Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9306010184
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Schulyer - having decided that legislating is a quicker way to change the world than litigating - joined the staff of Rep. Rick Boucher, who represents Southwest Virginia's 9th District.
Some Capitol Hill staffers go around with their stomachs in knots, worrying that their boss is going to make a big mistake; but people who work for Boucher don't have that fear, Schuyler said.
"He knows what he's doing; he wants things done right."
Boucher, an Abingdon Democrat, first went to Congress in 1983 after squeaking out a narrow win over Rep. Bill Wampler, a Republican from Bristol. Ninth District voters sent Boucher back to Congress for his sixth term in November. He took 63 percent of the vote, outpolling his opponent in every county and city.
Since his first win, Boucher has learned well how to use the power of his office to keep his name before the voters back home. But other than his weekly town meetings in Southwest Virginia, his congressional newsletters, his weekly newspaper columns and his campaign rhetoric every two years, the average voter seldom gets a look at what they're paying him $130,000 a year to do.
The fact is, Boucher appears to be a very busy man.
After his re-election, Boucher moved his office to the mammoth Rayburn House Office Building from the older Cannon building nearby. He was able to move to better quarters because of his increasing seniority, which now ranks him 88th among the House's 435 members.
Boucher's office suite No. 2245 is one of 168 similar suites in the 2.4-million-square-foot building, built three decades ago for $90 million. Its corridors are 10 feet wide, its ceiling 15 feet high, and its marble staircases are fit for a Civil War epic.
During a recent interview, Boucher - whose high forehead and eyeglasses give him a scholarly look - explained that the key to influence in Congress is knowledge.
"The person who makes decisions is typically the person who knows the most about a subject," Boucher said. "Some members make a mistake by trying to know a little bit about everything."
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican who serves with Boucher on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, says he has a high regard for the Southwest Virginian, both personally and professionally.
"He is one of the intellects of this institution," Boehlert said.
Former Republican Congressman William Whitehurst, who represented the Virginia Tidewater in the House, remembered Boucher as someone who took his work "very seriously" and who didn't attend many of the social functions to which the Virginia delegation was invited.
Boucher, a 46-year-old bachelor, goes about his legislative work quietly, hardly "raising a blip on the radar screen" of those who follow the inner workings of Congress.
He specializes in issues involving communications, science and technology, energy, solid waste, financial markets and copyright and patent law.
Busy day
The Wednesday after Congress' Easter break was a typical middle-of-the-week day for the House. Members faced a heavy schedule of hearings and meetings.
At 8:45, after a meeting of the Democratic Caucus, Boucher had scheduled a news conference in the Science, Space and Technology Committee meeting room. He was introducing a bill to provide federal support for research and development of a national high-speed computer network. Boehlert was a co-sponsor.
The room, one floor above Boucher's office, is richly furnished in the style of an old movie-house lobby. A thick royal blue carpet covers the floor; brocade curtains and wooden panels decorate the wall behind the committee's desks.
There was a crowd for Boucher's briefing, including reporters from computer industry trade journals and lobbyists. National magazines like Time and the Congressional Quarterly have devoted thousands of words lately to high-speed computer networking - what Vice President Al Gore has called an information "superhighway."
One reporter wanted to know if Boucher had talked to the White House about the bill. The answer was no, not directly, but the administration supports the bill, Boucher said.
A lobbyist cornered Boucher at the end of the briefing to talk about the education community's concerns for development of the network. Boucher told him that many of those concerns were addressed in his bill.
Although the connection is hard to see at first, the telecommunications bill also will have an impact on his rural district, Boucher said.
With improved communications systems, it will be possible to do many kinds of work in rural areas that could not be done there before, such as data entry, marketing, architecture and engineering.
High-speed computing has the potential to be a big business for the New River Valley, he said. Virginia Tech should play a major role in the research that his bill would finance.
After the news conference, Boucher walked across the hall to a hearing on reauthorization of the Superfund law being conducted by the subcommittee on transportation and hazardous materials.
The chairs set aside for the public in the hearing room were full, and people lined the walls. The double doors to the room were jammed with others who were listening intently . . . or pretending to.
That morning, Boucher had his choice of four hearings of committees or subcommittees on which he serves. He stayed with the Superfund hearing through noon, when he presided during the subcommittee chairman's absence.
Later, Boucher finished a quick lunch in his office as a delegation from the Army's ammunition command arrived in the reception area outside his door.
One of the five people in the Army group began to summarize the conversion program planned for ammunition plants, when Boucher cut him short.
Boucher wanted to know what progress was being made to get private industry with commercial contracts into the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.
Gen. William R. Holmes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for ammunition, assured Boucher that delays in establishing a public-private task force to oversee the conversion of plants to civilian uses would not hold up private contracts at Radford.
