Short-Timers Will Cast Long Shadow

So much for the perquisites of serving in the House of Representatives.

For the nearly 40 lame-duck members returning this week to cast perhaps the most momentous votes of their careers, there are no more posh office suites teeming with eager-to-please aides.

Gone too are the postcard views from windows framing the Capitol dome.

Having vacated their offices to make way for incoming members, the departing lawmakers--like a small band of the homeless--have been reduced to borrowing work space from friends and colleagues.

Others are operating out of a drab and remote banquet room in the basement of a House office building, where each has been assigned a collapsible table, a telephone, a desktop computer--but no personal printer or fax machine.

But the unusual scene is more than a curious footnote to history.

The status of the lame ducks underscores a political reality that could yet come back to haunt the impeachment juggernaut: President Clinton is about to be impeached by a House that is on the verge of entering the history books.

Thus even if the GOP-dominated chamber votes to impeach the president this week, as now seems likely, the next House will have to revisit the issue, in effect ratifying the vote, before there can be a Senate trial.

Prosecution Team to Be Appointed

That is because a new House must reappoint a team of GOP “managers” to serve as prosecutors in a Senate trial of President Clinton.

But with an even slimmer margin in the next House than the current one, Republican leaders may have a tougher time producing the votes next month, especially if a public outcry follows the impeachment vote.

In the current House, Republicans outnumber Democrats, 228 to 206, with one independent who usually sides with Democrats. But in the newly elected House that is to be sworn in on Jan. 4, there will be 223 Republicans, 211 Democrats and the one independent.

For the most part, though, the lame-duck lawmakers this week seem more concerned with getting through the next few days than with what the next House might do.

Offices Bombarded With Phone Calls

“I don’t know how this [impeachment] process will end. But I’ve already been tossed out of my office, lost my staff and I have one telephone line,” said Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), who is retiring at the end of this term. “Come Friday, I won’t even have this.”

Like most lawmakers, Hamilton’s office in Jeffersonville, Ind., is being bombarded with phone calls from voters expressing their views on impeachment.

“I’m getting hundreds of calls on impeachment but I can’t respond,” he said. And even if the vote is one of conscience, as some have said, “it’s always important to hear from voters,” he said.

The congressman’s lone aide, Holly Feiock, on Tuesday was drafting a press release that she intends to disseminate to the news media--apologizing for being so difficult to reach in recent days.

Having cast 16,000 votes during 34 years in the House, Hamilton said the prospect that a vote on impeachment would be his swan song is “depressing.”

“I can’t imagine a subject I’d less like to vote on. It’s distressing.”

To avoid the inconvenience and perhaps the indignity of being a lame duck, some lawmakers have delayed returning to Washington, working in their district offices back home instead.

But some, like W. G. “Bill” Hefner (R-N.C.), who is also retiring, already have closed their district offices.

And Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar), who was defeated in a GOP primary after pleading guilty to accepting illegal campaign contributions, is apparently nowhere to be found.

Whether he will show up for the big vote is an open question.

“We’re working on that,” a top GOP House leadership aide said Tuesday. “You can fully and totally expect Mr. Kim to be in Washington and voting.” Kim also has a workstation reserved in Room B-339 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Two retiring Democrats, Vic Fazio of West Sacramento and Barbara B. Kennelly of Connecticut, have made use of small offices provided them because of their leadership positions. But even that is coming to an end.

Kennelly’s aides began setting up shop Tuesday in the makeshift “Outgoing Members Service Center,” not far from Hamilton’s post.

At least one departing House member, however, has been given special dispensation: Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of three congressmen who won promotion to the Senate in the November elections.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee where impeachment proceedings took place and as a senator-elect, Schumer has until Friday to vacate his Rayburn building digs. Most outgoing lawmakers were evicted by Dec. 4.

“They’ve been very patient,” a Schumer aide said of incoming Rep. Herbert Bateman (R-Va.) and his staff, who are to take over Schumer’s offices. “But they are getting anxious to move in.”