Category: Gregory Hellman
Representative Hodes: ‘Ultimate Reality Game Show’
Hodes
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
2/05/07
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 – Welcome to Survivor Congress, starring 42 Democratic freshman representatives settling in a new territory—Washington, D.C. Leading the tribe is Rep, Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), Democratic Freshman Class president and New Hampshire’s rising congressional star.
Making the move from his law offices at Shaheen & Gordon just off Main Street in Concord to his congressional office on Capitol Hill, however, proved anything but smooth sailing.
“I have described this like an ultimate reality game show,” Hodes said.
“You get elected and you’ve got 60 days to find a place and set your office up,” he said, comparing it to the startup of a $1 million business.
Hodes wasted no time in making the transition, putting together a staff—led by Dana Houle, his campaign manager and an experienced Michigan political strategist—from campaign workers and outsiders alike after helping to review more than 3,000 resumes.
“The first few days are like being in a lifeboat,” Hodes said. “You have to make this transition and it’s complex, challenging and very exciting and luckily I started with a core of good people.”
While the move forced Hodes to live in a different city from his wife, Peggo, the vocal chair at Concord Community Music School, and son Max, a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston, it brought him closer to his daughter Arianna, who studies at American University in Washington. He is living in a Capitol Hill apartment a five-minute walk from his office in the Cannon House Office Building.
“I just thought this would be an excellent chance for a youngster like me,” Hodes, 55, said of joining Congress. “I love my job, I mean, I really just love this job.”
Crammed inside his office, which has a view of the dome of the Capitol, his staff mans the desks, phones and computers even as they play with the office’s final arrangement and manage the congressman’s schedule, legislative research, visitors and the press.
“It’s fast and furious,” scheduler Luke Watson said. “There’s lots of work and long hours, but that’s to be expected. The support staff at the House is very good [at helping with the move-in].”
Watson scans his computer, pulling up a color-coded scheduler to separately keep track of Hodes’ commitments in both Washington and New Hampshire. He budgets every minute of the congressman’s day while organizing the events under categories such as speaking, political and dinner.
“That’s what it looks like if everything worked perfectly,” Watson said. “Ultimately, he decides which events he’s attending.”
Even as desks and chairs trickled into his own office, Hodes began making trips to the offices of his first-term colleagues, organizing policy discussions and encouraging intra-party cooperation. They responded by electing him to a six-month term as House Democratic Freshman Class president.
Under Hodes’ guidance, they will hold meetings and each be given the opportunity to speak at least once each week on the House floor to talk about issues concerning them, a reform to the rules of the last Congress.
“We may be able to reach consensus on issues and we may not,” he said. “There’s tremendous political diversity within the party. This is going to help give us some identity.”
Sometimes, just finding his way through the tunnels underneath Capitol Hill, however, can prove as daunting of a challenge as building a party message.
“What they really need is a fleet of Segways to take us from the elevator,” Hodes said. “One thing I really need is a government issued GPS. That would be the best advance they could make.”
While Hodes occasionally struggles to find his way through the Capitol Hill tunnels, he encountered no problems in finding his way onto the House Financial Services Committee as well as the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He said he plans to help restore congressional oversight and shift some power back to the legislative branch.
“I ran for Congress in part because it became clear to me that Congress was not performing its oversight functions,” he said. “We need to do what the people sent us here to do and perform the kinds of investigations to find fraud, abuse and waste.”
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Senate Rejects Gregg’s Line-Item Veto Amendment
Cloture
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman
Boston University Washington News Service
1/24/07
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24- Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) failed to add an amendment to the minimum wage bill Wednesday that would give presidents a line-item veto. He then joined in helping block the wage bill from immediately moving to a floor vote.
Senate Republicans failed to get the 60 votes needed to limit debate on Gregg’s amendment and move to a vote on the amendment itself. The vote effectively killed the measure..
The Senate, meanwhile, blocked a floor vote on the minimum wage bill, with supporters coming up with only 54 votes to end debate, six short of the required number. That failure will almost surely force Democrats to compromise with Senate Republicans over inclusion in the bill of tax breaks for small businesses that Republicans say would suffer as a result of a raise in the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 26 months.
The House-passed version of the bill does not provide any such tax breaks.
