[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5809-5810]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO ROSS BAKER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have often likened the counsel that 
Senators receive from their staff to the confidential advice a lawyer 
provides to a client. That is why it is so rare that, over the last 40 
or so years, Ross Baker, a Distinguished professor at Rutgers 
University, has taken several sabbaticals to research the inner 
workings of Capitol Hill. Most recently, as a scholar in residence in 
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's office, Professor Baker has been 
given the unusual access to the inner workings of one of the Senate's 
leading offices. The result? Professor Baker is considered the go-to 
academic expert on the Senate, one of the preeminent scholars of 
congressional history, the author of six books about Congress and 
government, and an insightful resource for the news media about the 
often inscrutable goings-on in Congress.
  I came to know Professor Baker when he joined my staff as an adviser 
in 2000, when he returned to Capitol Hill to gain a better 
understanding of Senate seniority. When he returned to my staff in 
2004, during a period of fierce debate in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee over the direction of our courts and our national security 
policy, Professor Baker saw firsthand how lawmakers, including myself, 
balance meaningful, large-scale policy debates with the day-to-day 
responsibility of representing and advocating for our constituents. It 
goes without saying that my relationship with Professor Baker was a 
two-way street. It was not uncommon for me to respond to his questions 
with some of my own.
  In 2008, Ross Baker joined then-Majority Leader Reid's staff at a 
pivotal time in both Congress and in the political arena. Long and 
diverse primary campaigns, coupled with the winding down of the 
tumultuous Bush administration, provided Professor Baker with even more 
fodder for his courses at Rutgers. As he concludes his final stint with 
Senator Reid's office, one can only wonder how today's political 
dialogue both on the campaign trail and on the floor of the Senate will 
inform Professor Baker's American Government course when he resumes 
teaching this fall.
  Vermonters have entrusted me to represent them in Washington several 
times. Like Professor Baker, I have spent time studying what works, and 
what doesn't. His insights are as important to the chronicle of Senate 
history as they are to the students he teaches today.
  I ask unanimous consent that a May 5 article in the Washington Post 
entitled ``History Professor Landed a Privileged Perch to See How Harry 
Reid Works'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 5, 2016]

History Professor Landed a Privileged Perch To See How Harry Reid Works

                             (By Paul Kane)