The Army delegation was the first of a steady stream, including lobbyists for the telephone industry and National Association of Counties, that visited Boucher in his office that afternoon.
At 3:15, a group of women representing Extension Homemakers clubs in Southwest Virginia dropped into the office unannounced. The women from Bristol and Smyth County were in Washington for leadership training.
They wanted to talk about legislation related to water pollution and laws designed to protect wetlands. They also wanted to talk about the Superfund law, a topic still fresh on the congressman's mind from the morning hearing.
The law has not worked well, he told them. Almost half of the money the government collects in excise taxes from polluters is spent on overhead rather than cleaning up pollution.
Before they left, the women, two of whom carried cameras, asked Boucher to pose with them for photographs.
Boucher's next visitor was Randy Arno, Floyd County's administrator. Arno was in town to attend a seminar on the Agriculture Department's Job Corps, which gives inner-city youths job skills and a new start in life. Boucher already has two Job Corps centers in his district, in Wise County and Marion.
As more Job Corps sites are developed, Floyd County would be a good prospect for one, Boucher told Arno.
Boucher's new office is big enough to impress any visitor from back home or convey an air of importance to visiting bureaucrats or business executives.
A window behind his library-table style desk looks out on a courtyard and fountain and the National Arboretum and museums of the Smithsonian Institution beyond. Sitting at a work table beside his desk is the chair Boucher used as a state senator in Richmond.
On one wall is a framed letter from former President Bush, thanking the congressman for his work on the reauthorization of the Clean Air Act. On another hangs a photograph by O. Winston Link of an old Norfolk and Western Railway train passing by Green Cove station in Boucher's native Washington County.
As Boucher met with Arno, his staff trudged ahead in the adjoining offices.
If knowledge here is power, as Boucher said, his staff provides the fuel for the engine, each worker specializing in various legislative issues and feeding the accumuated information to the boss.
The role of congressional staffs has grown with the increasing complexity of issues facing government and the rising demands on the time of congressmen. With simultaneous meetings and hearings to attend, it's impossible for one person to keep up.
The staff room is about as big as the congressman's, but it's crammed with eight desks set off in small cubicles, each with its own computer.
One place staff members get information is from lobbyists, the "Gucci crowd" of popular infamy, whom people envision stalking the halls of Congress like drug dealers in search of their prey. The drugs in this popular view are big campaign contributions.
The good lobbyists come armed with information, said Schuyler, Boucher's chief of staff. They can explain the law, point out the problems and suggest changes.
While several members of Boucher's Washington staff are Virginians, only 26-year-old Paul Gay, who grew up in Christiansburg, is from the 9th District. Gay follows budget and taxation issues.
In 1991, according to a USA Today study, Boucher's office and mail expenses were $836,973, the highest among the Virginia House delegation and 99 percent of his allotted office budget. The average member of Congress used 83 percent of his or her budget that year, spending an average of $734,700 on staff and office expenses.
During 1992, according to the Report of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Boucher spent almost the same as a year earlier - $837,159.59 - on the operation of his Washington and 9th District offices. His own salary is not included in that amount.
Goals and reform
When the last of the day's visitors left, Boucher leaned back in one of the leather armchairs and talked about his goals. His last official function of the day would be a dinner at a restaurant with members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and President Clinton's Cabinet.
Economic development has been the top concern of his constituents during his 10 years in office, Boucher said. His efforts have included helping local governments find money for the construction of industrial parks.
If Montgomery County had had an industrial park ready, the county might have reeled in a new fiber-optics plant that the Siecor Corp. recently decided to locate in North Carolina, Boucher said.
Many Southwest Virginia industrial parks have been or soon will be filled. That's why Clinton's economic stimulus package is important, Boucher said.
But on the other side of the Capitol on this same day, the president's package was going down the Senate toilet. Senators who supported the bill gave up after failing to halt a filibuster by Republicans that had held up the bill for several days.
Boucher said the rules shouldn't allow 41 of 100 senators to hold up action on Clinton's economic package.
One of the big issues during last year's elections, not only in the 9th District but also nationwide, was reform.
Congress needs reform, Boucher said; and he predicted that a reform bill will pass this year or next.
Among some of the reform measures advocated last year, particularly by congressional challengers, was term limits for members of Congress.
But Boucher, a trial lawyer for 10 years, said he has no plans for another career. He expressed feelings similar to those of Schuyler, the lawyer who is Boucher's chief of staff: He believes he can help more people in Washington than he could in a courtroom.
"I enjoy this work; I'm successful at it," Boucher said. "We are accomplishing what I set out to do."
Keywords:
POLITICS PROFILE
by CNB