by Gene Steuerle

Economic Perspective columnist Gene Steuerle offers a tribute to recently retired Rep. Willis Gradison, R-Ohio.

Date: Feb. 15, 5-93

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Recently Rep. Bill Gradison, R-Ohio, announced his retirement from the House of Representatives to take a position with the Health Insurance Association of America. Partly because of my desire to maintain a policy focus in this column, I usually refrain from making references to the personalities of politicians or others involved in making decisions on government fiscal or social policy. This time I must make an exception, partly because Bill Gradison is no longer a member of Congress and partly because I believe his example provides important lessons for those elected officials who want to learn how to craft good policy. Although many of Gradison's formal legislative accomplishments are worthy of tribute, here I want simply to give due recognition to the remarkable way he went about his business.

As I have moved about over the years, I have come to know policy analysts at many different levels of seniority, both in and out of government, in tax, budget, and social policy. Some were civil servants, some elected officials, some political appointees, and still others were in so-called think tanks or policy research organizations. They wore many different stripes: conservative, liberal, and middle of the road, partisan and nonpartisan. When referring to Bill Gradison, however, they spoke almost in unison. Their questions were almost always the same. "Can we get Bill Gradison to come to this meeting or conference?" "What does Congressman Gradison think about the issue?" "In what direction is he leading his fellow members of Congress or his staff?"

If there is such a thing as a politician's analyst, Gradison was an analyst's politician. Thoughtful, reserved, and perceptive, he never approached issues in a lightweight manner, nor did he rely on trite phrases and commonly accepted wisdom. I can think of few people in my couple of decades in Washington who commanded so much respect. Although he was a national leader, his attention to detail was not the louder type that attracted immediate media attention. One of his great strengths was in getting a policy to work, to craft pieces of a bill together in a way that was coherent from a policy perspective, yet commanded enough political consensus to obtain passage.

Respect for him stretched far beyond those policy analysts, including congressional and executive branch staff, who worked on federal policy. In issues such as health, it was Gradison to whom fellow members of the Ways and Means Committee, both Republican and Democrat, turned. I can remember several sessions, hearings, or retreats of the Ways and Means Committee where everyone essentially waited for Bill's final word to summarize an issue at hand and allow movement onto another part of the agenda.

Not that Bill was always right. In the catastrophic health insurance debate of 1988, Bill was again one of the leaders on whom everyone relied. He fought to get out a bill that would expand coverage, but at modest costs and with workable provisions. He was forced, like many others, to accept a few too many add-ons and constraints, some of which were contradictory. These additions then required yet further revisions and compromises to be able to get the bill out of Congress. In the end, everything became glued together with a financing provision that was way too complex and would have been unsustainable administratively, even if politics had not first intervened. The plain truth, however, was that he came as close as anyone to making it work.

I have often said to others that if a president, Republican or Democrat, were really serious about health care reform, he would have put Gradison in a position to try to help pull it off. He was one of the few who could work well with politicians and staff, who knew what might fly and what might not, and who was willing to recognize the warts associated with both the present system and proposals to change it.

A major reason for Bill's effectiveness was the way he worked with people. He confided to me once that he did not believe in attacking other participants in the process, whether he agreed with them or not. He found it not only inconsiderate, but almost always counterproductive. He stated that political appointees, civil servants, and lobbyists all had roles to play and limits on what they could say or not say, and he saw little gain in criticizing them for doing their job. He accepted the information that others had to offer and had the wisdom to know where there were gaps to be filled. One reason that government workers liked working with him so much was that he actively sought their advice and knowledge while sharing his own.

Knowledge, of course, is also power. There are some officials who find knowledgeable staff to be a threat. At times the information that staff provides may be ammunition against some favored policy; at other times it can force revision of long-held views. Bill not only respected the role experts inside and outside of government had to play, but he made use of their knowledge to his own end. This was not possible, of course, without the modesty and will to let his own views evolve.

The willingness to communicate with all concerned parties, of course, is what made Bill such an effective legislator. The legislators who have the least impact on policy are those who already know all the answers, or who don't want to be reminded of the costs of the actions they propose. Bill understood implicitly that this type of attitude would be ineffective if one really cared about the policy itself and needed to know how details would affect design, drafting, and implementation. Modesty in one's own views, respect for the contributions of others, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge -- these are the attributes of a member of Congress who would be a successful policy maker. Bill was one of the finest.

Gene Steuerle is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and an economic consultant to Tax Notes.

Tax Analysts Information

Code Section: No Code Section Applicable
Jurisdiction: United States
Index Terms: other
Author: Steuerle, Gene
Institutional Author: Tax Analysts
Tax Analysts Electronic Citation: 93 TNT 42-76