But that’s more for the small stuff; after all, plenty of the GOP leadership’s priorities have received early and swift consideration without Democrats on board. Already Upton has pushed through his committee a repeal of Obama’s health-care law, a favorite target of the GOP.
Recently, the House Democrats’ second-in-command, Hoyer, rang him. (Upton noted Hoyer’s excellence in playing hearts: “Oh, man, it’s great to stick him with the queen!”) But this conversation was centered on the supercommittee. “I can’t really talk to you now because I’m in the middle of my fantasy football pick and our computers are down,” Upton told him.
Still, he heard Hoyer out: The dealmaking should go big, closer to $4 trillion, putting everything on the table, and with a final vote of 8 to 4 or higher, instead of a mere eked-out agreement.
“I have no idea how Fred is going to vote,” Hoyer said in an interview. “He is not an ideological hard-liner. He’s principled. He’s honest. But I think he can play a very constructive role.”
The supercommittee is a time-suck and an energy drain. Upton says strangers in airports have offered prayers.
“As I’m home literally every week, people just know that we’re in this rut,” Upton says, with tears brimming. And yet, almost in the same breath, he boasts that he promoted some freshman to his panel, that he pushed the president to jettison some tough ozone-reduction plans.
Upton also just passed a bill to ease emissions rules for cement manufacturers, and he noted that Democrats are starting to abandon the White House on such measures.
At a September joint session of Congress, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson caught sight of Upton. “She was smiling till she saw me,” he recalled with relish. Minutes later, Obama himself was walking the aisle and took a second to lock eyes with Upton. “Good luck to you, Fred,” the president said.
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