Leadership and Crisis (13 page)

I had suffered a tough loss, but I put it behind me. I knew there were other opportunities to serve my state, and I found one pretty quickly. For better or worse, I joined the U.S. Congress.

CHAPTER 6

CESSPOOL OR HOT TUb?

Harry Truman famously derided the “do-nothing Congress” of his time. Well, based on my time in Congress and its actions during the first couple years of the Obama administration, I’m all in favor of a do-nothing Congress. If Truman were alive today, I expect he’d long for the “good old days” when Congress had a measure of self-restraint.

A year after I lost the governor’s race, I was elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Washington, I witnessed first-hand how America is governed by a bipartisan, permanent political class that feels entitled to special status, influence, and power. We have to break the back of this elite clique by returning Congress to the role our Founding Fathers intended for it.

When I first arrived in Congress, I got a fair amount of attention because, well, I looked a little different than your average congressman. I was easy to spot, so several hundred members and aides would greet me with “Good morning, Bobby,” or “Good morning, Congressman Jindal,” while I still hadn’t learned their names. (My idea for requiring congressmen to wear nametags never gained traction.) After
I had been in Congress for several months, a good friend asked me, “Have you seen my friend, Congressman such-and-such?”

“White guy, mid-fifties?” I asked.

“Yep,” my friend said.

“Balding, slightly pudgy?”

“Yes, that’s him. When did you see him?”

“Only several hundred times,” I said.

What’s important in Congress, though, is not how its members look, but how they think and act—many have an unbounded sense of entitlement that I noticed as soon as I arrived in Washington in January 2005, just before President Bush’s inauguration speech on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. While a huge crowd stood on the Mall for hours in the freezing cold, members of Congress went from their offices through a heated tunnel, then to their reserved seats up front. We were told to wear special “Member of Congress” pins on our lapels so the Capitol Police and Secret Service would know who we were. Walking in front of me was a veteran congressman who was not wearing his pin.

“Sorry sir, you can’t go in here,” a security official told him.

He threw an absolute fit, screaming, “Don’t you know who I am?!”

Another officer recognized him and quickly came over to smooth things out. “Sorry,” he said, “We didn’t recognize you.”

The congressman snapped back, “Well, it’s your job to recognize us!”

These security officials were trying to protect us, and this congressman was treating them rudely. And it never seemed to bother him that while he was sitting comfortably up front, his constituents were literally out in the freezing cold, waiting in line for a turn in a Port-a-Potty.

Members of Congress receive all sorts of perks that reinforce this attitude of privilege and arrogance: special elevators, reserved parking spaces, dining rooms, etc. It’s well-known on Capitol Hill that members of Congress can often get out of traffic stops simply by flashing their congressional I.D. I also remember one White House meeting when a senator threw a childish tantrum—and even threatened to oppose us on a key healthcare vote—just because the senator was not seated at the same table as the president. We rearranged the chairs and got the vote.

To be clear, not all members of Congress get caught up in this culture of privilege, but many do. Based on my three years in Congress, I can tell you that as a group, congressmen are not smarter than ordinary Americans, nor do they have unique insights or capabilities. A senator once told me a lot of the state legislators in his state would probably need public assistance if they weren’t in politics. The same holds true for more than a few members of Congress. As they say, dumb people need representation too ... and they surely have it in Washington.

Although congressmen are anxious to regulate more and more of the economy, you wouldn’t want many of them running your business. As George McGovern admitted after he left the Senate, started a business, and went bankrupt, “I wish I had known a little more about the problems of the private sector.... I have to pay taxes, meet a payroll—I wish I had a better sense of what it took to do that when I was in Washington.”
¹
And he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for president! Likewise, in announcing his decision in 2010 to retire from the Senate, Indiana’s Evan Bayh explained, “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one
more than Congress has created in the last six months.” This was a rare moment of clarity from Washington.
²

Still, for all its faults, Congress does have some capable, intelligent legislators. It’s like that old Clint Eastwood movie,
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
. There are some brilliant folks, and there are some that couldn’t pass a CAT scan. Some have impeccable integrity, and others will end up in jail. Some display great humility, and others are supremely arrogant.

Nevertheless, Americans don’t have a high opinion of Congress right now. Polls show that only 21 percent of Americans believe Congress is doing a good job. (I want to know who those 21 percent are and find out what’s wrong with them.) When it comes to ethics and morality, studies show Americans rank congressmen barely above car salesmen. (An unfair comparison, in my book—at least most states have lemon laws to protect you from dishonest car salesmen.)

Believing they’re unpopular because Americans just don’t understand the great job they’re doing, congressmen send out more letters, fight for more pork and earmarks, and make more TV appearances. But the American people dislike congressmen precisely
because
they know what they’re doing—they’re spending our country into oblivion.

Congress has lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Many members are influenced far more by Washington than by their constituents back home. A city full of government employees, lobbyists, and government supplicants views the world differently from the rest of us. When congressmen do return home, it’s for brief, campaign-style appearances. They don’t have time for meaningful contact with regular citizens to learn about their everyday challenges. Before arriving in Washington, I decided to skip the reception and party scene, the sort of insider socializing that comes with being a congressman. As
a wise old Washington hand once said, when you first get to Washington, it’s a cesspool. But if you stay long enough, it becomes a hot tub. Well, there are plenty of people, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been soaking for too long.

