Shays’ Rebellion
By Mandy Kozar
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22-Congressman Christopher Shays’ day was not even close to being over when he walked into his office on Capitol Hill around 5 p.m. last Thursday to do press interviews.
Members of the House had spent all day debating proposed Republican spending cuts that would slice funds for programs like Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies. The negotiating went on into the wee hours of Friday morning.
In the end, only 14 Republicans voted against the spending cuts and Shays was one of them. The budget reductions were approved by the House and now negotiators are trying to work out the differences with a less stringent Senate version of the bill.
In person, Shays is polite and somewhat soft-spoken. During an interview he leans forward to listen and is attentive to the staffers in his office. When he speaks, he appears thoughtful and earnest. At times he is passionate, but he does not raise his voice.
And yet, his voice is heard all over the Capitol.
In the 18 years that Shays has served Connecticut’s Fourth District in Congress, he has become known as an outspoken centrist who is not concerned with placating either Republican congressional or White House leaders. Recently, Shays and a group of about 20 other moderate Republicans made news for opposing the GOP leadership over a number of issues, but Shays’ rebellion is nothing new.
Last week, the House spending cuts for 2006 brought the centrist resistance, along with Shays, into the spotlight.
Many Republicans were calling for cuts on numerous programs as part of a deficit reduction package which would have included authorization for oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That provision especially drew criticism from Democrats and moderate Republicans. Rep. Charlie Bass (R-N.H.) led the opposition, circulating a protest letter. Shays, along with fellow Connecticut Reps. Nancy Johnson (R-5 th ) and Rob Simmons (R-2 nd ) signed the letter and the provision was eventually eliminated from the legislation.
Even with Alaskan drilling no longer an issue, leadership had to work hard to gain the votes they needed thanks to the resistance of Shays and his fellow moderates. The spending cuts narrowly passed the House 217 to 215, and the vote revealed a divided Republican Party.
It exposed some of the “inter-party squabbling” recently plaguing the Republican Party, said Danielle Doane, director of House relations at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“The problem is the budget reconciliation was the first time the conservatives really were pushing conservative policy and I think that rankled a lot of the moderates,” said Doane.
Conservative Republicans were unimpressed with this centrist rebellion.
“The moderates are ‘fiscal conservatives’ until they actually have to cut something,” Doane said. “Chris Shays is a self-declared budget hawk. He wants to cut spending, he’s on the Budget Committee, he’s always talked about ‘no deficit.’ I mean, he says all the right things.”
But, she said, whenever spending cuts are proposed, he never supports them. “And I think that’s a problem a lot of moderates have, they shy away from putting any specifics to their rhetoric and that’s the problem,” she said.
The spending bill was not the first time Shays has found himself out of sync with the Republican leadership.
In April, the Washington Post dubbed him “The Loneliest Republican” when he was the first in his party to call for the House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to resign over questionable campaign fund practices prior to his indictment in September on charges of conspiring to introduce illegal corporate contributions to Texas state legislature races. And more recently he has been very vocal about ethical issues plaguing the Bush administration.
“The American people deserve better than a top government official perjuring himself and obstructing justice,” Shays said in a statement after Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, was indicted for obstruction of justice and perjury.
He also opposed President Clinton’s impeachment, supports stem cell research and abortion rights and recently he urged Congress to consider an anti-torture law despite the administration’s threat to veto any such legislation.
Although other moderate Republicans and Democrats support his outspokenness, there are those who do not.
Criticism has come from the conservative Club for Growth, an organization of fiscal conservatives that has drawn up a list of moderate Republicans they refer to as “Republicans in Name Only,” or RINOs. Shays is on that list.
“That’s offensive to me, that someone defines what a Republican is by what they are,” Shays said.
Many of Shays’ colleagues, in fact, support his actions as evidence of his dedication to his district.
“He’s very independent,” said Congressman Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican. “I admire his outspokenness. I think every member should be outspoken. You have to represent your district. And Chris does that very well.”
And he has received like support closer to home.
“He cares about what happens here, he has a very strong sense of commitment,” said Connecticut State Senator Judy Freedman (R-26). “He is very honest and has a lot of integrity.”
Last year, Shays won re-election to his ninth term with only 52 percent of the vote, the smallest margin of victory he has received since winning office in 1987 and a much closer race than he faced in 2002. Shays’ Democratic leaning 4th District, voted for Al Gore for president in 2000 and John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race. Shays learned a long time ago, he said, that “to represent my district, I would never be Speaker of the House. They come in conflict.”
His candor has not gone without repercussions.
Despite being one of the most senior Republicans on the committee, Shays was denied chairmanship of the House Government Reform Committee because he was a chief sponsor of a leading bill to overhaul the campaign finance system-a position that did not impress conservative leadership.
The congressman pointed out that although he supports a number of issues that may be stereotyped as Democratic, such as abortion rights and gun control, he does not think his party affiliation is in question.
“Who said supporting stem cell research doesn’t make you a Republican?” Shays asked.
If anything shows the extreme divergence in opinion surrounding Shays, it is the biennial superlatives poll conducted by Washingtonian magazine. In 2004, congressional staffers voted Shays both first place for “Gutsiest” and second for most “Spineless” member of Congress.
Shays, however, would probably reject the partisanship this vote no doubt reflects. The congressman is used to reaching out, as he said, “to both sides of the aisle” and much of his legislation reflects the bipartisan support that he said makes the most successful kind of legislator.
“I believe that we need to be Americans first and Republicans and Democrats second,” he said.
