It was around midnight Wednesday, or maybe it was late Thursday, when Sen. Robert Byrd was characteristically invoking grand personages from a past that even predates him.
It was time for citizens to get out an encyclopedia–and hold onto their wallets.
Those interested in how taxpayers get fleeced should have dropped by a humid conference room in the U.S. Congress basement. There, the octogenarian from West Virginia was alluding to Scipio Africanus defeating Hannibal back in 20 B.C., a period well before Apache helicopters or liquid Prell.
Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), a tall and thin gentleman of bookish demeanor and constant grin who resembles a goofy academic in a Disney movie, was oblivious to all except his copy of Newsweek as Byrd went on, and on, about Cyrus. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) seemed quizzical and exhausted, taking on the air of a mournful beagle.
Cyrus was a king of Persia who invaded territory controlled by the Scythians, nomadic folks who migrated from central Russia in the 8th Century B.C.–in case you forgot.
Byrd mentioned that the Scythians had a queen named Tomyris, and left it at that. He might have informed the crowd that she eventually cut off Cyrus’ head and threw it into a bag filled with blood in 529 B.C., perhaps inspiring Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and others who in later years would cut off heads and throw them into bags too.
As Republican members of the House of Representatives watching with a mix of admiration, mild incredulity and plain fatigue, Byrd moved to discoursing about Croesus. He was a well-heeled, and the last, king of Lydia who got his comeuppance from Cyrus in a battle in 546 B.C., obviously before Cyrus wound up a blood-splattered king-in-a-pouch.
Somewhere along the way, Byrd cited Majorian, the Western Roman Emperor from 457 to 461 A.D., a reign whose mere four years raises the prospect that perhaps they had term limits.
Majorian once said he was a prince who “still gloried in the title of `senator,’ ” according to Byrd, 81, a Democrat and coal miner’s son who has been in Congress since 1952, and in the Senate since 1958, and is a renowned expert on the Constitution and Roman history.
In plotting to extract more of your taxpayer dollars, Byrd gloried in the title of senator and spoke of dreams.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, addressing House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.), “the Bible speaks of dreams. Jacob’s dream, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. And we read of Scipio’s dream.
“I believe there have been some bad dreams last evening. A short night’s rest has wreaked some havoc,” Byrd said, which would prove absolutely correct.
All of the above musings were somehow deemed relevant to the group’s consideration of a $14 billion spending bill meant as an emergency measure to fund our war effort in Kosovo.
Huh?
It’s too bad so few citizens ever hear about the congressional staple at which Byrd’s arcane and passionate fulminations played out. It’s called a House-Senate conference.
This is where the two bodies’ differing versions of a similar bill are melded into one so that a final draft can be voted on in both houses. In the old days, this was done behind closed doors. Even now, they tend to be too long, too boring for most reporters. And it makes for lousy television, meaning it’s ripe for shenanigans.
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It’s why one could have forgotten whether it was midnight on Wednesday or late Thursday evening as Byrd talked and talked to a conclave that included major-domos from the appropriations committees of both houses, like Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), along with toadies and aides from their personal and committee staffs.
The toadies make sure to place “talking points” and cheat sheets in front of their bosses, like the one headed, “THE PARTICULARS OF THE AMENDMENT,” stuck in front of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) before she presented an amendment of interest to the oil and gas industry.
There are winks, nods and deals among the assembled because this is where the rubber meets the road, where a bill’s true purpose may fall prey to the debatable interests of a given politician.
This bill, which will surely be passed next week, constitutes a classic in hoodwinkery.
It was intended as $7 billion in emergency funds for Kosovo. But the majority Republicans started piling on various pet projects. Then the Democrats threw some in. By Friday morning, it had grown to nearly $15 billion, with lots of cash for military matters totally unrelated to Kosovo, as well as money for farmers, the nation of Jordan, hurricane victims in the Caribbean and airport construction.
And into the fray came Byrd, a former welder in World War II shipyards, who sought $145 million to support $1 billion in loan guarantees for the steel industry.
Of course, loan guarantees for the steel industry, even if justifiable as public policy, had nothing to do with aid to Kosovo–except in the mind of Byrd, who defines the admittedly humbled state of the steel industry as an emergency.
But he had already convinced his Senate buddies to put it in their version. Over two long nights, he strained to convince the House boys and girls to stick it in theirs. For a while it worked, luring several GOP votes to pass the provision shortly before 1 a.m. Thursday.
But by dawn’s early light, fence-jumping Republicans were taken to the woodshed by their leaders, notably House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). This was Byrd’s bad dream.
In what was as much an assertion of institutional ego as principle, the House conferees announced a new vote in which they now rejected the same Byrd proposal. That meant a deadlock, as Byrd’s Senate chums declined to dump the steel provision from their version.
Byrd announced that he fully respected that the House had voted “its conscience,” then proceeded to bash them for buckling to their leadership. Singling out his provision, he said, was akin to Napoleon’s tactic of focusing his military forces on one point in the enemy defense.
He also reminded everybody, exactly as he had the night before, that he’d been a welder in ship yards in Baltimore and Florida. And like the night before, he regurgitated statistics about the loss of steel jobs and the fact of past bailouts of Chrysler and New York City, suggesting it would be perfectly consistent to help bail out steel.
“He’s certainly a lot more interesting” than most members of Congress, Porter of Illinois conceded to me during a break. Porter amended that in a less-flattering manner at the next break, right after hearing Byrd’s shipbuilding oral autobiography for the second time in 18 hours.
For sure, Byrd was assisted by passionate, if contorted, arguments from colleagues such as Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.). As if she were a Roger Ebert in drag, Mikulski declared that the merits of the steel provision reminded her of the Robert De Niro film, “The Deer Hunter.”
I implore C-SPAN junkies, who may find the rerun of this session at 3 in the morning, to make more sense of that than yours truly.
Ultimately, the deadlock resulted in a closed-door meeting of key members. The Byrd provision was yanked as he was assured there would be House and Senate votes on a separate steel measure somewhere down the pike.
The spending bill was thus saved, ending a challenging week for Byrd.
He had earlier rear-ended a Ford van while following too closely in his rented Cadillac. When a cop showed up with a traffic citation, Byrd apparently took out the famously frayed copy of the Constitution he keeps in a jacket pocket and invoked Article 1, Section 6, wherein members of Congress can’t be pinched while Congress is in session except in cases of “treason, felony and breach of the peace.”
After publicity, he dropped his claim to immunity and said he’d face a reckless driving charge.
Lucky law enforcers.
Just imagine if Byrd had been moved by the legacy of Queen Tomyris to cut off the head of the Fairfax County (Va.) police officer and throw it into a bag.