the private paid travel I’ve ever done, I hosted the AIPAC trip to Israel, gone once and hosted it four different times. That’s a trip that is defensible, but we may have to go to the point that for a while you say we are immediately going to have a ban on travel as we work to find out what kind of prior approval of travel would make sense.

Brody: Congressman Shadegg told me that he is skeptical that you and Mr. Boehner will really work hard towards lobbying reform.

Blunt: I think we're all committed to lobbying reform. I think institutionally we have to be sure we're moving forward in the right way-- and there's a moment here where you need to fulfill people's sense of their trust in you--and your willingness to put the facts on the table. Every 10 years you probably need to look at the rules you put in place and say now who has figured out how to skirt around the edges of this rule. I don't think it's a pervasive problem, but it's clearly a problem--and it's a problem that needs to be dealt with. Personally, I don’t either have the time or inclination to spend a lot of times with meals, or golf games, or something else that somebody else pays for.  I can pay for my own meals and golf games. I’m better than eating than playing golf.

Brody: Is this a one ballot vote here?

Blunt: I think it is. I think it’s probably a one ballot vote, and I think we’re going to win that but this is a hard job.

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