WASHINGTON-Any good will House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.) hopes to bring to the 106th Congress could evaporate quickly if a deal is not struck with House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) on adding more Democrats to committees that will tackle key wireless issues and other telecom matters next year.
“Negotiations are ongoing,” said a Livingston aide.
Livingston met with Gephardt last Tuesday afternoon, but no agreement was reached. Both lawmakers’ staffs are expected to meet today for more talks.
So far, Livingston is not giving in to Gephardt’s demand that committee seat assignments reflect the House GOP’s 51-to-49 percent edge that narrowed after Democrats picked up five seats in midterm elections.
The House next year will have 223 Republicans, 211 Democrats and one independent (Vermont antenna-siting foe Bernie Sanders).
Gephardt wants 43 additional Democrats sprinkled throughout House committees in the 106th Congress. But it’s a tough sell. Livingston has offered seven more Democratic committee seats, and wants the size of House committees pared down.
At the same time, Livingston is rewarding early financial backers of his House-speaker bid with plum committee posts and is delegating more authority to committee chairmen than they had under outgoing House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who often intervened and called the shots from above.
Rep. Michael Forbes (R-N.Y.), an Appropriations Committee member who sits on the subcommittee that oversees Federal Communications Commission appropriations, was given a seat on the Republican Steering Committee for help raising funds for the House GOP leadership PAC. The Steering Committee makes committee assignments.
The Livingston regime appears tailor-made for House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), another GOP lawmaker from Cajun Country who is positioned to head the Commerce Committee in 2001 if Republicans can retain the House.
Replacing the four Republicans who left the Commerce Committee after the midterms are Reps. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Charles “Chip” Pickering (R-Miss.), Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
With the defeat of Rep. Rick White (R-Wash.), an influential telecom lawmaker who represented the state’s high-tech 1st District, there is a move afoot within industry to get another Washington lawmaker-like White successor Jay Inslee (D-Wash.)-on the Commerce Committee.
Based on the Committee makeup in the 105th Congress, Republicans will have a seven-seat advantage over Democrats. But that could change as committees are reconfigured for the new Congress.
Democrats are outraged with Livingston, and have threatened guerrilla warfare if the incoming House speaker fails to accommodate Gephardt.
In addition to Gephardt’s entreaty, the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative House Democrats-which will be critical to Livingston’s future as House speaker-is taking a direct yet less caustic approach to the controversy.
“One of the first, most important decisions you can make to promote bipartisanship concerns committee ratios,” the Blue Dogs said in a Nov. 18 letter to Livingston.
“Recognizing that neither of your immediate predecessors had a clean record in matching committee ratios to the makeup of the entire House, we urge you to correct this historic imbalance and establish a more just committee structure,” stated the coalition.
Indeed, Gephardt press secretary Erik Smith said Republicans-despite their slim majority-have 90 more committee seats than Democrats. Many Republicans, Smith noted, have multiple committee assignments while freshman Democrats in the 105th session had problems landing a single committee assignment.
For Livingston, the committee-ratio flap is an early test of negotiating skills he will need in 1999 to have any chance of success.
While lawmakers and lobbyists like to say telecom policy is bipartisan-despite the fact Republicans tend to favor deregulation more so than do Democrats-a nasty fight over committee ratios could undermine Livingston’s desire to repair the poisoned, partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill that found its full expression in a slew of investigations (the Portals, campaign finance, technology transfers) and ultimately in the Clinton impeachment proceeding.
“I don’t think there’ll be a great effect on telecom [as a result committee imbalance],” said Dennis Fitzgibbons, minority deputy staff director of House Commerce Committee.
But, added Fitzgibbons, ill-will from the committee-ratio dispute and strident partisanship generally could spill over into telecom policy making.
By the end of this Congress, hostility between Republicans and Democrats could be seen in party-line votes in the Portals lease probe of the House Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
Next year, as GOP lawmakers likely consider enhanced 911, antenna siting, digital wiretap, FCC reform, wireless taxes and other wireless issues, Democratic votes will be crucial to passing legislation.
In seeking the House speakership, Livingston, who bequeathed his appropriations chair to Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.), sold himself as a manager more interested in moving legislation than in being the kind of visionary and lightning rod for controversy that is the mercurial outgoing House speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
To do so, Livingston will have to reach out to Democrats because of the GOP’s precariously slim post-election majority. Yet, even if Livingston fares well in the next years, his tenure as House speaker could be a short one.
If a Democrat wins the White House in 2000, many political observers believe the new president will have coattails long enough to return the House control over to the Democrats. Then, for Democrats, there would be no committee-ratio problem. Gephardt would be House speaker.
In the Senate, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who struck it rich as a cellular investor in the 1980s, announced last week he will challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for the fund-raising post of national Republican senatorial committee chairman.
Meanwhile, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) was reappointed as head of the Democratic Technology and Communications Committee.
