Mother works on handling 2 houses

Cathy McMorris Rodgers is still working on the balancing act of being a member of Congress and a new mom with a special-needs baby. It’s too soon to say yet whether she’d ever have to give up the former to concentrate on the latter.

“We’re still learning what the demands are going to be,” McMorris Rodgers said in an interview Wednesday as her husband, Brian Rodgers, held their son, Cole, nearby. “It’s encouraging to me that millions of moms have learned to balance work and being a mom.”

The U.S. representative can’t say whether blending the two is harder because Cole was born with Down syndrome, because “I’ve never been a mom before.”

But she does believe she’s more fortunate than many new mothers returning to work. Her schedule, while sometimes unpredictable, is fairly flexible; she lives close enough to work to make the trip in a few minutes and her husband, a retired Navy pilot, is able to be with their son during the day. She took maternity leave for the month after Cole’s birth in May, and returned part time in June, being in the Capitol for most votes, but with limited time in the office and at committees.

And she’s got a baby-friendly, or at least baby-accepting, workplace. Cole got a standing ovation the first time she brought him on the House floor, McMorris Rodgers recalled, and one member took to the podium to say she saw “a lot of love on the House floor” – something that’s rare in Congress these days.

“He’s opened new doors to me and broken down barriers,” the Eastern Washington Republican said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called her when Cole was born, and made a point of finding her on the House floor when she returned from maternity leave. Eunice Kennedy Shriver called to invite her to the Special Olympics, and “sit down with Teddy” – her brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

“I’m just very grateful to the thousands who have walked this way before,” she said.

Cole is enrolled in an early intervention program for developmentally disabled children in Washington, D.C. It’s too soon to tell how much he will be affected by Down syndrome, but she and Brian are paying attention to physical signs, like the way he uses a pacifier and the way his eyes track movement.

“We’re already seeing where he’s not developing as quickly. Mentally, you don’t get a sense until much later,” she said.

Now Congress is in recess and the two-term congresswoman is in the middle of her first trip back since May. It includes a standard schedule of meetings around the far-flung district: ceremonial openings at Spokane International Airport and WSU-Spokane, forest management discussions in Walla Walla and Omak, meetings with seniors in Colville, interviews with reporters on topics ranging from Iraq to the farm bill.

Cole is accompanying his parents on much of the trip, and was on hand for the town hall meeting on health care Wednesday morning at Valley Hospital and Medical Center.

In an interview with The Spokesman-Review before the meeting, McMorris Rodgers said her new experience with Down syndrome has not changed her opposition to embryonic stem cell research, which some scientists believe could point toward new treatments for that and other diseases. She believes the federal government should continue to fund other types of stem cell research that don’t involve the destruction of embryos.

“There have been some exciting breakthroughs” with other types of stem cells, she said. “I draw the line with embryonic stem cells. I’m pro-life.”

When Congress returns in September, the House and Senate will be getting reports from Gen. David Petraeus on the effects of the U.S. military’s “surge” in Iraq, and McMorris Rodgers said she’s hoping for news of military gains. Right now, she wouldn’t support a timeline for withdrawal.

“I want to hear from him what he says is the best course,” she said. “I don’t believe that you can put up artificial deadlines. Hopefully we can agree to benchmarks.”

Those would include more talks among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds on sharing power and dividing oil reserves. “We need to keep the pressure on Iraq.”

Shortly before the recess, McMorris Rodgers voted against the House version of the farm bill, which contains many agricultural programs key to her Eastern Washington district. She said she supported the bill that was approved unanimously by the House Agricultural Committee, but voted against it after Democrats added a provision that taxes U.S. subsidiaries of some foreign-owned companies that had previously been able to avoid taxes on some earnings.

That would have affected foreign-owned companies with employees in Washington state, she said. Aides later sent a list of those companies, ranging from British Petroleum and Shell to Nokia and Panasonic, with a total of 85,000 employees.

“The farm bill has never been a tax document,” McMorris Rodgers said. But the Senate has yet to vote on a farm bill, and if a final compromise returns to the House with all the farm programs but no tax increase, she’ll support it.