Bradley Learning the Ropes inside the Beltway

by David Tamasi

WASHINGTON - A little more than a year ago, Jeb Bradley cast a vote in the New Hampshire House to establish an employee recognition and award program. Now, he is preparing to travel to Iraq as part of a congressional delegation.

The venture overseas--Bradley said he couldn't disclose the exact details of his trip yet--signals his conversion from state legislator to member of the U.S. Congress.

As his first year in the House comes to a close, Bradley said the biggest difference between serving in Congress and in the New Hampshire legislature is the need to understand a variety of domestic and foreign issues. He served 12 years in the state legislature.

"When I was in the legislature, I was able to almost exclusively focus on a couple of issues," he said in an interview. "Here, there are a lot of things that were not really part of my experience in the legislature."

Bradley listed foreign policy and veterans' affairs as two examples of subjects on which he had to "broaden my perspective."

Bradley defeated Democrat Martha Fuller Clark last November in a race for the House seat vacated by now-Senator John Sununu. Since he took the oath of office in January, Bradley has been thrown into the front lines of national policy debates over national security, the economy and health care.

"When I do town meetings at home, those are the big issues that people are talking about," he said.

Sitting in his Capitol Hill office, Bradley was relaxed as he hewed to the Republican Party line on a number of issues. He expressed support for President Bush, but acknowledged that many of his constituents are concerned about the conflict in Iraq.

"I get a lot of questions, certainly," he said. "But I think there is broad support for the President and an understanding that he is doing everything in his power to make Americans secure."

Bradley added that there will "always be people who argue over details."

Though the conflict in Iraq dominates the national and local headlines, Congress is also hoping to complete work on Medicare and energy legislation before recessing for the year in November. Bradley said he believed the Medicare reform bill had a better chance of passage than the energy bill but cautioned that his comments were based on "what he has heard."

And therein lies another change for Bradley. Last year in the state legislature, Bradley was an intimate player in the passage of the New Hampshire Clean Power Act. Now, as a freshman in Congress, he is generally out of the loop. Decisions in Congress are made by committee chairs and party leaders who gain positions, in part, because of their seniority. Freshmen are rarely involved in the discussions that lead to important legislation.

Currently, the Medicare bill is the focus of intense negotiations between House and Senate lawmakers. House Republicans are seeking a bill that would include a provision to allow private companies to compete with the government-sponsored health plan for seniors. Senate Democrats oppose this measure because, they say, it would leave poorer seniors with inadequate coverage. The issue has emerged as a key sticking point. Just this week Bush stepped into the fray to urge Congress to send him a bill he could sign.

"There is a lot of support for it [Medicare]," Bradley said. "I think that there will be ways of bridging the gap."

Bradley said he would not be surprised if there was a fallback position that would let private plans compete in some way to give seniors "some choice." House members, for example, would support medical savings accounts that allow people to set aside pre-tax dollars for their medical expenses, he said.

While expressing less confidence that consensus could be reached on an energy bill, Bradley said he doubted that a controversial provision to permit oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be included in the final version of the bill. Critics say the drilling would destroy the environment; proponents have argued it would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Bradley said he also did not think Congress had an appetite for another round of tax cuts, but added that a bill to ease tax rates on corporations doing business overseas might be passed in the next several months. This would stem the loss of manufacturing jobs, he said.

Three weeks ago, Bradley flew on Air Force One with Bush, Sununu and fellow New Hampshire Republican Rep. Charlie Bass for a Manchester appearance before what he called a "friendly audience." Bradley said he expected the President to carry New Hampshire in the 2004 general election. Bush won by a narrow margin there in 2000.

Would the President's coattails help him in his own re-election effort?

"I hope so," Bradley laughed.