Speaking Up:
Hastert Finds Leading
In House Isn't the Same
As Being in Charge
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GOP Rifts, Tough Rivals
And His Own Low Profile
Have Bred Frustration
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The Budget Brings Limelight
By David Rogers

11/08/1999
The Wall Street Journal
Page A1
(Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WASHINGTON -- When his temper rises, House Speaker Dennis Hastert 's left leg bounces up and down. On this September afternoon, it was pounding like a jackhammer as House Budget Chairman John Kasich exhorted Republicans to make a last stand in defense of strict caps on government spending.

In fact, the caps had all but collapsed already, and it seemed unreal to hear the young chairman lecture those who had fought for months here in the trenches while he was off on his failed presidential campaign. As the session degenerated into shouting, Speaker Hastert watched helplessly until the bells rang for a floor vote. Silent, in shirtsleeves and suspenders, he walked back to his private office and slammed a table to vent his anger.

Frustration is part of the job for this burly Illinois Republican. Plucked from obscurity last winter, Mr. Hastert was asked to steer the House with a razor-thin majority and Democrats smelling blood. Try as he might to lead, he has been undercut by supposed allies, while his pragmatism and decency often have been lost on an institution given more to image and raw power.

Not since Thomas "Tip" O'Neill retired in 1986 has the House had such a down-to-earth leader. Yet the former speaker, an imposing white-haired Massachusetts Democrat in size 52-long suits, ruled in what seems now a faraway age -- and with a level of experience and majorities that Mr. Hastert can only dream of. "Tip and Hastert are similar because they both trust the system to come up with a solution," says Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and friend of Mr. O'Neill. "But Tip always knew he was the speaker, and he was in charge. Hastert doesn't know he's in charge."

Learning how to shoulder that responsibility is Mr. Hastert 's great challenge. After almost a year in office, he remains a work-in-progress who challenges Washington's conventions. A small-business conservative from the Midwest -- he was the fry cook in his parents' restaurant -- Mr. Hastert is less of an ideologue than his fiery predecessor, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, and less of a political pro than House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

As speaker, Mr. Hastert occupies a unique and difficult position. He is the Republican Party's highest-ranking political leader, but also the man charged with speaking for the House as an institution.

In a city that focuses on the winners and losers of each vote, this onetime history teacher still marvels at the process, at seeing the House simply "work its will." But he is so submerged in the daily operations of Congress that he has yet to establish the public profile he needs to be an effective modern House speaker.

Now, a year-end budget confrontation with President Clinton is pushing him into the limelight. Mr. Hastert has challenged the White House to do more to protect Social Security trust funds. At the same time, he has interceded to reach a compromise with the president on foreign aid. And the two men appeared together in Chicago to support a bipartisan effort to help lure investment to poor communities.

Along with the hitches, there have been achievements. Passage of a financial-services bill last week, after years of stalemate, was a reward for Mr. Hastert 's doggedness. He is pressing hard for legislation before adjournment to aid the disabled. At the same time, Mr. Hastert was unable to stop a patients'-rights bill he didn't want, or pass a gun-control measure he did. Also this week, a promised vote on raising the minimum wage is at risk of being delayed because of inadequate support for the Republicans' own version.

Illinois defines him best, and his world is very much one of Midwest conservative males. With his wife, Jean, back home teaching, Mr. Hastert shares a townhouse in Washington with his two top aides, both longtime veterans of Illinois politics.

In the speaker's office, pictures of Abraham Lincoln have replaced the dramatic dinosaur head that dominated GOP meetings under Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Hastert talks less than his predecessor, but when he does speak, he isn't to be trifled with -- stopping in midsentence if someone isn't listening.

Rep. Henry Bonilla, an awestruck Texas freshman when Mr. Gingrich and the GOP took power in 1994, describes the contrast this way: "We felt that Gingrich, with all his intellect and wisdom, would always come up with the answer. With Denny, we help him think it out."

Unlike Mr. Gingrich, who sought to define House Republicans by the sheer force of his personality, Mr. Hastert has no such illusions. Instead, he struggles with how to be different from Mr. Gingrich: trying to share power more, without giving up so much that he undercuts his effectiveness. He has a toughness born of years in Illinois politics. "If you weren't tough, you wouldn't take on a five-vote majority looking down the barrel of a Democratic majority," says aide Mike Stokke.

From the outset, however, the 57-year-old former high-school wrestling coach has had to cope with conservatives on his right and the ever-growing partisanship of Democrats on his left. Traveling in Berlin in September, Mr. Hastert was amused to find German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder down in the mouth about his own political losses in state elections a few days before. "Sounds like you and I have something in common," the speaker said.

Sometimes -- as with the gun-control debate in May -- he has risked being overshadowed by the House's combative No. 3 GOP leader, Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas. In response to the Colorado school shootings, the speaker wanted passage of "common sense" gun-control provisions but faced deep splits in his own party and among Democrats over the issue. "He was caught in a cleft stick," says Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and ally of the National Rifle Association.

Mr. DeLay worked with the NRA and Mr. Dingell to engineer an amendment that weakened the proposed restrictions. In the process, the Texan appears to have undercut Mr. Hastert by quietly signaling to Democrats that the whip had no objection if the bill itself went down. The result was an erosion of support on both sides. The weakening language drove away more liberal gun-control advocates, while Mr. DeLay's signal ensured that few votes would take their place.

Alarmed by what he sensed was afoot, Hastert aide Scott Palmer rushed to make it "crystal clear" that the speaker wanted a bill passed the next day. Mr. DeLay then voted with Mr. Hastert . But the damage was done: Conservative Republicans had already told gun supporters at home they would vote no, and Democrats of all stripes joined forces to help kill the measure and embarrass the speaker.
 
