Background Check

People to watch in the new Congress

Rick Henderson from the March 1995 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

Despite Bill Clinton's weakened position, the president can still veto bills he doesn't like and will need friends on Capitol Hill to advance his administration's agenda. Had the Democrats retained control of Congress, Sacramento native Bob Matsui might have supplanted New York's Charles Rangel and become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. (Democratic leaders did not want two New Yorkers, Rangel and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in charge of the tax-writing committees.) Now that Democrats are in the minority, Matsui, an ideological ally of Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, may instead become the Clinton administration's biggest booster on Capitol Hill.

The White House chose the telegenic 53-year-old Matsui, rather than more-senior trade subcommittee members (the 74-year-old Sam Gibbons and the legally challenged Dan Rostenkowski), as its principal House spokesman for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. But taxes and spending, rather than trade, will dominate the new Congress. Matsui was an early supporter of the rate-cutting tax simplifications in the 1986 reforms. More recently, however, he has become a "Panetta Democrat"--a corporatist deficit hawk who believes in using the Internal Revenue Code to supplement government activism.

Over the past few years, Matsui has supported the use of the tax code for a variety of social-engineering endeavors--targeted capital-gains cuts, limits on employer-provided parking to encourage the use of mass transit, and tax credits for child care and wind power. He supported the administration's stimulus package and the 1993 budget deal.

Since the election, he has become a vocal critic of the Contract with America and one of the few legislators to oppose any tax cuts, including Gephardt's and Clinton's. Matsui argues that the 1981 income-tax rate cuts expanded the federal deficit and ballooned the national debt; he says a similar tax-cut bidding war today would cause the deficit to explode. In fact, the deficit was driven up by the military buildup and by spending increases in the types of programs Matsui supports--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and other government intrusions in the marketplace such as job training and industrial policy.

Matsui's opposition to tax cuts may appear impolitic now. But it may eventually be echoed by Clinton, as spending advocates bombard the White House with demands for more money. Expect to hear the phrase Matsui now uses, "We can't enact any tax cuts we can't pay for," become a part of the administration's playbook in the coming months.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)

As a member of the California Assembly, Waters was a protégé of Speaker Willie Brown, the most powerful and most feared politician in state government. She came to Washington in 1990 and quickly became the most prominent freshman in the House.

Outside her South-Central Los Angeles district, people have heard of Waters mostly as a result of two events: the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the House Whitewater hearings. In the aftermath of the riots, she blanketed television and radio talk shows as an apologist for gang violence, actions that have prompted Michael Barone, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, to say Waters "speaks in the authentic accents of the street thug." As a member of the House Banking Committee, she also drew national attention during the Whitewater hearings when she repeatedly shouted, "Shut up," at Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) as he tried to question Clinton administration witnesses.

Despite her blustery demeanor, the 56-year-old Waters is more than sharp elbows and left-wing dogma. She supports programs to deter teen pregnancies and, unlike many inner-city legislators, plans to be more than a naysayer in the welfare-reform debate. In the state legislature, Waters was an important backer of the Greater Avenues for Independence program, better known as GAIN, which establishes work requirements for some welfare recipients. A former garment worker who earned a sociology degree when she was 32, Waters supports job-training programs that replace cash welfare grants with scholarship-like stipends to people who complete adult-education programs.

But Republicans promise to more than tinker with existing programs. The debate has now shifted beyond funding levels for food stamps to questions over what role, if any, Washington should play in anti-poverty programs. Republicans are now proposing giving states money to administer any programs they choose and otherwise getting out of their way. Waters will remain relevant in this debate only if Republicans fail to substantively slash welfare bureaucracies.

Waters is also a savvy politician. Previously a Jesse Jackson supporter, she endorsed Bill Clinton early in the 1992 campaign and co-chaired his California effort. She then distanced herself from him after he won the Democratic nomination, though not too far; her political support won her husband a post as ambassador to the Bahamas. And while Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) seethed at Republicans for cutting off taxpayer funds for the Congressional Black Caucus last December, Waters brushed the matter aside. "We are, I think, wise enough and capable of raising the money necessary to keep this organization going and I think that's what we're going to have to do," she told the Los Angeles Times.

The money will presumably come from shaking down corporate donors. And Waters's seat on the Banking Committee could help provide her with access to guilt money from businesses. Look for her to relentlessly prod companies to confront two issues: economic devastation in the inner city and bank-lending practices that allegedly discriminate against women and members of racial minority groups.

The Western Senators

The new Republican majorities are dominated by members from the South and the West, and for good reason: Americans have been moving West for almost 300 years and South for at least 30. The GOP must sweep both regions to retake the White House next year.

With their anti-welfare state positions, economic optimism, and morality-infused rhetoric, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott represent the spirit of the suburban South, a combination of upward mobility and conservative Christianity. Western attitudes are slightly different: less genteel, more get-out-of-my-face. In both regions, however, voters are energized by issues that the Eastern establishment considers outside the bounds of civilized discourse, including the rights of property and gun owners. And beyond the leadership, the West is just as important--particularly in the Senate, where population density doesn't matter.