Tom DeLay

Congress is filled with people who have power, but few wield it as brazenly as Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

He led the charge to impeach President Bill Clinton, undaunted when other Republicans had qualms. He helped install one of his own lieutenants as House speaker early this year. And, before that, he even turned on his own party leadership, abetting a failed 1997 effort to oust Newt Gingrich as speaker. DeLay is, in short, a take-no-prisoners conservative, and because he never seems reluctant to exercise his power, he has emerged as perhaps the most influential Republican in Congress.

As House majority whip, DeLay is the No. 3 leader in the House GOP hierarchy. That puts him in charge of maintaining party discipline and turning the GOP agenda into legislative victories. He is unabashed in his willingness to twist arms and badger fellow Republicans into voting the party line--a key job because they hold only a five-seat majority. DeLay’s nickname is “The Hammer,” a tribute to his bare-knuckle tactics.

DeLay’s prominence took a quantum leap a year ago, when Gingrich resigned and created a power vacuum. DeLay quickly engineered the selection of J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), his chief deputy whip, as the new speaker. Hastert and DeLay are close allies, though often the Texan’s hard-charging partisanship eclipses the new speaker’s low-key approach and fuels the impression that DeLay is the real power behind the throne.

Indeed, DeLay was the mastermind of his party’s strategy in its fight with Clinton over the federal budget this fall. Republicans insisted that the budget not tap Social Security surplus revenues to pay for other programs, ending a budget practice that has been routine for decades. That helped Republicans limit Clinton’s demand for more spending and helped inoculate them from Democrats’ charges that the GOP is hostile to the popular retirement program.

That strategy may have been designed to help moderate the GOP’s image, but DeLay personifies the party’s more fervent conservative wing. One of Clinton’s most vitriolic critics, he has cultivated strong ties to the party’s Christian conservative base. He has also been a leading water-carrier for the business community’s antiregulatory agenda.

DeLay is supporting the presidential bid of his state’s governor, George W. Bush. But this fall, when Bush undercut House Republicans by saying one of their budget-cutting proposals amounted to balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, DeLay snapped back in response: “Bush needs some education in how Congress works.”

DeLay, 52, is married to his high-school sweetheart, Christine, and they have one grown daughter and two foster children. He represents a conservative district southwest of Houston. Before being elected to the House in 1984, he served in the Texas Legislature for six years. Delay entered politics after running a pest-extermination company, giving him experience in small business that has helped fuel his resentment of government regulation.

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Question: A lot of people see George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, with his emphasis on “compassionate conservatism,” as an effort to remake the hard-edged image of the party created by congressional Republicans. What do you think of that view?

Answer: I think he’s really onto something. Conservatism is compassionate because instead of relying on government systems, conservatives rely on individuals and their creativity. Conservatives have always talked in general terms and in terms of big ideas, and they haven’t been able to speak in terms of people, families, names: How are ideas important to individuals and families? We haven’t been very good at it. George Bush has been very good at it. He’s trying to carry that on into a national basis, and it’s very constructive. It’s called leadership.

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Q: Have congressional Republicans tried to follow that lead?

A: I think we’ve tried. I think it’s been harder for our enemies to demonize us. This last year has been really important in accomplishing that because we’ve done things differently--done what Congresses should do, and that’s get the work done. . . . I do know that our base is very happy with us, and I think people are looking at us differently. We have a long way to go, but I think we’ve made quite an impact. . . .

On the economic front, the whole notion of stopping the raid on the Social Security surplus is having a very real impact out in the real world. First of all, most seniors today had no idea that the Democrats have for 40 years been raiding Social Security for big government programs. Now that they’re awakened to that fact, to see us stop that raid has been a very compassionate approach. They like it.

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Q: But as a political matter, polls show that people still trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle Social Security. How do you interpret that, and what do you do about it?

A: Well, first of all, we don’t do business by polls. We do take polls to see how we’re doing, but we don’t change our focus or our strategies based on polls.

We feel very confident that the American people eventually, if we’re patient and get our work done, will understand that the Democrats just want to do business as usual: Throw money at a problem, and never solve the problem. We’ve had to be very patient over five years, even against, sometimes, our own conservatives, who think we don’t do enough.

I’ll give you an example:

We started out our majority by saying we’re going to balance the budget. Well, when it was declared that the overall budget was balanced, our conservatives said, “Well, you’re counting Social Security, so you didn’t really balance the budget.” Then, when we balanced the budget without Social Security, then they started talking about the [national] debt. Well, the debt’s still going up, so . . . we’ve had to deal with that. . . .

We know the Social Security system has to change in order to provide retirement security for our seniors, and we’re looking at it, and it’s a step-by-step process. First, we had to get the Democrats’ hand out of the Social Security surplus. . . .

So our next step is to go in and start debating how we fix Social Security. It’s been proven, even in polls, that if you present people that are younger than, say, 50 years old the opportunity to have their own personal savings account or retirement account, they think that’s a great idea. At the same time, guarantee those that are on Social Security or about to go on Social Security that their benefits will be protected. Many people have come up with many different ways to accomplish that, and that’s a good debate to have, so that’s our next step.

