This article first appeared in the St. Lous Beacon, Jan. 21, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Missouri's senior senator is an outspoken, quotable Democrat who likes to challenge Senate rules and relishes her "watchdog" role. The state's junior senator is a low-key insider who is already making inroads into Republican leadership by working behind the scenes. Sens. Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt offer marked contrasts in their legislative styles and their stands on national issues, but they may find ways to work in tandem on some issues important to the state.
Blunt may help bridge the Senate-House gap
He may be the least senior senator in the bi-state delegation, but Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., already is positioning himself to become a player in the chamber's Republican ranks. The day he took the oath of office, Blunt was named by the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., to the caucus "whip" team as a likely liaison between the Senate and the House.
The reasoning is clear: Blunt served in the House for nearly 14 years, rising through the Republican ranks to become the majority whip, minority whip and -- for a few months -- the acting majority leader. In those roles, he got to know most House members, dealt often with Kyl and other Senate counterparts, and learned the legislative arts.
In an article this week, Roll Call -- a newspaper tailored to Capitol Hill insiders -- called Blunt "a key player with unique relations" with House members.
In the article, Kyl described Blunt as "a very thoughtful" senator who "can analyze things well. He doesn't get out and talk about things a lot. He's able to do his job very effectively, but without a lot of fanfare. ... He has very good contacts over in the House, both on the R and D side."
That assessment was echoed by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Ca., who told the newspaper that Blunt's experience and contacts in the House "if used properly ... could help Senate Republicans be stronger."
Blunt's Senate priorities appear likely to follow the Republican line on most national issues, including an emphasis on spending cuts and an opposition to last year's health-care overhaul. After the House voted this week to repeal the health-care law, Blunt said he is "committed to examining all of the tools at our disposal to bring this fight to the Senate floor where the American people expect to see an up or down vote." The Senate's Democratic leader, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, has said he plans to block such a vote.
In an interview last month, Blunt told the Beacon that he wanted to follow what he interpreted as the two major messages sent by Missouri voters who elected him to the Senate in November: "The No. 1 message from voters in the country was: 'Where are the private-sector jobs?' [That was] followed by: 'Why is the federal government spending so much more money than it's ever spent before?'"
Blunt said, "There will be lots of opportunities in both of those areas to pursue better, sounder spending policies and to do the things that encourage private-sector job creation." He added: "Government jobs don't pay the bill; government jobs are the bill. You need a few of them. But if they get out of place relative to the rest of the economy, the rest of the economy stops growing. We've seen that happen, and we've paid a price for that happening."
Key staff members told the Beacon that Blunt plans to focus on various issues important to Missouri: protecting legacy programs at the state's best universities; confronting challenges facing the state's farmers and food producers; making sure that the state's defense industry and the jobs it supports are maintained; establishing a St. Louis transportation hub for trade and commercial exchange with China; keeping watch to ensure that Missouri is not disadvantaged on highway and transportation funding; and trying to keep the price of electricity low by protecting "low-cost electricity production" in the state.
While the Senate has been in recess in early January, Blunt has been making appearances across the state -- from a visit to Fort Leonard Wood in Rolla to a Martin Luther King Day celebration in St. Louis -- to talk with Missourians about their goals and complaints about the federal government and Congress.
Blunt's spokeswoman, Amber Marchand, said the senator "continues to travel around the state, listening to organizations and communities about their priorities, and he looks forward to being their advocate in the U.S. Senate."
McCaskill looks for bipartisan initiatives
An outspoken opponent of Senate earmarks is Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who says she wants to make sure that this Congress doesn't add them to appropriations bills. She tried to get earmarks banned last fall with an unsuccessful amendment that she advocated along with some Senate Republicans.
McCaskill said she wants to find ways to work more often on a bipartisan basis with Republicans -- including cooperation with Blunt on some Missouri issues. Among other things, McCaskill told the Beacon last month, she hopes to work with Blunt on a number of state matters, such as "the [St. Louis] China hub, light rail for Kansas City, the University of Missouri, agricultural issues in rural Missouri [and] health-care facilities."
Both McCaskill and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said they backed the project to expand and improve the Gateway Arch grounds, including the East St. Louis riverfront. But the problem is going to be finding federal funding. In a Congress in which earmarks are being shunned, McCaskill says she hopes that the Obama administration's budget might include some support for the project.
"I think it's going to be a combination of funding," said McCaskill. "Everyone is envisioning that there will be some private, some local, some state and some federal. I think the only way we'll get it done will be with a layering of funding."
Another Missouri issue that interests McCaskill is halting the duties imposed in 2005 by the U.S. Commerce Department on imports of magnesium and a magnesium alloy from Russia and China. What's the impact in the Midwest? The duties, which were intended to save jobs at the sole U.S. magnesium producer in Utah, have hurt manufacturing companies in Missouri and elsewhere that now must pay much higher prices for the alloy.
"It has caused a lot of our tool-and-die manufacturers in Missouri to be placed at a competitive disadvantage," McCaskill told the Beacon. "Because the magnesium prices they are paying are so much higher than [prices paid by] their foreign competitors."
With the magnesium tariff due to expire this year, McCaskill said she is "working hard to get it to go away. Because these small tool-and-die manufacturers sprinkled throughout Missouri ... there are thousands of jobs out there."
Which brings McCaskill to the topic of why Senate earmarks and backroom dealing can lead to problems. The magnesium tariff "was one of these instances where one company got something because they had connections in Washington," she said.
Earmarks are just one of the senator's targets. A former Missouri state auditor, McCaskill has used her chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's contracting oversight subcommittee to investigate complaints about gravesite management and contracting at Arlington National Cemetery as well as deficiencies in auditing by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which is tasked with exposing waste and fraud in the $56 billion Afghanistan reconstruction.
Both of those initiatives got results, with SIGAR's chief resigning this month and the Arlington hearings leading to a bipartisan bill, signed into law in December that aims to straighten out the problems at the national cemetery. McCaskill wants to continue to watch carefully the audit of reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and also to follow up on the Arlington problems.
"I'm still not convinced that we shouldn't turn over the day-to-day management of Arlington to the Veterans Administration" rather than the Army, she said. "They do the vast majority of them. It's a core competency they have."
By focusing on wasteful contracts and "good government" issues, McCaskill is trying to stake out ground as a centrist on some fiscal and Senate reform issues, such as her bipartisan effort to ban the "secret holds" that allow individual senators to block legislation or presidential nominees.
In general, McCaskill said, it's important for congressional committees to follow up on major initiatives. "There's a very short attention span around here and there's a tendency for people to move on to something else."
Her subcommittee's next hearing will examine "how much audit work on contracts is actually being done by federal agencies," she told the Beacon. "Sometimes an investment in good auditors produces a very good return for taxpayers. At the next hearing, we're going to look at the extent to which there is audit work going on to examine federal contracts."
In general, McCaskill said she hopes to find ways to work with fellow Democrats and moderate Republicans to find ways to develop and approve bipartisan legislation. "Obviously, we can't get anything passed without some bipartisan support," she said.
Observing that some Republican moderates "are worried about primary challenges from the right," the Missouri senator said she hopes that trend "doesn't discourage moderates in the Republican Party from working with us to find compromises that can actually solve some problems."