Gregg threatened last week to tack on his line-item veto amendment to ethics reform legislation but agreed to wait for the minimum wage bill and allow the ethics measures to pass. The addition of the line-item veto would allow a president to veto individual spending items without vetoing an entire appropriations bill.
That would give the president the opportunity to eliminate wasteful spending, Gregg said.
“What this amendment essentially does is it allows the Congress to fulfill its obligation to make sure that money, which we are sent by our taxpayers, is spent effectively, honestly and appropriately without waste,” Gregg said during debate on the floor of the Senate.
Congress passed a similar measure in 1996 proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to give President Clinton the line-item veto, only to have it struck down by the Supreme Court two years later as unconstitutional. Senate Republicans argued that Gregg’s measure would be constitutional and blamed partisanship for standing in the way of the amendment.
“[The amendment] has now been rejected by other side of the aisle,” Gregg said. “It’s especially ironic, and maybe even a touch hypocritical, in light of the fact that at least 20 members of the other side of the aisle voted for essentially the same amendment when it was offered by Senator Daschle.”
Democratic opponents of the amendment said it would unnecessarily delay a long-overdue pay raise for Americans earning the minimum wage.
“Minimum-wage workers have been waiting for a raise for 10 long years,” Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said. “Year after year this Congress has turned its back on working families. We have the opportunity today to take one bold step.”
Other opponents of the amendment warned that giving a president the line-item veto would weaken Congress and violate the Constitution no matter what revisions Gregg made.
“I believe this amendment is dangerous,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said. “It transfers power in a way the Founding Fathers did not envision and would not have supported.”
Senate Republicans backed Gregg’s amendment, however, in a vote splitting almost exactly down party lines.
“If it was good policy [a decade ago] I would hope [Democrats] would think it’s good policy in 2007,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “We cannot continue to spend in a way that harms our greatest programs – Social Security and Medicare.”
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Delegation Split on the State of the Union Speech
UNION
New Hampshire Union Leader
Greg Hellman & Alyssa Marcus
Boston University Washington News Service
1/23/2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 – Members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation split along party lines in their reaction to President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night.
The state’s freshmen House Democrats criticized the president’s plan for continuing the war in Iraq and his domestic proposals while Senate Republicans hailed the economic growth of the last year and gave their continuing support for the Bush Administration’s handing of the Iraq war.
In his first appearance in front of the newly elected Democratic Congress, the president focused the first half of his speech on domestic issues —energy, education and healthcare – and turned to the war in Iraq for the second half.
The president called for a reduction in dependence on foreign oil and said he aimed to cut gasoline use by 20 percent by 2017. He stopped short, however, of proposing mandatory fuel economy levels.
While reiterating his commitment to continuing to fight in Iraq, the president proposed creating a bi-partisan special advisory counsel for the war on terror.
“This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in,” Bush said. “Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.”
“His proposal assumes there is a functioning Iraqi government; that is not the case at all,” said Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes. “Inserting 20,000 troops into a city of 10 million is too little too late. We need a new course.”
In a statement, Republican Senator Judd Gregg said he would continue to stand with the president on Iraq and support the plan to send an additional 21,500 troops.
“It is my intention to continue to give our troops in the field the support they need to do their jobs and to maintain their safety and to support efforts which will allow us to find the terrorists, especially those who subscribe to Islamic fundamentalism, before they attack America or American citizens,” Gregg said.
Both GOP senators expressed support for the president’s ideas to improve health care while recognizing they only represented a starting point for reform.
“There is no single policy that can address all the concerns regarding cost and access to quality health care, however these ideas are a step in the right direction,” Sen. John Sununu said is a statement.
“I’m at a loss to understand how raising taxes is going to give people more coverage for health care,” said Hodes.
“I think the problem is that most small businesses simply cannot afford health insurance. A tax deduction will not help them,” agreed Rep. Carol Shea-Porter in an interview following the speech.
Gregg, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said pursuing energy independence and getting the federal budget under control are two areas highlighted by the president that hold the greatest potential for reform.
“It is incumbent upon us to choose areas where positive results can be accomplished and aggressively pursue resolutions to those issues,” Gregg said in a statement. “This is most likely to occur in the areas of energy independence and fiscal responsibility.”
Sununu said in an interview following the speech, “We will definitely be able to eliminate the deficit in the next five years, maybe even sooner.”
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