[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 6 (Tuesday, February 1, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              AN EXTRAORDINARY BARGAIN: EDWARD G. GROSSMAN

                                 ______


                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 1, 1994

  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, too little attention is 
given to the high quality of work that is produced by so many employees 
of the Congress for salaries that are well below what these individuals 
would receive if they were in the private sector. One of the most 
extraordinary bargains the public gets is Ed Grossman, the extremely 
talented counsel in the Office of Legislative Counsel. I was delighted 
to read a recent New York Times article describing the high quality 
work which Mr. Grossman does, and because it is important that the 
public understand the high quality of work that is done by so many 
public employees, I ask that this article be printed here.

                [From the New York Times, Nov. 26, 1993]

           It Should Be Called the Grossman Health Care Bill

                            (By Robert Pear)

       Washington, November 25.--When Bill and Hillary Clinton 
     said they had ``no pride of authorship'' in their legislative 
     proposal to overhaul the nation's health care system, there 
     was good reason: neither they nor anyone else in the White 
     House wrote it.
       Most of the bill's 240,000 words are those of Edward G. 
     Grossman, an inconspicuous, self-effacing lawyer who 
     translates bold visions and vague ideas from the fevered 
     brains of politicians into the cool, precise, bloodless prose 
     of statutes.
       The 44-year old Mr. Grossman is known as a brilliant, 
     meticulous and tireless technician who finds enormous 
     pleasure in the mastery of legislative details. He knows as 
     much as anyone one earth about Federal health care laws, and 
     he has been described as not merely a magician but indeed a 
     national treasure.
       ``It was like going to someone with preliminary renderings 
     of a cathedral and having this incredible artisan turn it 
     into Notre Dame,'' said Sara Rosenbaum, a health care lawyer 
     chosen by Mrs. Clinton to supervise drafting of the 
     Administration's bill.
       Mr. Grossman is a senior lawyer in the House of 
     Representatives' Office of the Legislative Counsel, which 
     ordinarily drafts bills for members of Congress, not the 
     White House. He took up the Administration's health care 
     proposal at the behest of the House majority leader, 
     Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.
       That unusual arrangement infuriated some conservative 
     Republicans like Representative Robert K. Dornan of 
     California, who complained that Mr. Grossman had been 
     ``seconded to the executive branch at our expense.''
       But Mr. Grossman is not an advocate for Mr. Clinton, or for 
     anybody else. He has worked as a ghostwriter for lawmakers of 
     every political stripe. He drafted not only the Clintons' 
     bill but the other major health care proposals as well: the 
     Republican alternative offered by Representative Robert H. 
     Michel, the conservative Democratic version of ``managed 
     competition'' sponsored by Representative Jim Cooper, and the 
     ``single payer'' bills offered by Representative Jim 
     McDermott and Senator Paul Wellstone.
       When Congress wanted a law that would protect Medicare 
     beneficiaries against catastrophic medical expenses, it was 
     Mr. Grossman who drafted it, in 1988. And it was also Mr. 
     Grossman who a year later, after an outcry from elderly 
     people angry about the higher taxes and premiums needed to 
     pay for the legislation, wrote the law repealing it.


                          ed works like a dog

       Although Mr. Grossman toils in a highly charged political 
     atmosphere, where suspicion and distrust abound, a diligent 
     search found no one with a bad word to say about him.
       Senator Alan K. Simpson, the Republican whip, said: ``Ed 
     works like a dog. In my dealings with him, I have never seen 
     any shred of partisanship. I've been in this world for 62 
     years, and I've been in the Senate for 14 years, and I'm awed 
     by him. People would have more confidence in our system of 
     government if they knew there were people like Ed Grossman 
     working for us.''
       Mr. Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, calls Mr. Grossman ``the 
     Mr. Goodwrench of legislation, a master mechanic who really 
     knows how to make things work well.''
       ``He's writing the biggest bill in 60 years,'' Mr. Cooper 
     said. ``He's writing the laws that other lawyers will read 
     for the rest of their lives.''
       In contrast, Mr. Grossman is characteristically understated 
     in describing his work on the bill. ``Many elements of the 
     Clinton bill are similar to pieces of previous legislation,'' 
     he said. Still, he did acknowledge that ``our work on this 
     bill differed in the sheer magnitude of the project, the 
     scope and complexity of the task and the large number of 
     people involved.''


