[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 10, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H5156-H5157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         IN MEMORY OF AL DAVIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, like the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) 
who has spoken and the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) who has 
now just spoken, and those who will speak after me about Al Davis, I 
relied on him every day on a wide variety of issues and on this floor 
and in committee I miss him every day.
  When we hit a tough question, the answer was, ``Ask Al.'' We expected 
and received from him a straight, unvarnished answer, and if he did not 
know the answer and I can remember many days he would say, ``I am not 
quite sure,'' off he would go to find the information.
  Al Davis was available with memos, with charts. His documents were so 
plentiful and useful during debates on taxes that the staff in my 
office often included in my briefing binders a tab entitled simply ``Al 
Davis memos.'' I cannot recall a tax debate when so many of us did not 
rely on some document or some analysis that Al Davis prepared. He was 
prolific. He analyzed tax bills and budgets upside down and backwards. 
My tax counsel, who assures me that Al's memos were so valuable that he 
never deleted a single one, counted 44 memos, charts, and other 
analysis from Al to the committee from March 1 through May 19 of this 
year. So many points from these memos were used to help shape important 
tax and budget debates. He was blessed with the ability to take issues 
that were complex and numbers even more complex and to explain them in 
ways that everybody could understand. He hated dishonesty and 
inaccuracy.
  In the past 2 weeks, many, particularly those in the media, have 
commented on how accurate and reliable his work was. His vigilance 
helped ensure that all of us who relied on him and worked with him also 
avoided the temptation to let the digestible sound bite overwhelm the 
accurate and honest debate that America deserves.
  The Washington Post in its editorial, rather unusual in terms of a 
tribute to a staffer unknown to the public, so well known, though, 
within this institution, this is what the Washington Post had to say. 
``Unless you are a tax and budget wonk, you probably did not know Al

[[Page H5157]]

Davis. Mr. Davis, the Democrat's chief economist on the House Committee 
on Ways and Means, was one of those classic Capitol Hill staffers whose 
effectiveness cannot be measured by the number of times they are 
mentioned in a newspaper. From his cluttered office in the Longworth 
House Office Building,'' and we knew well of the clutter in that 
office, ``Mr. Davis helped mold and inform the public debate about what 
he saw as the troubling direction of the Nation's economic policy, 
churning out fact sheets that were as accurate as they were partisan. 
He could get as worked up, maybe more, about Democrats using distorted 
numbers as about Republicans who did so.''
  Like so many others, I will miss Al very much. He was not only an 
important asset to the country, but for so many of us, he was a friend. 
Our words today cannot replace the loss felt by Al's longtime 
companion, Mary Beilefeld. I express my deepest condolences to Mary. I 
hope it is somehow comforting that her loss is not only hers but is 
shared by all of us on the Committee on Ways and Means and by all of us 
in this institution who had the privilege of working with Al Davis.

                       [From the Washington Post]

                            Albert J. Davis

       Unless you're a tax and budget wonk, you probably didn't 
     know Al Davis. Mr. Davis, the Democrats' chief economist on 
     the House Ways and Means Committee, was one of those classic 
     Capitol Hill staffers whose effectiveness can't be measured 
     by the number of times they are mentioned in the newspaper. 
     But from his cluttered office in the Longworth House Office 
     Building, Mr. Davis helped mold and inform the public debate 
     about what he saw as the troubling direction of the nation's 
     economic policy, churning out fact sheets that were as 
     accurate as they were partisan. He could get as worked up--
     maybe even more--about Democrats using distorted numbers as 
     about Republicans who did so.
       Mr. Davis had the gift of being able to translate the most 
     arcane economic data into real-world language that Democratic 
     lawmakers--the people he called his ``customers''--could use 
     to make their case. For reporters scrambling to make sense of 
     a study or to dredge up an obscure detail, he was the 
     ultimate resource, with a seemingly encyclopedic 
     understanding of the tax code. If you wrote or advocated 
     about such matters, you'd quickly find your way to Al--or he 
     to you. He patiently educated the uninitiated, from green 
     legislative aides to reporters new to the economics beat. 
     When a bill was on the floor, Mr. Davis was always there with 
     his bulging accordion file, colleague Janice Mays recalled, 
     offering when the most obscure of points came up, ``I just 
     happen to have a memo here.''
       Mr. Davis died last week at 56 after being struck by a cab 
     on his way home from work. The accident occurred as Congress 
     was finishing work on a tax bill that Mr. Davis detested, 
     and, as he lingered in a coma for 11 days after the accident, 
     we can only imagine how frustrated he would have been not to 
     be immersed in the debate. Len Burman, co-director of the Tax 
     Policy Center, recalled visiting Mr. Davis at George 
     Washington University Hospital and delivering updates on the 
     latest outrages in the tax measure. ``I kept on thinking, 
     he's definitely going to wake up for this,'' Mr. Burman said. 
     Mr. Davis's boss, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), said that 
     Mr. Davis ``promoted truth in an institution too used to 
     skirting around politically inconvenient facts.''

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