Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Some utterances appear in the Congressional Record as if they had been delivered.
By MYRON STRUCK
and BRENDAN CONWAY
STATES NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- When newly elected Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, decided to make his first comments in Congress, the topic on Feb. 6, 1997, honored the fast rescue work of a Coast Guard boat, the Neah Bay, based in Cleveland.
But Kucinich, now a long shot in the presidential sweepstakes, simply inserted into the Congressional Record's back-of-the-book section, known as Extensions of Remarks, several sets of comments, including those about the Coast Guard.
"Mr. Speaker," said the Kucinich statement, "members of the U.S. Coast Guard perform extremely valuable services for the American people, keeping our shorelines secure and safe from environmental damage. I commend to your attention a recent incident that demonstrates the tremendous contribution made by the officers and crew of Coast Guard units in that region."
Kucinich's comments were never spoken, and the speaker was not really present. The congressman was only abiding by the time-honored system of using the Record to create a historical record of a comment and making it seem like his colleagues in the House of Representatives had listened to the words. A trick, for sure, but not one of his making.
Appearances wrong
When reproduced for home-district consumption, these types of congressional utterances appear as if they had been delivered, in language and tone.
In reality, they are most often typed by staffers and dropped into the hands of a clerk for insertion into the official volume of the proceedings of Congress.
First speeches, a Congressional tradition, have changed over time.
In years gone by, they were considered akin to a debutante's coming-out party, reserved for a special moment in time when a member -- usually a senator -- chose to show just what he viewed as a significant issue. That tradition dated back to the days when freshmen senators were expected to simply cast their vote the way party leaders wanted.
Historically, said Senate Historian Richard A. Baker, "Some senators would literally not say anything for two years."
"The Senate mythology is that new senators are to be seen and not heard," according to Baker.
Of the nine men and women running for the Democratic nomination for president this year, seven have a track record on Capitol Hill, and their start shows a mixed bag of first offerings. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and the Rev. Al Sharpton have not served in Congress.
How it's done
In the Senate, where debate time is unlimited, members often take the floor and make a brief comment and then ask to "revise and extend" their remarks, allowing them to submit a full speech to a clerk and to have it appear as if delivered. Unlike the days before the press microscope, now the watchful C-SPAN gavel-to-gavel broadcasts show what was said, and how.
It was not until Feb. 11, 1997, that Kucinich apparently spoke to his colleagues on the House floor. On that occasion, he issued a short memorial to the late U.S. Ambassador Carl B. Stokes, like Kucinich a former Cleveland mayor.
For Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo., the moment came in January 1977, early in his national political career -- the ex-St. Louis alderman had just been sworn in as a freshman member of the House when Jimmy Carter, still bearing the title of president-elect, had said he would pardon all Vietnam draft dodgers.
Gephardt, then just 36, used his first comments in Congress to blast the soon-to-be president, saying: "The intentional disregard of our legal system will be forgiven in President-elect Carter's expected decision, whether it is labeled a blanket amnesty or a pardon, and it is an act I cannot accept and join in."
Limited by fate
For Rep. John B. Edwards, D-N.C., the choices of his first comments in Congress were limited by fate -- the Senate had assembled for the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and the members were taking center stage one-by-one to present their views. Edwards, then 46, and most recently a practicing attorney, offered a lawyerly, insightful defense of the Democratic president.
"When I walked in here the first day of this impeachment trial I was 100 percent completely open to voting to remove this president," Edwards said, beginning a 2,000-word examination of the two impeachment charges.
"That wasn't a hard thing for me to do. I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."
Edwards then carefully broke down the arguments advanced by the Republican impeachment managers from the House and concluded that even one House manager, Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had acknowledged that reasonable people could differ in their interpretation of the facts, and so there was reasonable doubt the president should be convicted and removed from office.
Lieberman's start
For Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., his start on Capitol Hill was somewhat more inauspicious. In 1989, just weeks after he was sworn in, the 47-year-old Lieberman left his first mark on the Congressional Record, submitting a written statement on Senate Resolution 16 that challenged what he deemed to be a regressive Republican budget plan. The subject? Sewage.
Lieberman made his "coming-out" moment a defense of the Clean Water Act Amendments, and in just a few paragraphs, focused on how the Republican administration wanted to cut funds to construct sewage treatment plants by 38 percent.
"If Long Island Sound, our rivers and our streams are going to be cleaned up, and if our beaches are going to be safe for swimming, we must invest more," Lieberman said. "The president, in his 1990 budget proposal, reduced the $2.4 billion by one-half, leaving us only $1.2 billion for the purpose of constructing sewage treatment plants, compared to the $76 billion need."
For Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., the first topic he apparently chose to speak about in the Senate was a defense of the Roe vs. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the right of a woman to have an abortion.
Kerry's campaign Web site noted the Roe vs. Wade talk, but the Boston Globe used an 18-year-old States News Service account detailing Kerry's actual maiden speech -- it was on President Reagan's plan to build 21 MX missiles -- to show that the claim was erroneous.
The Congressional Record shows Kerry -- like Lieberman -- had only inserted brief remarks into the Congressional Record on Jan. 22, 1985, defending Roe vs. Wade and had not actually spoken the words he had claimed. The record appears to show that his first real remarks came on Feb. 7, when he commented briefly on a civil rights issue and then, on March 19, discussed the MX missiles in a formal speech.
Graham's first
In his first speech in the Senate, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., wanted to show substance and eschewed flowery oratory -- as he often does now -- calling for support for pending legislation that was designed to more closely regulate what are called nonbank banks.
"We need to take an architect's approach to redesigning our banking system to function effectively and efficiently in this decade, in the 1990s and beyond," Graham implored colleagues, discussing a pending banking bill. The legislation passed later in the week, with Graham's vote behind it.
Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., made her maiden speech in Congress just three weeks into her first and only term, on the occasion of the death of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Moseley-Braun's first legislative comments were in support of the Family and Medical Leave Act, about a week later.