       Harry Reid almost never says no.
       ``When he gets a new piece of information or a request or 
     anything, he says--he uses this phrase all the time--he says: 
     `I'll look at it,''' says Ross K. Baker, a distinguished 
     congressional scholar at Rutgers University.
       That approach gives the Senate minority leader wiggle room 
     to make decisions in private, a style of leadership that is 
     decidedly different from the ``master of the Senate,'' 
     bulldozing approach that Lyndon B. Johnson honed as leader in 
     the 1950s.
       That's just one of the countless insights that Baker, 77, 
     has drawn in three separate stints as ``scholar in 
     residence'' on Reid's staff Last week, he finished his final 
     tour with the retiring Senate leader as an unpaid adviser and 
     observer, a one-of-a-kind sabbatical for the professor. Over 
     the past 41 years, Baker has done seven stints on Capitol 
     Hill, working in the House and Senate.
       Rather than teaching undergraduate students his ``American 
     Government'' course, the professor embedded himself in real 
     American government at an irregular pace in the past, but 
     over the past 16 years he's been here every four years. 
     Nothing can compete with the access he has been given in 
     Reid's leadership office in the Capitol. He watched the early 
     stages of the 2008 presidential primary play out on the 
     Senate floor between then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary 
     Clinton. He has seen Senate battles over treaties, and, 
     without fail, has seen countless legislative battles end in 
     gridlock.
       Baker's time on Capitol Hill has provided history the 
     chance to have an academic get an up-close view of one of 
     this era's most influential political figures, but also one 
     of the most difficult to understand.
       ``The panorama is breathtaking,'' Baker said. ``Here is 
     somebody who has his [finger on the] pulse [of] all the major 
     policy areas, has to, and has a staff that is equipped to do 
     that. So the feelers are out, the sensors are everywhere, the 
     neurons are firing constantly.''
       Reid said he wanted Baker to ``focus on the Senate as an 
     institution'' for history's sake, and the professor wrote a 
     2014 book, ``Is Bipartisanship Dead?,'' based largely on his 
     2012 experience with Reid.
       ``We all trust him,'' Reid said in a telephone interview 
     this week from Nevada.
       He allowed Baker into every senior staff meeting and let 
     him watch Reid's senior aides prep the senator every Tuesday 
     morning for his weekly news conference. ``He doesn't speak up 
     very often, but when he does, we all listen,'' Reid added.
       The low-light came when Republicans filibustered the 
     ratification of a treaty to elevate global standards for the 
     disabled, opening Baker's eyes to the ability of conservative 
     groups to block legislation.
       Now, Baker thinks the calls on both sides for ``regular 
     order''--legislation beginning in committee, involving junior 
     members, emerging to full and open debates on the House and 
     Senate floor--are hollow.
       ``There are just too many forces arrayed against it for it 
     to work,'' he said. ``I think it's a function of 
     polarization, that leaders have to get control of the process 
     and have to use exotic procedures that are basically 
     incomprehensible.''
       Yet Reid was never the dictator in Johnson's 1950s style, 
     according to Baker. Those senators whom Reid rebuffed after 
     his initial ``I'll take a look at it'' would soon find him 
     doing a quick favor. ``He will double back and do something 
     for that person to make them feel important,'' Baker said.
       Baker has long been known as a leading congressional 
     expert, a go-to resource for news media in need of 
     translating Washington. These stints on Capitol Hill have 
     given him a first-hand experience, spanning decades, that few 
     scholars can match.
       Baker's political interests started randomly. In the mid-
     1970s, when he was fashioning himself as an Africa expert and 
     writing occasional op-eds in The Washington Post, Baker 
     decided to refocus his career on U.S. politics, and on 
     Congress in particular.
       So the 36-year-old professor persuaded Sen. Walter 
     Mondale's chief of staff, Richard Moe, to give him a break. 
     Baker read the academic version of Washington in journals on 
     his bus commute, then lived the real-life version by day, 
     spending a full academic year among the offices of Mondale 
     (D-Minn ) and Sens. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and Frank Church (D-
     Idaho).
       Back then, Baker was more like a regular staffer, writing 
     speeches for Bayh and helping Church in his late-breaking bid 
     for the 1976 presidential nomination. He almost accepted 
     Church's offer of a full-time job but returned to Rutgers for 
     the fall of 1976.
       ``But I got a serious, you know, a chronic case of Potomac 
     Fever,'' Baker said.
       By 1983, the time of his next full-year sabbatical, he had 
     landed a gig with the House Democratic Caucus, when the 
     massive majority included dozens of ``Boll Weevil'' Democrats 
     who backed Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and strong military 
     posture.
       Baker went another 17 years before he got back to the 
     Capitol, returning to the Senate and to his only Republican 
     boss, then-Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.).
       He bounced from there into the office of Sen. Patrick J. 
     Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, 
     spending several months there in 2000 and again in 2004. 
     There, he saw up close how senior senators have to focus on 
     one significant policy arena at the expense of others.
       ``There's this sort of policy triage that senators have to 
     engage in, which is: They can't possibly devote themselves 
     equally to three major committee assignments,'' Baker said.
       Several years later, Baker's Rutgers connection paid off.
       Reid's longtime senior aide Susan McCue was a Rutgers 
     alumna, connecting Baker with Reid, which led to tours with 
     the majority leader in 2008 and 2012, as well as a brief 
     stint during the 2014 lame-duck session. These past four 
     months were Baker's first stint with Reid in the minority.
       With his Reid partnership ending, Baker is returning to 
     another semester of ``American Government'' this fall at 
     Rutgers.
       ``I at least come out of it with fresh anecdotes for my 
     undergraduates,'' Baker said. ``I mean, I just don't want to 
     ever be in a position of mentioning a name and they look at 
     me blankly.''

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