Pay Raise Plan Doomed by Leadership, Tactics : Analysts Say Congress Should Have Taken Its Case to the Voters

“We face reality here today,” Rep. Vic Fazio said Tuesday as his colleagues prepared to demolish the controversial pay hike plan in an avalanche of “nay” votes. “We’re doing what has become inevitable.”

At a tactical level, the Sacramento Democrat, who led the fight on behalf of the raise, may have been right: The attempt to give members of Congress, federal judges and some other high federal officials huge pay increases through parliamentary sleight-of-hand led to political disaster.

As other analysts viewed it, however, the pay raise fiasco was more than a tactical blunder. It represented a telling failure of leadership. By refusing to confront the issue directly and make a case up-front with voters, Congress lost a chance to take what many see as a significant step toward better government.

In the process, Democratic leaders gave themselves at least a temporary black eye. But it was questionable whether the episode will have long-term impact on their dealings with President Bush on major national policy issues--issues such as the economy, which involve overwhelmingly powerful forces that directly touch the lives of millions of Americans.

Eliminating Honorariums

At its heart, the pay increase plan was an attempt to grant higher salaries in exchange for eliminating the so-called honorariums, speaking fees and other side deals by which members of Congress augment their bank accounts. These outside sources of income are one of the principle vehicles by which interest groups gain access to members of Congress.

“My sense is that you have to deal with this issue in a straight-forward way,” said John Palmer, dean of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and a former senior fellow at Washington’s Urban Institute. “There should have been plans for a straight-up vote on the raise, closely tied to a restriction on honorariums, along with a strong attempt to educate the public on the need for a raise.”

“They never tried to make the case for why it would be a good deal” to raise pay and remove the honorariums, opting instead to try to slip the deal through without a vote, said a White House aide, who believes that the episode will have negative effects for President Bush as well as House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.).

White House aides, he said, view Wright as having been noticeably damaged by the pay raise debacle. Some aides, he said, argue that a weakened Speaker will be less of a rival to Bush on policy matters.

“But I think it will hurt us,” this aide said, speaking on condition that he not be named. With a powerful Speaker, the White House at least has someone among the 435 House members with whom to negotiate and cut deals, he argued, saying: “We can’t negotiate with all of them.”

At the last minute, members of the House once again demonstrated their instinct for self preservation by quailing in the face of a firestorm of public outrage. Opinion polls have shown that more than 80% of the public opposed the increases.

“Today we, the Congress, will be reflecting the voice of the people regarding the attitude on congressional pay,” Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) declared before the vote.

The harder part of leadership, conspicuous mostly by its absence, would have been to try to reshape opinion by taking the case for the raise to the public. Then lawmakers could have held themselves accountable by enacting it on a roll-call vote.

“I would have proposed a series of smaller increases phased in through the front door, instead of trying to get one lump sum through the back door,” said Palmer.

Some supporters of the raises dismissed that approach as unrealistic in the face of pervasive concern about the budget deficit, combined with what Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Mann called the “visceral anti-political feelings” of many Americans which have traditionally inclined them against pay raises.

“I think it was just an untenable situation,” having Congress in a position of voting on its own salaries, Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, said. Wertheimer had vigorously supported the raise. “The way things are set up, no matter what your intentions are, it looks like you’re feathering your own nest.”

But at least one member whose sense of reality has never been questioned, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), was willing to risk the public wrath by openly defending the raise, even as it was going down to defeat.

“The quality of all three branches will suffer because we do not have the guts to say what we are worth,” said Rostenkowski, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a 30-year Hill veteran. “Let’s stop breast-beating and finger-pointing. My colleagues, you deserve a pay raise.”

No one knows whether a more open approach, as embodied by Rostenkowski and a handful of others, might have achieved a different result. But Tuesday’s vote made abundantly clear that the tactics used by the House leadership were a blueprint for political disaster.

Gambits Backfired

Indeed, the story of the pay raise is the story of a series of gambits that backfired one after another:

--The commission. The theory behind depending on a federal commission to propose the raise was that it would shield the lawmakers from the expected resentment of their constituents.

But critics of the raise quickly seized upon this device for what it was, a way to avoid accountability. They used this criticism to fan public resentment against the raise.

“I think the public is tired of the Machiavellian way the government does business,” said Palmer--an attitude that he said stems in part from reaction to the Iran-Contra scandal.

--The single 50% hike. The rationale behind seeking a raise so big that it embarrassed even its proponents was that it would be easier to get Congress one big raise than to risk a series of annual political battles over smaller increases.

“It’s like taking a quart of castor oil all at once, instead of a pint every four hours,” said Capitol Hill analyst Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Far from facilitating passage, however, the large dose made it even harder for the public to swallow.

--The proposal to vote for a lower raise and the ban on honorariums. This balloting was to take place Thursday after the pay raise had gone into effect. The idea was to show that congressmen were not as greedy as their critics allege, by giving them a chance to give up part of their pay raise along with their fees for speeches.

Critics say that if this proposal had been submitted to Congress in the first place, instead of after the raise went into effect, it might have taken some of the sting out of the criticism. As it was, it just made the whole strategy for the raise seem even more contrived.

Predictably enough, in the wake of their defeat, the field marshals of the pay hike drive blamed not themselves but the ground rules under which they operated.

“Twenty-two years ago, we changed the system, but that hasn’t worked,” said Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced) the House majority whip. “We need a new system.”

Both Coelho and Fazio say that congressional salaries cannot keep pace with the private sector as long as Congress has to vote on salary increases. Fazio said that members of Congress who demand a vote are almost always the ones who intend to vote against it.

Staff writers Sara Fritz and David Lauter contributed to this story.

HOW CONGRESS ALMOST GOT A RAISE

Dec. 13--The Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries recommends 50% pay raises for members of Congress and other officials. Salaries for lawmakers and judges would rise to $135,000 from $89,500. The vice president’s salary would go to $175,000 from $115,000.

The commission chairman, Lloyd Cutler, notes that the government’s top 3,000 or so workers are paid less than professional athletes and cites major league baseball salaries. The commission recommends also that Congress pass legislation to abolish honorariums, the speaking and writing fees paid to lawmakers primarily by special-interest groups.

Jan. 6--Then-President Ronald Reagan endorses the pay-raise recommendations, saying “fair compensation for those who bear the responsibility for effective functioning of our government is critical at this juncture of history.” With Reagan’s endorsement, the raises will go into effect unless both houses of Congress reject them before Feb. 8.

Jan. 25--Against a backdrop of public outcry, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) endorses the 50% raise. House Speaker Jim Wright has refused to endorse the raise but has privately promised House members that he will delay any vote until after the deadline.

Jan. 26--As the public deluges Washington with protest letters, Republican House members complain that they can’t stop Speaker Wright from delaying a vote on the raise.

Jan. 27--President Bush endorses the proposed pay raise, saying the increase is “overdue, there’s no question about it.”

Feb. 1--With a survey showing 62% of the House opposed to federal pay raises, Wright plans to let the increases take effect and then ask the House to scale back congressional raises to 30%.

Feb. 2--The Senate votes 95 to 5 to reject the pay increase.

Feb. 6--Under intense pressure from constituents, House members turn an adjournment vote into a referendum on the pay raises, decisively setting the stage to kill them.

Feb. 7--Congress formally votes to kill the proposed pay raises and Bush signs the measure.