In Congress, you have to resist a lot of suck-ups. You’re constantly flattered by endless numbers of people—staff, lobbyists, other members of Congress, bureaucrats, media figures, and others—all of whom ultimately want something from you. Eventually, many members of Congress start spending more time with these ego-strokers, and less time with their family and friends who are still willing to speak to them honestly. And that’s how they begin to lose touch with the real world.

I had to work hard to stay grounded in reality. My brother Nikesh is a lawyer in Washington, so I would crash at his place. His furnishings rightly belonged in a dorm room and the dinners were mostly microwaved, but it was all I needed. I also took every opportunity to fly to Louisiana to see Supriya and the kids. She made sure I didn’t take myself too seriously. “I don’t care if you’re a congressman,” she would tell me. “Go change your child’s diaper.” (When they need changing, they are always
my
children.) “And take out the trash while you’re at it.”

Congressmen tend to be insulated from the real world by their staffers, who often really run the show. Staffers are writing increasingly complex bills that members usually don’t even read. The first federal highway act in 1956, which started our national highway system, was less than one-tenth the length of most highway funding bills passed these days.
³
Former vice president and Minnesota senator Walter Mondale once recalled about his Senate staff, “I felt sorry for them, so I would try to work with them. Pretty soon I was working for them.”
⁴

Some people think members of Congress are lazy. In truth, they work long hours, but too many of them frequently place their own political interests ahead of their constituents. Congress engages in a lot of political showmanship, especially in committee meetings, which often amount to political actors reciting well-rehearsed scripts for the cameras. As Arizona Senator John McCain once put it, “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.” And as C-SPAN watchers can testify, this ain’t Hollywood.

In committees, congressmen ask witnesses “questions” by giving twenty-minute speeches. The witnesses are there to make a point, but you’ll rarely see anyone change his mind. To attract media attention, celebrities are often invited to testify, regardless of their actual knowledge of the topic.

Floor “debates” are run in a similar way, with legislators typically talking to an empty chamber. Each side talks past the other, and speakers often refuse to yield for questions because, well, that would cut into their time in front of the microphone and the cameras.

It became obvious to me that the hearings and house floor proceedings people see on C-SPAN are more orchestrated theater than true debates that people care about. I quickly realized the most productive use of committee meetings was to catch up on some reading or send out emails on my Blackberry. Some members, I kid you not, would just sleep right through the meetings.

Members of Congress often behave like kids who at first fight over toys, and then fight just for the sake of fighting. One child doesn’t care if he gets the toy, as long as his brother can’t have it. If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. Both parties frequently care less about achieving some specific policy goal, and more about inflicting
a “loss” on the other side. The problem is the American people are the ones who really lose and end up paying the bills.

Congress, in a way, is also like the Middle East—the place is plagued by ancient disputes and grievances. The prevailing attitude is, “When they were in the majority, they did this to us, so when we’re in the majority, we’re going to do this to them.” So they keep on fighting. But remember: for all the vinegar that gets thrown around in Congress, many members are part of a permanent political class that takes care of its own. They might fight on the House floor today, but tomorrow they’ll be opening a lobbying business together so they can take money from both sides.

A lot of congressmen “go along to get along,” but that’s no guarantee of success. I remember sitting in the locker room of the House gym when Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays walked over to then-Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel. Shays was a moderate to liberal Republican who tried hard—many Republicans felt too hard—to work with Democrats. But Shays had just learned the Democrats would drop millions of dollars to defeat him. “Gee,” he asked Emanuel, “what’s this about you pouring a million into defeating me?”

Emanuel put his hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s not a million—it’s twice that. Nothing personal.” Shays basically abandoned conservative principles in an effort to get along with the Democrats. It didn’t work.

Our country is in terrible financial shape, as we compile a massive debt for our children and grandchildren to pay. Right now, each American “owes” $45,000 on the national debt, and that figure is set
to rise much higher. The 2009 budget deficit was nearly the size of the entire federal budget in 2000. And by 2012 the size of our debt will exceed our country’s entire GDP. Congress recently voted to raise the debt limit to over $14 trillion. Estimates are that the debt will nearly double by 2020 to $26 trillion.
⁵

To cover this spending, the federal government borrows money from foreign countries, which makes us even more dependent on the Chinese or other powers, and it prints more money, which will lead to inflation and a weaker dollar. And count on your taxes going up—
way up
. Economist Bruce Bartlett estimates, “Federal income taxes for every taxpayer would have to rise by roughly 81% to pay all of the benefits promised by these programs under current law over and above the payroll tax.”
⁶

We inherited from our parents a better way of life and more opportunities than they had. But our exploding debt means our children may be the first generation in a long time to have fewer opportunities. Families can’t spend more than they earn and neither should their government—it’s not all that complicated. What we need to do is institute a series of radical changes that I would call the “Saving Our Grandchildren’s Inheritance” package.

We start by remaking Congress. First step: make being a congressman a part-time job. When Congress meets, a lot of bad things happen. Astronomical amounts of money get spent; the government takes over banks and car companies; people try to reengineer entire sectors of the economy. Elected officials inevitably feel the need to do something, and they crave the media coverage that accompanies big proposals, no matter how wasteful or destructive. As Mark Twain observed, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”