Mr. Hastert can be faulted for being naive in his expectations of what could pass the fractious House and for ignoring early warnings from Mr. DeLay's office. The incident poisoned relations between Mr. Hastert and Democratic leader Gephardt, but the bigger lesson was in the speaker's own party and his need for a better intelligence network. "In retrospect, I think I should have known exactly what the terms of the agreement were that DeLay had with Dingell," Mr. Hastert says. "Because I thought it was one thing, and it was something else."
There is a genuine friendship between Mr. Hastert and Mr. DeLay. "The most effective speakers of this century were men not known to most Americans," Mr. DeLay says in defense of the low-profile speaker. But the high-voltage Texan, who gets up each morning to work out at the gym, can't resist a power vacuum and casts himself as the protector of the party's conservative base.

With the Republicans' divisiveness, Mr. Hastert 's biggest losses have come at the hands of his own party. Just last month, he was soundly beaten by GOP doctors on a subject he knows best as a legislator: health care. Mr. Hastert , who has adult diabetes, has shown a longstanding commitment to improving access to health care.

The central issue was the right of HMO patients to sue their insurers for coverage decisions that cause injury or harm. Three major alternatives were offered, and nearly a third of the Republican caucus broke ranks to support a Democrat-backed bill giving patients the greatest access to state courts. Mr. Hastert , fearful that lawsuits would increase health costs and limit access, had favored a bill with no right-to-sue component. Adding to the humiliation, he allowed himself to be outflanked again by the same centrist Democrat who helped beat him just months before on gun control, Rep. Dingell.

His greatest error may have been the decision to abandon his pledge of following "regular order." Under these customary procedures of the House, committees would have written the bills in open meetings, voting on amendments to vet different issues before the legislation went to the floor. Instead, in what seemed a panic to regain control, Mr. Hastert virtually shut down individual committees, and the floor debate became a winner-takes-all race among the alternatives, most of which he was ambivalent about himself.

Facing certain defeat, Mr. Hastert went to the well of the chamber in the last minutes to defend his position -- exposing himself politically in a way Mr. Gingrich typically avoided doing in similar situations. The next morning's headlines screamed of his loss, and the problem persists. When it came time last week to choose House members to negotiate with the Senate over the final version of the bill, Mr. Hastert reverted to acting more like a political leader than speaker. Of the 13 negotiators he picked, only one had actually voted for the final version of the bill the House passed but Mr. Hastert opposed.

Nothing has been more frustrating than the time-consuming budget process that has led to the year-end showdown now with President Clinton. Mr. Hastert has never been at home with the process, despite his years on the appropriations committee in the Illinois Legislature. "I know the game, I've been around the game," he says. "But it's a different kind of game around here."

An early lesson came during HouseSenate negotiations this past spring on a supplemental spending bill to fund the war in Kosovo and relief for Central America. Returning to the Capitol late at night, Mr. Hastert joined an aide monitoring the talks on a C-Span telecast. Together, they watched with astonishment as House Republicans from steel states joined Democrats in supporting a costly amendment creating a new loan fund for companies hurt by foreign imports.

"I think it was the first time he realized what it meant to be speaker," says another aide. Mr. Hastert went to his office and telephoned down to his negotiators, then met with the rump Republicans the next morning to reverse the vote. "It made me see you don't take anything for granted," he says. "And if you're going to take a stand, you make it stick."

By rights, the House Appropriations Committee should be his natural ally; its members see themselves -- like Mr. Hastert -- as pragmatists. Yet from the start, the committee and speaker have been on opposite sides of a budget debate dominated by what to do about staying under strict spending caps enacted in 1997, which many members of the appropriations panel consider unrealistic.

"I'm going to stick those guys in an F-22, and let them take off," Mr. Hastert said of the wrangling over military spending.

But the speaker tends to focus on getting the bills passed, and shows less interest in their substance than Mr. Gingrich did. As a member of the appropriations panel, Mr. DeLay has taken on a greater role, so much so that he risks undermining Mr. Hastert 's credibility in budget negotiations with the White House. "DeLay is running the boat," says Democratic leader Gephardt.
The nearly five-month odyssey of this year's agriculture budget -- signed into law last month by Mr. Clinton -- illustrates the speaker's struggles. The initial House bill became a showcase for conservatives, who stalled the measure until Mr. Hastert ordered cuts to hold spending to last year's levels. By the time it cleared Congress, all this was history: The money was back in, plus $8.7 billion more in new emergency farm aid.

The added costs knocked a hole in GOP budget plans and also provoked a costly split between the speaker and Republicans who wanted to use the same bill for their own purposes: to help Northeast dairy farmers and to relax sanctions that hurt wheat growers in the Pacific Northwest. After Mr. Hastert appointed nine Republicans to negotiate for the House in meetings with the Senate, he found he could no longer control them. Aides were hastily dispatched one evening to stop the proceedings for fear the measure was heading hopelessly off the track.

Again going against regular order, Mr. Hastert imposed a settlement from on top that killed both the dairy and the trade measures. But he had to buy peace by adding more money for drought assistance and accepting 60 pages of legislation imposing landmark price-reporting requirements on the meat-packing industry. Rep. Tom Latham, an Iowa Republican whose vote was pivotal for the final deal to go forward, insisted on the language, which was sought by hog producers in his district. Caught in the middle, coincidentally, was a small Aurora, Ill., packing firm in Mr. Hastert 's own district.

Now when it comes to appointing negotiators on other spending bills, Mr. Hastert meets with them first to make sure there are no problems. "I learned something there," the speaker says.

For Mr. Hastert , it all comes down to being himself: "I had a high-school football coach that I just revered," he says. "When I started coaching, I wanted to be him. But I found I couldn't be him. I had to be me. . . . You have to do what you can do best."