Sali charts own path in Congress

Bill Sali says he arrived in Congress to find a system that’s “goofy.”

Congressmen debate bills in an empty chamber. Testimony at committee hearings is by invitation only. Votes are noisy, messy affairs. Bills have multiple issues tucked into them, and the only choices are all or nothing.

“Things do not make sense,” said the freshman Idaho Republican, whose seven months in office so far have been marked by “no” votes on an array of popular bills. He voted against economic development funding for Indian tribes. He opposed reauthorizing Head Start. He turned thumbs-down on scientific research funding, small-business loans and incentives, rural housing money and community policing grants.

Sali said he’s “trying to keep us from spending our grandkids into bankruptcy.” He added, “People like the way I’m voting, and I’m getting encouragement all the time, saying, ‘You’re doing a great job, keep it up.’ “

He hasn’t opposed all spending. Sali introduced legislation to continue federal timber payments to counties, pushed for earmarks for road projects and hospital programs in Idaho and even was taken to task by a free-market blogger for backing federal funding for a Boise detox center.

About 85 percent of the time, Sali has voted with the majority of Republicans in the House. The other 15 percent of the time, he’s tended to vote “no,” often as part of a small minority that doesn’t include Idaho’s other congressman, 2nd District Republican Mike Simpson.

“I’m not responsible for Mike, and he’s not responsible for me,” Sali said. “I think the amount of difference between us is acceptable and respectable, and I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

Sali said a good example of what’s wrong with how Congress works was legislation to provide new small-business startup grants to tribal members on Indian lands in states with at least a 1 percent Native American population. Idaho fits in that category, and the 1st District includes three Indian reservations and part of a fourth.

But Sali opposed the bill, HR 2284, because it also would have included native Hawaiians in the program.

“Hawaiians are a race, they’re not a tribe – so what we’re doing is we’re putting in law discrimination in favor of a race of people, and I’m shocked that we’re doing that in Congress,” Sali said. “They don’t fit the definition of a tribe, they’re not recognized as a sovereign people.”

Sali added, “If I could carve out the Hawaiian part of that, I’d probably vote for the bill.”

Boise State University political science professor emeritus Jim Weatherby said, “The balancing act for Bill Sali is ideology on one hand and representing his district on the other. … He’s such a polarizing figure. On one hand he’s viewed as this right-wing wacko that few listen to, but on the other hand he’s viewed by others as a principled maverick whose positions are gaining respect.”

Weatherby noted that Idahoans historically have sent to Congress “a lot of very colorful members who have not been in the mainstream on a lot of votes and have taken a lot of unpopular stands.” He cited former Idaho Reps. Butch Otter, Helen Chenoweth-Hage, Steve Symms and George Hansen.

Sali still chuckles about his debate gambit during his first weeks in office, when he rose in the House and proposed mock legislation to reduce the law of gravity, saying it made as much sense as legislation to raise the minimum wage, which Sali contended defied the laws of the free market.

“We got so much positive comment about that,” Sali said. “People liked the fact that I was poking fun at Congress for presupposing that it has all the answers and has all the power to be able to do things like change gravity. The reality is most of the answers to real questions that we face won’t come out of Washington, D.C.”

When faced with the legislation reauthorizing Head Start, the federally funded preschool program for low-income children, Sali said, “It did not include a mechanism for faith-based organizations to be involved in Head Start.” So he opposed it.

“We were told … that any gains that kids get in Head Start disappear by third grade,” Sali said. “There’s some information that would indicate that Head Start would perform well if we allowed some of the faith-based organizations to engage and bring some different principles to bear in that early childhood.”

Jasper LiCalzi, a political science professor at Albertson College of Idaho, said, “He’s more independent than I think most first-term members are. … He’s even in the minority on bipartisan issues that the Republican leadership supports.”

Among them: Sali had problems with a batch of proposals to provide loans or incentives to small businesses. They included provisions targeting money to specific groups, such as women or veterans.

“The idea that we’re going to reserve certain money for veterans, for women’s groups, those kinds of things, it assumes that they’re not getting their fair share for the entities that are financially viable, and there’s no indication that that’s true,” Sali said. “The reality is we’re going to take a bunch of money off the table that might be available for other small businesses that are viable – we’re discriminating.”

But he hasn’t made speeches on the floor of Congress about those objections, or proposed other mock legislation since his gravity argument in January. That’s because, he said, he’s discovered that floor debate doesn’t really matter in Congress. Much of it is simply “nasty attacks” and partisan bickering.

“We don’t really deliberate around here,” he said. “It tends to occur in a more meaningful way in committee work and private discussions.”

He’s been focusing on his committees – he’s assigned to the Resources and Government Oversight committees – where he said he’s distinguished himself in part by attendance. Many members don’t bother to show up, Sali said.

But he said the process has been confusing. When congressional committees hold hearings, they’re on topics – not on specific pieces of legislation. “For a member of Congress to try and discern what is the takeaway message from these people who actually do have to testify in front of us can be very difficult,” Sali said. “Too often the hearings end up being nothing more than a photo opportunity for people” so they can say they testified to Congress, he said.

He added, “If that sounds goofy to you, it’s only because it is.”

Though Sali often clashed with his own party’s leadership in the Idaho Legislature, losing a committee chairmanship in the process, he said he’s found allies in Congress. “There’s a ton of them,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of like-minded thinking.”