Hearing the Call and Answering It

Nine months ago I sat in a Duke University classroom studying T.R. Reid’s 1980 book Congressional Odyssey, learning about how an upstart freshman senator from New Mexico battled against entrenched special interests, 200 years of tradition and powerful committee chairs to pass a bill that would impose a user fee on barges that traveled on public-funded waterways. We had spent the semester studying the ways in which powerful, concentrated and organized interests could pass laws and achieve outcomes that were harmful to the overwhelming majority of citizens. The collective action problems, the failure of the injured majority to work together, allowed these interests to have their way. But Sen. Pete Domenici overcame the long odds of collective action in 1977 by cleverly using Senate rules and building a wide-ranging coalition to pass a user fee and make barges pay for part of the cost of building and maintaining the waterways they travel. From that classroom in North Carolina, he looked a lot like a hero.

Largely because of the lesson Domenici taught—that smart, motivated people could defeat the special interests and achieve outcomes for the common good—I applied for an internship at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, D.C., non-profit that works to make sure that federal money is spent wisely. One of my first projects was helping to convince senators to support the Wyden-Sununu amendment to the energy bill. The amendment would have removed highly risky loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry, loans on which the industry would likely default, the Congressional Budget said, and which would cost taxpayers $15 billion. That part of the energy bill was a clear-cut handout to a grownup industry. Covering the loans was unambiguously not for the public good.

Barely one week into my internship I sat at my desk watching C-SPAN as the senate debated the proposed amendment. Domenici, now a sixth-term Senator and powerful chairman of the Energy and Resources Committee, stood on the floor speaking for his energy bill and his handouts to the industry. He used all of his power as committee chair, calling in personal favors, lobbying other Senators and distorting the reality of the amendment in his speech on the senate floor. In the end, veteran legislator and friend of the nuclear power industry Domenici prevailed 50-48 in killing the amendment.

Sitting there at my desk, watching Domenici speak—his logic was absurdly clumsy and predicated on fear: fear of fuel shortage and falling behind the French in the nuclear power business—it was clear to me that he was setting a smokescreen. A savvy man, a young renegade, Domenici had to know that what he was advocating was bad for Americans and good for a specific industry. He had to know that the arguments he was making were at best tangential to the amendment and at worst designed to obfuscate its actual purpose.

Domenici had broken with himself and his history. The senator I read about would be ashamed of the one I now saw on television. He had sold out, specifically to the tune of $98,705 from nuclear power political action committees during the 2002 election. He had traded a responsibility to the American people for a responsibility to the big energy businesses that keep in him office. No longer is he the man who fought an entrenched power structure; he’s the man who commands a stretch of that very same trench. He’s turning the machine gun on those who would do as he did.

All I’m left with is heartbreak. Domenici’s downturn means more than just the loss of a role model. It speaks to the curse of aging. Will I too someday turn from getting what’s right to just getting by? Exposure to the system and to the temptation of power has caused that change in many of our public figures. But it’s also a clarion call to the young to be energetic and creative leaders, to push for change as soon as possible. This summer, I’ve heard the call and learned that one way or another, I must answer it.