Congress Prepares for Power Shift

MARGARET WARNER:

The Republicans' 12-year domination of Congress officially ends on January 4th. As Democrats prepare to assume the leadership, what lessons can they learn from the Republicans' experience and their own on what it's going to take to keep it?

For that, we turn to four former members who all held senior positions while their party was in the House majority. Our two Democrats are Tom Downey of New York, who had 18 years in the House and a prominent role on the Ways and Means Committee, and Martin Frost of Texas. He served for 26 years and was a senior member of the Rules Committee.

Our two Republicans are Bob Livingston of Louisiana, who was chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He resigned after 22 years in the House. And Bob Walker of Pennsylvania, a 20-year veteran of the House, he was vice chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's inner circle.

All four former lawmakers are now lobbyists in Washington.

And welcome to you all, gentlemen.

Bob Livingston, I'm going to start with you. You and Bob Walker were part of the Gingrich revolution, came to power in '94, a very ambitious agenda. What happened in 12 years to squander that that's instructive for the Democrats going in?

FORMER REP. BOB LIVINGSTON (R), Louisiana: First of all, Margaret, I wouldn't say we totally squandered it. The fact is that the economy was — is booming today because of what we did.

We lowered taxes, and we had an agenda. That Contract with America worked very, very well. It kept us on course for most of the time we were in, but I think in the last couple of years we got lazy. We just stopped, well, frankly, doing the job.

We were on the track of holding what we'd accomplished rather than being proactive. And I think a lot of it was due to the schedule.

The members of Congress simply weren't coming in more than, say, Tuesday afternoon to Thursday morning. And I often say that I believe that America's a full-time nation and it deserves a full-time Congress.

And Congress wasn't here, and so they couldn't have oversight. They couldn't do their jobs. They didn't understand fully what all the bills were. And they didn't know each other well enough to compromise with one another so that they could get good, comprehensive, effective, bipartisan legislation.

MARGARET WARNER:

Is that it, Bob Walker, not spending the time on the job?

FORMER REP. BOB WALKER (R), Pennsylvania: Well, I think that was certainly part of it. But I would add to that, that one of the real problems was that we did not keep the process open, that there was not enough debate, that there were very few open rules, as such. And so therefore…

MARGARET WARNER:

Where the Democrats could actually put their ideas out?

BOB WALKER:

And where the House could work its will in the end, because I think that produces the best legislation. So I think that ended up a being a mistake.

And the second thing that I also think was a mistake was the fact that fundraising was made more important than policy-making. And I think, as a result then, you ended up with the whole earmark syndrome and a lot of other things that really ended up destroying the ability to do the kind of policymaking that Congress is supposed to be doing.