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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 2, 2002
WASHINGTON -- It was several steps short of a full-blown purge, but a recent move by the strong-minded Republican House leadership to consolidate its power over the next Congress still packed enough force to jolt Capitol Hill.
In a display of discipline applauded by some of the most conservative House members, the leadership pulled in the reins on the 13 Republican members who control most discretionary federal spending, a group of subcommittee chairmen so powerful they are known as the Cardinals. From now on, House leaders said, the chairmen will be selected not by seniority but by Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, and Tom DeLay, the majority leader, and their close circle, who are likely to use their new leverage to restrain spending.
The message was unmistakable: Congressional appropriators would now have to follow the tune piped by the leadership, in close consultation with the White House. Those Republicans who march to their own beat in doling out spending favors or preserving programs without authorization could find themselves out of a job.
"These subcommittee chairmen are as powerful or in some cases more powerful than regular committee chairmen," said John Feehery, Hastert's spokesman. "The speaker's action reflects the fact that those chairmen are now going to have to be accountable."
The Cardinals are generally not well-known to the public, but their supreme authority over the 13 spending bills that provide the government with tax money has made them a magnet for lobbyists and campaign cash, and has made every other member who needs a project back home beholden to them as they pick and choose from thousands of spending requests.
Top Republican aides said privately that some of the Cardinals had become so enchanted with their unchecked ability to spend billions of federal dollars in their districts and those of friends -- a practice commonly called pork-barreling -- that they had strayed from the ideological reservation.
There has long been a cultural divide between Republican appropriators and orthodox Republican conservatives. Members who struggle for years to rise through the ranks do so for the right to determine where money is spent, not to cut back on spending, and Republican Cardinals have handed out "earmarks" to their colleagues with no less enthusiasm than Democrats before them. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, the 31-year House veteran who is chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, has publicly clashed with Mitchell Daniels Jr., the White House budget director, over spending limits that Young considers too low. Hastert and DeLay have made it clear that their sympathies are with the administration.