Gingrich Not Shy About Funneling Congressional Money to California

When it comes to courting California, Bill Clinton has proven himself to be an indefatigable suitor. Lately, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is showing some pretty good moves himself.

Both want to win over California this year, and its load of 54 presidential electoral votes. Both also want to gain the upper hand in the state’s congressional delegation--now split equally between Democrats and Republicans.

Clinton’s efforts have been well publicized: He has spent two dozen sojourns in the state and relentlessly touts the federal dollars and projects his administration has directed California’s way.

Now Gingrich is weighing in as well. Two weeks ago, he helped clear the way to finance the Alameda Corridor--a 20-mile project to streamline the rail and highway link between Los Angeles and Long Beach port facilities and downtown distribution centers.

And as the House begins final work on the annual appropriations bills, Gingrich had an unusually blunt message for his appropriations subcommittee chairmen: Keep California uppermost in your minds when you parcel out federal dollars.

No one pretends that federal spending is pure, bean-counter science. But rarely has a speaker so baldly spelled out how election-year politics can skew appropriations decisions.

“Does it mean that speakers have never discussed such things with appropriators? Of course not,” said Norman J. Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “But the level of chutzpah to put it in a memo is really quite intriguing.”

The speaker’s point of view was delivered to 13 appropriations subcommittee chairmen--dubbed “the cardinals”--in the form of seven “principles for analyzing each appropriation bill.”

Most were predictable: eliminating wasteful Washington spending, divining how President Clinton intends to “fight” the bill and identifying aspects that could hurt Republicans in specific districts.

Last, but most interesting, was: “What impact will this bill have on California?”--an eyebrow-raising query of startling candor.

Appropriations decisions are difficult to separate from their political underpinnings, said Ornstein, but the Gingrich memo puts an overt partisan spin on an old legislative game.

“The appropriations votes tended to be fairly bipartisan, in that interests that members have in their own districts are managed and protected,” Ornstein said, with incumbents of both parties the implicit beneficiaries.

The Gingrich memo suggests a new set of rules, whereby appropriations subcommittee chairmen are encouraged to be more partisan and target funds to help specific Republican members.

For instance, money has been set aside for a new veterans hospital in the district of Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor), giving the incumbent something to crow about in his tight race with Democratic challenger Michela Alioto.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that oversees veterans affairs, said the decision to fund the hospital had been made “well before the memo ever took place.”

But even Lewis was surprised by the openness of the Gingrich directive--and not entirely surprised that the hospital funds were perceived to be entangled with the gist of the memo.

“Whether I would have handled it exactly that way is beside the point,” said Lewis. “[The memo] did inject a political tone, [and] . . . in areas like this it’s delicate what you put in writing.”

In a more general sense, Gingrich’s blatant pitch to House appropriations subcommittee chairmen to favor California--and California Republicans--seems antithetical to the party’s reformist zeal when it took over both houses of Congress in 1994.

“The Republicans, and freshmen in particular, said, ‘We’re not going to continue politics as usual. We’re going to cut out all this wasteful spending,’ ” said Ornstein. “But to have a memo that itself explicitly says . . . ‘One of your criteria should be: What does this mean for Frank Riggs or any of our vulnerable members’ takes some explaining.”

A spokesman for Gingrich said the memo was a reflection of the speaker’s well-documented beliefs.

“There’s no new ground in any of that,” said Lauren Sims. “All along we’ve been stressing the need to point out wasteful Washington spending. And it’s not just California, there are a number of programs that benefit a number of states.”

Republican loyalists say that the Gingrich memo is a logical follow-up to his decision in early 1994 to form a California task force to promote the state’s legislative agenda in the House.

“This is nothing more than a reaffirmation of what our policy has been over the past 17 months,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), chairman of the task force.

“We have been able to get the speaker’s attention focused on California priorities,” Dreier said.

Lewis concurs.

“If this loosens up the process and people around here look at California in a different way, maybe that will help us in this appropriations year.”