Former House Armed Services Chair Cites Changes, Concerns

By: Kevin Trainor/Managing Editor

Howard P. “Buck” McKeon stood on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and felt a buzz in the room.  The Republicans were going to win one.  A vote, that is.  The freshman California Republican was standing with multi-term fellow Californian, Elton Gallegly.  Gallegly had never been on a winning side before that day in 1993.  At issue: a Democrat-controlled House power grab.  In roughly seventy years, save for two in the Eisenhower era, Democrats had run the floor.  Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and others in the leadership, had devised a plan to create four new congressional task forces.  Four new chairman, with purse power, and another four million plus in spending.   The task force committees would deal with general issues like addiction, allied relations, etc.  Before the vote the Republicans had offered Leader Gephardt a compromise to limit the committees to one year of existence in exchange for cooperation.  Gephardt would have none of it.  Why?  They would win anyway.  The vote board showed a different story.  With his committee measure going down to defeat a chastened Gephardt returned to the Republicans accepting the compromise offer.  They would have none of it.  Freshman Congressman McKeon, a future Armed Services Committee chairman, would reflect that out of a budget in the trillions the minority party somehow managed to save four million and change.  It was a start.


When Buck McKeon arrived on Capitol Hill it was a different place.  U.S. Capitol police were not carrying automatic weapons, and congressional leaders went without armed protection.  Events, like the shooting on an Alexandria ballfield targeting members tuning up for an annual inter-party baseball game, had not been on the radar.  He was elected from an expansion congressional seat centering on Santa Clarita, CA, an upstart town in the northern reaches of Los Angeles County.  He had been on the original city council, and took his turn as mayor, which is the procedure.  He had taken over his family’s Western apparel clothing business.  When the new seat was announced he was urged to run, and quickly consolidated support.  He had never really run for office before as the city council term was an appointed one in the beginning of the city’s incorporation.  McKeon was urged to hold a press conference to announce his candidacy.  About seventy friends and family showed up.  Plus one reporter.  The journalist asked about his position on abortion, and it was welcome to the big leagues.

As a Republican a cycle before the “Contract With America” in 1994 Democrats still wielded the power hand.  McKeon recalls a certain amount of arrogance.  He cites one example of an Education Committee vote where all 18 Republicans showed up and voted in unison.  One Democrat showed up, voted, and offered 26 proxy votes.  Dems 27 Reps 18.  When the Republicans would soon take power proxy voting was abolished.  Other changes will soon include, under Republican control, term-limits on chairmanships, and party leadership positions, thus making the floor less imperial.  McKeon adds that in the first cycle in Republican hands taxpayers were saved millions in operational costs.

With all the streamlining the long-time Republican representative bemoans the fact that “we did not get the message out to the public. Democrats are better at that.”  Call it political marketing.  Case in point in a back-to-back series of tragedies when the Democrats held power for a four year stretch, ’06 to ’10, there was a mining accident in Pennsylvania, and a sugar plant explosion in Georgia.  Before the Mining Safety and Health Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration started meticulous work in assessing cause, Democrat leadership had brought victim’s families to the Hill, complete with photos of the deceased, and held public hearings.  Within a week two bills were proposed, drafted, and passed in the House.

“Obamacare” legislation was drafted and passed in the House without any Republican input.  McKeon says George Miller, a longtime California Democrat, offered to show him the bill after it was written up, and before it was disclosed.  “Why bother?” he says, “it was a done deal.”  Unfortunately Republicans, as he mentions, have been guilty of one-party passage as well.  To the detriment of both legislation, and process.  The party in power has its advantage, counterintuitively, in raising money.  In his first term Buck McKeon says he went to a National Republican Congressional Committee, (NRCC) fundraiser in Palm Springs. “There was like thirty people or so, I gave a talk about our freshman Republican class, and we raised a few dollars.”  After ’94 that all changed he recalls.  People were lining up to drop a check.  Like most in congressional office he says there are good people in both parties who strive to do the right thing.  He has a caveat however.  First, you ensure your re-election, and then you serve the common good.  McKeon recalls his first campaign for congress in ’92, and not getting any money from the national party as his district was safely Republican.  “I had to mortgage my house, that was about $500,000.”  Then to raise money the old fashioned way.  Ask.  “Someone noticed my congressional pin on my lapel, and asked how you get one,”  he adds, “I told him they cost five million dollars.”

Before the Republican takeover it was noted despite party affiliation members, their families, usually socialized, especially on weekends.  Speaker Gingrich discouraged that, and wanted Republican members going home on the weekends.  McKeon says there are roughly 780,000 people in a congressional district.  You go home, a few events, and at most, talk to a few hundred constituents.  Then come back to the Hill, and say my district feels one way or another on an issue.  Really, the twelve-term member says “I probably only spoke to Republicans, Democrats the same on their side.”  Hardly representative sampling.

Is Chairman McKeon optimistic, pessimistic, about the future?  “I struggle to be optimistic.”  He cites a visit to the Gettysburg Battlefield and the Park Services guides, many former military officers, citing the Civil War as an example of a bad time.  He is concerned the atmosphere of divisiveness is dangerous.  “We could be tested, around the world they see us being so critical of the president, each other, someone could think now is a good time to take a shot at us.”  As Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee he went to Korea to meet military brass on the ground.  “They struggle with tamping it down.”  By that he meant South Korean commanders who wonder “why we (US) are waiting.”  One thing the Chairman is grateful for is that, in his opinion, President Trump has assembled the finest Armed Forces Chief of Staff’s in memory.  “They’re probably saving us right now.”


Howard P. “Buck” McKeon is founder, and principal, of the McKeon Group, LLC in Alexandria, Virginia.