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What Congress needs is a pest
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Feb 21, 2009 07:47pm |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | TV News - CNN |
| News Date | Thursday, February 19, 2009 04:05:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | When I first arrived in the Capitol those 36 years ago, there was a man who was the professional dissenter, the Republican congressman from the 3rd district of Iowa. His name was H.R. Gross.
Rep. Gross was a former newspaperman and radio announcer at WHO radio in Des Moines who was said to have the fastest tongue in radio. His fellow House members would find it the sharpest tongue in the House.
At WHO, he worked alongside a young man who would go on to a bigger career in politics, Ronald Reagan. Congressman Gross was elected in 1948, after upsetting an incumbent Republican in a primary, and he retired in 1974.
In his 26 years in Congress, he voted against nearly every spending bill, including the Marshall Plan, the space program, the Peace Corps, the Kennedy memorial flame, all foreign aid, congressional junkets and everything that today would be called an earmark. His self-proclaimed mission was "to save this country from national bankruptcy."
After voting against the space program, he quipped on the floor: "Well, even if we don't get to the moon first, we'll be there first with foreign aid."
He was also one of hardest-working members of Congress and never left the floor of the House when it was in session. He read every bill he voted on, listened to every speech made on the floor. He voted on 98 percent of all votes in his career. He avoided all parties and receptions and spent his evenings poring over government documents.
He constantly demanded quorum calls (forcing members to be on the floor during debate), so often that Time magazine called him the "Pest of the House." And he constantly made the chairman of the Appropriations Committee explain what was in every bill. "What's in that turkey now!" was a familiar cry. |
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