                          toiling in obscurity

       Mr. Grossman works in a basement office on Capitol Hill, 
     rarely attends Congressional hearings and is little known to 
     the legions of lobbyists trying to influence health care 
     legislation.
       By all accounts, he has an astounding ability to figure out 
     what his lawmaker clients want--not just what they say they 
     want--and then devise elegant legislative solutions to 
     achieve those objectives, with great attention to detail.
       His latest assignment was particularly challenging because 
     the White House's health policy team included many people 
     unfamiliar with prior legislation. Ira C. Magaziner, the 
     President's health policy coordinator, is not a lawyer and 
     had no experience in Washington when he arrived here in 
     January. Mr. Grossman took the Administration's inchoate 
     ideas and converted them into a concrete legislative 
     proposal.
       Mr. Grossman has worked at the Office of the Legislative 
     Counsel for 18 years, ever since graduating from law school. 
     The office was created in 1919, when Congress decided that it 
     needed expertise in writing tax laws, and now has 35 lawyers, 
     four of whom--Noah L. Wofsy, Susan Fleishman, Peter Goodloe 
     and Lawrence A. Johnston--helped Mr. Grossman with the 
     Clinton bill.
       Ms. Rosenbaum, the health care lawyer who supervised the 
     bill-drafting effort for the Clintons, describes Mr. Grossman 
     and those four colleagues as people with ``extraordinary 
     legal skills, for which you would normally pay $500 an hour 
     at a private law firm.'' Mr. Grossman earns $109,000 a year, 
     substantially less than the salary of a partner at a leading 
     firm.
       The legislators who seek Mr. Grossman's help vary 
     immensely. ``Some people have thought through the problems, 
     solutions and alternatives before they walk in the door,'' he 
     said. ``Others have less experience. I encourage them to 
     think through all the legal and social consequences of what 
     they do. Most legislation affects real, live people in the 
     real world.''
       Mr. Grossman has a strong sense of architecture. He knows 
     not only the content but also the structure of existing laws, 
     and he knows how to construct legislation so that the pieces 
     fit together. Mr. Clinton's Health Security Act has 12 
     titles, and many titles are divided into subtitles, parts, 
     subparts, sections, subsections, paragraphs, subparagraphs, 
     clauses and subclauses, in that order.
       The writing of legislation forces policymakers to answer 
     difficult questions. Legislative draftsmen working on the 
     Clinton bill spent the better part of a day just trying to 
     get Administration officials to define a ``family.'' Does it 
     include foster children? Adopted children? Children of minors 
     living in three-generation families? The answers to such 
     questions--in general, ``yes'' to all three of these--are 
     important because they help determine who would get Federal 
     subsidies to buy health insurance and whether an employer 
     must pay premiums not only for an employee but also for the 
     employees' children.
       Mr. Grossman, now married and the father of one child, was 
     born in Manhattan and grew up in Roslyn, L.I. His father was 
     a clothing manufacturer, his mother a lawyer for the Nassau 
     County government. He earned a bachelor's degree in urban 
     studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971 
     and graduated from Yale Law School in 1975, two years after 
     the Clintons, whom he did not know there.
       At Yale, Mr. Grossman developed an interest in legislation 
     and edited a general manual for the drafting of bills. After 
     graduation, he went directly to the Office of the Legislative 
     Counsel.
       A lawyer on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee who 
     has worked closely with him said: ``He's on a different plain 
     from the rest of us mortals. He has different circuitry in 
     his brain. He's almost like a robot. He reads everything 
     very, very fast, and he instantly understands everything he 
     reads, including the confusion and the nuances.''
       Legislative compromises are often forged late at night, in 
     chaotic conditions just before Congress adjourns for the 
     year. Mr. Grossman seems to flourish in that environment.
       Co-workers describe him writing law in the middle of the 
     night, surrounded by pretzels, potato chips, cookies and soda 
     cans, while exhausted colleagues drift into a daze.
       ``His stamina is phenomenal,'' said the House Judiciary 
     lawyer. ``He can go without sleeping. At 3 o'clock in the 
     morning, he's just rocking and rolling and wishes you 
     wouldn't leave because he enjoys what he's doing so much.''

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