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It was done in broad daylight. Sen. Robert Byrd walked off with a $185 million FBI fingerprinting center, the Bureau of Public Debt and 3,000 government jobs. There were plenty of witnesses. But except for Jesse Jackson's plaintive cry of "economic rape," no one said a word as Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, moved a chunk of Washington to his native West Virginia. As the sound-bite capital of the world, Congress usually provides critical comment on every imaginable subject. But try to get a top official to say anything negative about Byrd, and you will encounter a conspiracy of silence.
The explanation is simple. Byrd controls the purse strings for federal projects and grants. He is the Prince of Pork. Cross him and you pay; praise him and you play. District of Columbia Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon, who had just won Byrd's vote for a crucial $100 million bailout grant, didn't squawk when Byrd raided her city. "The bottom line is we're helpless," said a District official. "[Byrd is] an untouchable." As majority leader, a post he left in '89, Byrd kept a running tally in his pocket of who was committed to him. "You always knew where you stood," said a former Senate aide. Byrd likes to remind senators that on every major bill he gets hundreds of requests for federal projects - an average of seven per senator - and that some lawmakers lobby for as many as 20 at once. When Sen. John Chafee had the chutzpah to question how long Byrd would speak in a floor debate last fall, Byrd pointedly thanked him for his "very nice card about the item that I helped you with in the Interior appropriations bill."
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Some politicians want to change the world. Byrd has a narrower focus. Two years ago he bounced a lobbyist from his office who had been hired by West Virginia University to win congressional support for a federal grant. Byrd reacted as though it were a personal affront. "The people of West Virginia don't need a lobbyist," he roared. "They have me."
No one disputes that West Virginia, one of the nation's poorest states, is deserving of federal help. During the last decade the state lost more of its population than any other. Its public-school enrollment is down to 64,000, a sixth of what it was in 1980. "Better they get this than welfare," says a Democratic Senate aide. But is this any way to run a poverty program? When Byrd became head of the Appropriations Committee, he vowed to bring home the bucks and become "West Virginia's billion-dollar industry." Less than two years into his chairmanship, Byrd is well on his way toward fulfilling that pledge. A recent tally credited him with bringing in more than $700 million in federal grants, including a state-of-the-art "wildlife worker training center" that he hopes will become a tourist mecca.
No wonder a seat on Appropriations is the No. 1 choice of every lawmaker. It's the gift that keeps on giving. One of Byrd's predecessors, Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield, is currently under fire for accepting gifts and special favors for his children from universities which received grants from the Appropriations Committee when he was chairman. (Hatfield denies he was influenced by the gifts.) Byrd is so brazen about his billion-dollar goal that in less hypocritical circles, his heavy-handed approach might be called blackmail. In Washington it's simply the way business is done.
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