Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper Read Free Book Online Page A

a low number in the office lottery, which consigned him to the seventh floor of the Longworth Building. West didn’t give a crap. He was used to living out of a tent.
    On the morning of the third, when the freshmen got their office keys, West marched up to Longworth carrying a book about blacks in Congress and various other documents in his old helmet bag ornamented with the myriad postings of his twenty-two-year military career. He convened a meeting with his new staff. His instructions to them were in fact his standing orders as a battalion commander, written on a three-by-five index card that he had laminated because he carried it with him on the campaign trail:
    Keep your bayonet sharp. Keep your individual weapon clean.
    Be the expert in your lane, and knowledgeable in another.
    Be professional.
    Not on the list was: Blindly follow commands. The freshman had already staked out his contrary position back in October, a month before he was even elected, when Boehner flew in for a campaign appearance with West at the Gun Club Café in West Palm Beach and quietly advised him to go easy on the rhetoric about tax reform and the flat tax. “Try to avoid talking about that,” the Republican leader told the candidate, who ignored the counsel.
    A month later, the congressman-elect appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and responded to a question about potential budget cuts by saying, “Everything has to be on the table . . . We need to look at our Defense Department.” As soon as the show was over, the incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon , called West on his cell phone. How could West—who was vying for a seat on McKeon’s committee—say that the defense budget ought to be cut?
    “You’re talking to a guy who’s been on the ground,” the freshman coolly replied. “There’s waste, and I know where the low-hanging fruit is.”
    And shortly after learning of the House’s new working calendar , which would involve fewer days in Washington and more time back in their congressional districts, West fired off a letter to the man who designed the new schedule, incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. They should be spending more time in Washington, not less, the freshman wrote. How could they possibly contend with all the issues on their plate “when, among other things, we start off being in session only ten days the entire month of January?” West then circulated the letter in the form of a press release. Cantor’s spokesman responded with his own statement: “What matters is who’s in charge and the process put in place, not the number of days in session.” The majority leader himself did not contact West—which, of course, was a statement of its own.
    Fine, thought West. He saw the matter as he always did, through a military prism. Any private on a rifle range can call a safety violation without the permission of the Officer in Charge. Otherwise someone could get hurt. The private is showing initiative and care. He’s thinking. He’s not a Soviet-style robot. The OIC should be grateful.
    And anyway, his bayonet was sharp. Now it was January 5, 2011. Time to charge the enemy.

PART TWO

    SHUT ’ER DOWN

CHAPTER FOUR
    Citizens in the Devil’s City
    On the morning of his swearing-in, Jeff Duncan held a prayer breakfast in a reception room of the Republican National Committee headquarters, across the street from the Cannon Building, where he now worked. In previous months, there had been a banner affixed to the RNC building’s façade. FIRE PELOSI , it had read. Now there was a new banner, hailing the politically radioactive Democrat’s commitment to stay on as their minority leader: HIRE PELOSI .
    A hundred South Carolinians were there to join Duncan. Most of them had traveled eight hours in a bus caravan from the 3rd District, and with few exceptions they wore Carolina (or Republican) red. One of his buddies led them in prayer: “We know that the Lord installs kings, princes and