Trading Florida sunshine for the national spotlight

Insight on the News, Feb 13, 1995 by Lisa Leiter

For 14 years, E. Clay Shaw Jr. has looked out for the interests of his Florida district. Now that he chairs a key House subcommittee, he must balance that tendency with the expectations of GOP leaders.

Majority rule has its perks. A week before the November elections, when Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida was just another Republican, his wife Emilie reserved the House Ways and Means Committee room for a reception for congressional spouses. But when she decided to extend the reception, she discovered that a Democratic congressman already had reserved the following time slot.

So Shaw's chief of staff, Scott Spear, called the Democrat and asked him to postpone his event for a few hours. No response. He called again and again - until Congress adjourned for the 1994 election.

The day after, Shaw was anything but just another Republican. Spear's phone rang that morning with a member of the suddenly deferential Democrat's staff on the line. Emilie could have the committee room for as long as she wanted.

"The sands are shifted up there, that's for sure," laughs Shaw, retelling the story. "There's a lot more concern about returning phone calls."

Shaw should enjoy more laughs after struggling against a Democratic majority during his first 14 years. As the new head of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Human Resources, he has become the focal point of the House's debate about welfare.

"I'm tremendously excited, but with that excitement goes a lot of responsibility," he says. "We have to control the legislative agenda.... We just can't sit back and vote against what the Democrats are going to do. It takes a whole attitude change."

Mild-mannered - in fact, almost unflappable - Shaw would seem like the ideal consensus builder to help steer complex legislation through the House during the first 100 days, as he and his Republican colleagues have promised. But with this newfound power comes the challenge of balancing constituent needs with a national agenda and his moderate views with those of the GOP's staunchly conservative leadership.

Just weeks after the Republican revolution, Shaw came close to heresy, expressing doubts about sections of the "Contract With America" denying welfare to unwed teenage mothers and placing children in orphanages. He insists the word orphanages won't make it into the final bill. "The word is only in there once," he says. "Unfortunately, that one word has drawn the focus away from what we're trying to do."

Still, Shaw promises to adhere to the contract and help produce legislation with three key reform elements: a time limit on cash benefits; a work requirement for welfare recipients coupled with job placement and training; and no increase in aid to mothers who have additional children while on welfare.

He also endorses the plan's demand that women identify their children's fathers as a condition of receiving help under Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the main welfare program.

"These guys are getting off scot-free, and the mother's life is pretty much ruined under the present system," says Shaw. "They need to learn there is a price to pay for bringing kids into this world. What we're doing now is so upside down - it encourages multiple births. Everything we're doing is wrong."

Fueled by unsuccessful attempts in the past - his welfare reform legislation has been blocked by Democrats for the last four years - Shaw exhibits confidence and determination to deliver a subcommittee vote by mid-February. But he still wishes his colleagues had given him a little more time.

"We've designed this thing in a very tough way with this Contract With America," he says. "We can do it, but it's going to take a lot of work. What we agreed to do is a sizable chore for the first two years, but we're going to work at it and see if we can't do it in 100 days."

To succeed, Shaw must overcome problems from all over the political compass - liberal Democrats, the tendency of lawmakers to dismiss an agenda in favor of their home district's pork-barrel needs and a zealous party leadership that needs to be appeased.

The former lawyer and certified public accountant looks to his self-described pragmatic business experience to see him through the coming bedlam of the 104th Congress. "It's just going to be a question of party unity," he says. "[Congress is] going to have to have a longer and wider vision for America.... We're not going to be any good unless we enact rhetoric into laws."

Concentrating on national issues is something new for Shaw, 55, who has spent most of his previous seven terms serving up federal dollars for his district, a 100-mile coastal stretch from Juno to Miami beaches that has grown more moderate since he first was elected in 1980.

Before joining Ways and Means in 1988, he served on three committees: Judiciary, Public Works and Transportation and Select Narcotics Abuse and Control. Shaw concentrated on regional issues, such as the military's involvement in the war on drugs, Everglades preservation and, most notably, South Florida's traffic woes.