WASHINGTON -- Shattering the seniority system on which congressional influence traditionally is based, House Republican leaders announced yesterday that they are awarding most open seats on key committees to freshmen lawmakers, ensuring them a major role in enacting the GOP's legislative agenda next year.
The young and homogeneously conservative GOP class of '94, which so far has shown an almost lock-step loyalty to incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, received nearly two-thirds of the 31 plum vacancies on the Appropriations, Ways and Means and Commerce committees.
They also received a slot on the pivotal Rules Committee and six of the eight vacant seats on the House Judiciary Committee, which, along with Ways and Means, will handle most of the legislation in the GOP's list of campaign pledges known as the "Contract with America."
"If you want to have an infusion of new blood and restore the health of the body, you ought to put it in the main artery," said incoming Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, as he announced the committee assignments at a Capitol Hill news conference.
The 73 newcomers received seven of the 11 open seats on the House Appropriations Committee; three of the 10 vacancies on the Ways and Means Committee; six of the eight openings on the Judiciary Committee; and nine of the 10 open seats on the newly renamed Commerce Committee, formerly known as the Energy and Commerce Committee.
"It is quite remarkable," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think-tank, of the freshmen's clout in winning so many senior committee posts. "The only analogy in modern times is the [post-Watergate] freshman class of 1974, but even they were not given the deference that this class has received from its leadership."
That deference, a reflection of the unusually close alliance that the senior leadership has forged with its new legislative recruits after the Nov. 8 elections, is based on what both sides say is a mutual recognition of their importance to one another.
Mr. Gingrich and other senior GOP leaders like Majority Whip Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, were extremely active during the campaign, raising money and providing political advice and support to many of the Republican challengers.
Already united under the ideological umbrella of Mr. Gingrich's "Contract with America," many of the freshmen arrived in Washington with the knowledge that they were deeply indebted to the GOP leadership that helped get them elected. As a result, they have been among the most vocal and unquestioning supporters of Mr. Gingrich's efforts to consolidate and centralize power in his office.
But if the freshmen owe GOP leaders a debt of gratitude, the leadership also recognizes that it would not be in the majority now had it not been for the freshmen, and it has bent over backward to be unusually solicitous of the newcomers as a result.
"Two years ago, there was another class that came to Washington saying they were going to bring about reform, but their leadership headed them off at the pass," said Rep.-elect Gerry Weller, an Illinois Republican, referring to the Democrats who came to Congress in 1992 with a strong reform agenda that was continually frustrated by the Democratic leadership.
"But the exact opposite has occurred with the leadership we are working with today," Mr. Weller said. "The leadership we have in Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and Tom DeLay and others has been listening to the concerns and ideas of the new members."
Also yesterday, Republicans announced that they would reduce the size of the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees, forcing off some Democrats who have been serving on them for years.
Appropriations -- the spending panel -- will have 32 Republicans and 24 Democrats, four fewer seats overall than in the Congress that just ended.
Ways and Means -- which sets taxes -- will have 21 Republicans and 15 Democrats, two fewer members overall than previously.
"We tried to be as responsive as we could [to the Democrats]," said Mr. Armey.
He said Democratic Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri agreed to the Republican-Democratic ratios for each committee.
But Mr. Gephardt's office immediately released a statement saying the committee structure shows the Republicans' "prime motivation is control, not public policy."