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Q: Cutting taxes is a signature issue for the Republican Party, but is it a big issue for voters? Why is there no great public clamor for tax cuts?

A: The economy has a lot to do with that. People, for many different reasons, don’t visibly see that their tax bill is limiting their ability to realize their dreams. So we really need to start talking about many different things. Not just balancing the budget, but reforming what government does in our lives [and] paying down the [national] debt, which is really, really important. In these good economic times--that, unfortunately, the president takes all the credit for--people see the opportunity to pay down the debt, and they don’t even know that we’ve paid down the debt three years in a row now. We intend to continue that. . . .

The American family’s paying well over 50% of its income on government. They pay more on government today than they pay on food, clothing, housing and transportation. . . .

We need to quit talking about tax cutting and talk about tax burden. They can start thinking on a personal basis how important that is to them. If they had more money in their pockets to make decisions for their families, they might be able to set aside more money for their children’s college education. In some cases, people dream of starting their own businesses; they might be able to start their own little business. They might be able to save more. They might be able to plan more for their retirement and their future. There are just so many things that they could be doing with a lower tax burden for themselves and their families.

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Q: Look ahead to next fall’s congressional elections. How do you size up Republicans’ prospects for keeping control of the House?

A: It’s a good year for Republicans. A presidential year is always a good year for Republicans--particularly when Democrats hold the White House. And we now have an open seat for the president. The turnout is better. We lost seats, for instance, in the last election because the conservatives didn’t vote. And we, unfortunately, deflated our base.

This year, and hopefully next year, but most importantly this year, we have shown our base that we can accomplish some really meaningful things that keep them motivated going into the next election. That was part of the strategy that we had last year: Do nothing that deflates our base.

That’s where the national media is missing it on the polls on tax cuts, for instance. Yes, we may not have gone into the 70s or 80s range in the polls, . . . but if you look at our base, our base was very excited about the fact that we actually put a tax cut on the president’s desk. If we keep our base and expand upon it, we’ll do fine.

The vulnerable side to all of this is the number of retirements on our side. Open seats are always competitive and always makes it appear that we’re vulnerable. But our [candidate] recruitment has been excellent in those open seats. We’ve still got a couple of places where we need to shore up with good candidates, but we’re very happy with recruiting so far. . . .

So it’s not a done deal, and we’re not overly confident or even confident. We know we’ve got a lot of work to do over the next year, but we have the strategies in place. We’ve accomplished those strategies so far, and as long as Dennis Hastert is speaker of the House he’ll keep us focused and we’ll be fine.

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Q: Next year, to broaden your appeal beyond your party’s conservative base, is it important for Congress to finish up work on bills like raising the minimum wage and regulating health-maintenance organizations?

A: No. I don’t think it’s important to accomplish the Democrat agenda. Not at all. Because all politics are personal. [Former House Speaker Thomas P.] Tip O’Neill said, “All politics are local.” I amended that to “All politics are personal.” And “personal” meaning, from our perspective, district by district. In many of the districts that are competitive, the Democrat agenda is not something that’s going to pull people to the polls to vote for Republicans. So accomplishing the Democrat agenda is not exactly high on our list.

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Q: It’s been a year since the House voted to impeach President Clinton. What do you see as the lasting impact of that episode on Congress and the presidency?

A: I think it had an impact on certain individuals in the House, from both sides. But as far as having an impact on our ability to get our job done, I don’t think it had any at all.

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Q: How about on your ability to deal with Clinton?

A: You know, dealing with Clinton, we’ve learned over the five years [of Republican congressional majority], is fairly easy. You just do your job, and then he shows up at the end. He’s never engaged on anything. He doesn’t even count votes very well on his top agenda. So we just go and get our job done, and then he shows up at the end to negotiate. That’s on anything.

I think what’s going to be written about Bill Clinton is: “He showed up for the photo op.” On any initiative that he has come forth with, he’s never lifted a finger to get it done--and on everything that he takes credit for that he signs, that are Republican initiatives, he comes in at the last minute and negotiates on the fringes.

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Q: One last question on Gov. Bush: Some say he is suffering from a perception that he’s a lightweight or not seasoned enough for the presidency. Do you think he’s helped or hurt himself in the debates so far?

A: To be honest with you, I think this is a month’s story in the national media. I think it has no substance in reality with the people out in the real world. I’ve been in Florida, I’ve been in Iowa, I’ve been in Georgia over the last two weeks. I’ve been home. People don’t see it the same way the national media sees it. They look at the alternatives and . . . they still see that George W. has the ability to win, and they have seen nothing to dissuade them from that feeling.

Debates, they are important to a certain extent, but they are not a campaign. Particularly these kinds of debates are not really debates, they’re forums. And when you get to answer maybe, in an hour and a half, five questions, it doesn’t show you the whole person. *