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By Root 1483 0

he was, in the early 1980s, perhaps the most stubbornly principled person in that legislative body, a distinction that has worked against him at every turn. “Some of my colleagues come up to me and say, ‘Bob, I wish I had your guts,’ ” says Edgar. “Then they attack me on the floor.” Actually, Edgar has a built-in advantage in his district. He represents suburban Philadelphia, and it would be difficult for the Corps of Engineers to tantalize his constituents with a water project—where would one build one in the suburbs?—and then see to it that the appropriations committees deny him funds (a strategy which, according to a number of Congressional staff aides, has been used on numerous occasions, with good results). Still, federal public-works money has, in recent years, tended to detour around Edgar’s district. His colleagues have also subjected him to threats. “Tim Lee Carter of Kentucky came up to me once after I fought to remove Paintsville Lake from the appropriations bill,” says Edgar. “He was blazing mad. He punched a finger in my chest and said, ”I know nothing about the Philadelphia shipyard, but I will.’ Another Congressman told me he hopes I am successful in knocking off his project, because then hundreds of his constituents will walk into my district and work for my defeat.”

After a while, it is difficult to remain principled in such an atmosphere, let alone be effective. “Congress as an institution is pretty sick,” says Bob Eckhardt, who was a liberal Congressman from Houston until his defeat in 1980. “It has two diseases: special interestitis and parochialism. My opponent made a big issue out of the fact that I was too generous to the Northeast. He said I voted to guarantee New York City’s loan when the money could have been spent in Texas. He boasted about not being a candidate with a national perspective. New Yorkers are just as parochial in their own way. Liz Holtzman of New York feels the question of the Concorde landing at Kennedy Airport is as important as the Equal Rights Amendment. People like Pat Moynihan [the Democratic Senator from New York] oppose western dams but want to waste even more money on a crazily expensive project like Westway. If New York City had gone bankrupt in 1975 it would have been a terribly serious blow to the bond markets of many other cities, including places like Boise, Idaho, and Jackson, Mississippi. I didn’t detect that many members recognized that fact, or cared about it if they did. They mainly didn’t want to be accused of spending their constituents’ money on a lousy place like New York.”

“We are a tyranny presiding over a democracy,” says Edgar. “Congressman Floyd Fithian of Indiana has a water project planned for his district which he doesn’t want. He wants it out of the bill, deauthorized. I don’t know whether a majority of his constituents support him or not, but that should be his problem and their problem. He should be able to take a project out of his own district and if his constituents don’t like it they can vote him out of office. But he hasn’t been able to remove the project from the appropriations bill. Congressman John Myers sits on the Appropriations Committee and its Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. He has some big construction people in his district, which is next door to Floyd’s, who would get some big contracts if the project is built. So every time Fithian tries to remove the project, Myers puts it back in.

“It’s pathetic to watch what can happen to grown men here. One guy had a good project—I thought it was good—in the 1978 appropriations bill, but Ray Roberts yanked it out because he was upset over a couple of votes the guy had cast. He had the poor Congressman crawling up to him on his hands and knees for a year. He finally got his project back. Ray jerked him around like a beaten dog.”

It was against this system that Jimmy Carter, a rube from Georgia who had never been elected to public office outside the state, decided to declare war.

Carter’s appointments alone probably got him off on the wrong foot; in their own way, they were