For a sitting congressman, there are few things worse than being advised what to do by a “former.” So, it is in this spirit that I tread cautiously on the most important issues now in front of the House and Senate.
Having spent 18 years in the House between 1987 and 2005, it is not difficult to understand why I still have a piece of myself in Washington. After all, William Butler Yeats said it best when he wrote: “Because I helped to wind the clock, I came to hear it strike.”
In addition to my time in Washington, I also spent 35 years in the business world. It’s very competitive. That’s the nature and the vibrancy of economic democracy. The difference, however, between this and Washington is that in business, competition is external. In politics, it often can be internal. In business, you can’t afford to have two teams fighting for recognition on the same project. In a public company, there is only one.
Competition is healthy and stimulating, but its impact must be directed at the right target. Corporate internal competition is paralyzing. E.E. Cummings used to remind us that “one is not half of two, two are halves of one.”
That’s why we so desperately need Washington to take a break from the internal competition — the gridlock and partisan bickering — to focus on creating an environment that will give American businesses the opportunity to succeed and allow our economy to begin creating much-needed jobs.
We need a path forward on spending and the debt. We all now recognize that we cannot continue on the road we are on — members of both parties have been forced to wake up to the reality that something must be done to alleviate our mounting debt crisis. We need a bold and comprehensive plan to do so — one that provides a sense of stability in the markets. If we simply continue to kick the can down the road, we will foster instability in our economy and American businesses will continue to be reticent to expand and invest.
We need comprehensive tax reform — a 21st-century tax code that encourages innovation, rewards the job creators who take the risks and makes America the place where every company wants to do business.
We need to dramatically expand our international trade. We need new trade agreements that will open up markets across the globe to American products.
We need serious regulatory reform. I know first-hand how the regulatory bureaucracy can cripple the ability of a company to create jobs. We need to streamline regulations and the federal bureaucracy and unleash the power of the American entrepreneurial spirit.
All of the things I have outlined above can and should be done. All of these proposals enjoy bipartisan support — at least in theory.
Indeed, if Congress was made up of nothing but formers, all of these proposals would likely pass in an almost unanimous fashion. The problem is that we formers are not there. We do not feel the political terror of doing the right thing while trying to get re-elected. Moss Hart, the playwright, twisted that old compliment “gone but not forgotten” to “forgotten but not gone.” Old-timers free from the burdens of primaries, general elections and raising money are liberated to speak their minds and their consciences.
Those of us on the outside by design have a common relationship with elected officials. We’re all citizens, and what we want as Democrats or Republicans is to be able to find a way to help us be free so that we can cross-protect each other in nasty run-ups to elections, and so that we can help each other to serve primarily our country. To do that, we have to listen.
Mark Twain is the most politically quoted author. “Suppose you were an idiot,” he once said, “and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” He was frank, blunt and funny. But at times, he also could be wrong. An example is his statement that “you are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do.” Suppose you find you are wrong. John Maynard Keynes wrote years after Mark Twain’s passing, “When facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”
To move forward on these and other issues, we need to listen to the other side and be flexible in our opinions. Some of us were part of the military. I signed on in May of 1944. Our goal as Marines was not to beat out the Navy Seabees or the 182nd Air Force group. Our goal was to join hands and win the war — certainly not as Republicans or Democrats, but as common, everyday United States citizens.
I believe in the two-party system. It has kept us from having a minority form of government such as other democracies have. Competition is only good as long as it produces results that keep us strong.
Now more than ever we need our elected leaders in Washington to recognize that we share a common bond as Americans, that we share common goals and that we are infinitely stronger working together than we are working against each other.
Amory F. Houghton is a former U.S. Representative from New York. He is the chairman of the board of the Republican Main Street Partnership.
