It’s been a rough couple of days for Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), who’s trying to get a health-care bill through the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A National Journal CongressDaily headline on Thursday none too subtly declared that “Waxman’s Approach Raises Questions,” with a member of the committee, Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.), declaring he will try to hold up the legislation on the floor if he isn’t allowed a vote on an amendment to prohibit federal funding for abortion.
On Friday, Waxman became so frustrated with the “Blue Dog” Democrats that he threatened to have the legislation bypass his own committee. Needless to say, an attempt to block out the 52 or so Blue Dogs was supremely risky; it would almost certainly guarantee their opposition and probably make passage impossible if the Republicans stood unified in opposition.
Then Rep. Charlie Melancon (D., La.), co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, emerged from negotiations declaring that Waxman had “lied to” him and his allies; Melancon also accused the chairman of deciding to “sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America.” The fury of the seven Blue Dogs on the committee suggested that a permanent wedge had been driven between the panel’s Democrats.
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The development left Republican congressional staff stunned. “We were really surprised by the tone,” said one GOP staffer following the health-care debate closely. “I’ve been up on Capitol Hill for a number of years now, and I’ve never seen a member come out and say that a chairman of his own party has lied to him. . . . Maybe he’s getting a lot of backlash in his district about the cap-and-trade bill.”
By Friday afternoon, the bellicose Waxman of the morning had disappeared, replaced by a mild-mannered chairman who, emerging from a closed-door meeting with one of the leaders of the Blue Dogs, Rep. Mike Ross (D., Ark.), announced that negotiations would continue.
Put aside all the cheap, easy jokes about Waxman’s appearance, and note that while his district includes Hollywood, that word doesn’t usually fit his style. Henry Waxman is no newcomer — he’s been fighting in the congressional trenches since the 1970s. But it’s an increasingly fair question whether Henry Waxman is the lawmaker that Democrats want shepherding the Obama administration’s most sensitive legislation through the House process.
At the beginning of the year, Waxman challenged the House’s longest-serving member, Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.) for chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell probably was a more natural consensus-builder, for reasons of geography and history if not pure ideology. Dingell’s district has shifted over the years, but usually it has included diverse groups of Democrats, from somewhat socially conservative union members in Wayne County to liberal academics in Ann Arbor. He sometimes quarreled with his fellow Democrats on guns, military force, and auto emissions; he never qualified as a Blue Dog, but he seemed a bit closer to their world than did Waxman, whose district includes Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Malibu — 97 percent urban. Dingell’s lifetime ACU rating is 11.62; Waxman’s is 4.69 and was zero for several years.
“I’m sure there could be something said for the vast institutional knowledge that Dingell has,” said a Republican leadership staffer. In the CongressDaily piece, Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton and Rep. Nathan Deal (R., Ga.), the ranking member on the panel’s Health Subcommittee, longed for the good old days with Dingell, when they always felt respected and there had been legitimate bipartisan outreach. Stupak, a longtime ally of Dingell’s, said that if his old friend were still chairing the committee, he would never have a moment’s doubt that a pro-life amendment would get a vote.
The chairman’s constant spats with less liberal Democrats makes for some high, hanging softballs for Republicans: “Henry Waxman is good at advancing a liberal agenda very much in line with Speaker Pelosi but very much out of touch with the American people,” says Joe Pounder, a spokesman for GOP House Whip Eric Cantor.
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Waxman was one of the architects of the cap-and-trade legislation, which also turned into an uncomfortable vote for Blue Dogs; in fact, some Blue Dogs are lamenting to the press about their party leadership’s expectation that they make two unpopular and controversial votes before an entire month of constituent meetings.
Waxman has the misfortune of wanting to see his long-awaited policy goals become legislation while chairing the panel where the Blue Dogs have the most leverage. He may have thought that our liberal president’s popularity would sweep away all moderate-Democrat opposition to his far-left agenda, but for two straight cycles the Democratic party has won in conservative, Republican-leaning districts by running conservative candidates who pledged to accurately represent their hometowns’ values.
“None of this should have been a surprise,” notes a GOP staffer who’s been watching the health care legislation from the beginning. “He thought he could just do whatever he wanted — I don’t know how he could think it, but he can’t say he wasn’t warned that his committee and his caucus had members who weren’t ideologically aligned with himself.” The current thinking is that none of the Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade would vote for the health-care bill.
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Beyond all of his big headaches, Waxman is perfectly capable of generating small ones. Here’s how he described a recent hospital visit during an appearance on C-SPAN:
Somebody asked me, “Why is your knee jerking?” And I thought I was making a joke, and I said, “Well, I have Restless Leg Syndrome.” Now, I don’t think there is such a thing as Restless Leg Syndrome. I’ll probably hear from all those people who have it. But I thought that Restless Leg Syndrome was a disease that was created by a drug company that wanted to sell a drug for the disease they had created. And I was making a joke. Well, when I got out of the hospital, I looked at my record, it said, “He claims to have Restless Leg Syndrome.” Well, I don’t know if there is such a thing or not. I don’t have it. But a lot of people start thinking they have medical problems because they’ve seen too many of these commercials. I don’t think that’s doing the public a lot of good. It’s certainly making the drug companies richer, but it’s not doing a lot of good for the public.
A C-SPAN caller who suffers from the condition took issue with Waxman, and he laughed at the caller; now every organization that treats the syndrome is lamenting the congressman’s lack of understanding.
Perhaps there is such an ailment as restless-mouth syndrome.
— Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot for NRO.
