The Congress: The Useful Pest

The angry Congressman stepped to a microphone, stared scornfully at the nearly empty chamber, and denounced a motion that the House of Representatives recess for three days. "I am becoming more and more disturbed over the failure of the House to get down to work," he snapped. "This is just about the most do-nothing session I have seen in my 14 years here." He had figured it all out, and a little later he passed on his statistics to reporters. So far this year, he said, the House has been working an average of only four hours a day, a mere 15 days a month—and each Congressman thus is making $126 a day. "That's a lot of pay for such a short workday," he complained.

Such waspish criticism is routine for wispy (5 ft. 6 in., 135 Ibs.) Harold Royce Gross, 62, seven-term Republican Congressman from Iowa's farm-rich Third District. Day after day, year after year, Gross uses the crisp voice of a onetime Des Moines and Waterloo radio newscaster to scold his colleagues about their leisurely ways, question any and all spending bills, and push what he considers his lonely fight "to save this country from national bankruptcy." He is a nitpicker and a pest. He detests Washington's social life ("I've never worn a monkey suit"), prefers watching wrestling on television with his wife Hazel in their apartment ("an oasis in a community of synthetic functions"). But, as self-appointed caretaker of the congressional conscience, he has his own unique value. The House needs a man like H. R. Gross—although one is probably plenty.

No! Gross practices what he preaches.

When he derides Eastern Congressmen as being members of the long-weekending "in-Tuesday-and-out-Thursday club," he can point to his own remarkable record: in the past 14 years he has answered 97.1% of all roll calls. Unlike most Representatives, he stays on the floor between roll calls, listens carefully to the debates.

He studies legislation diligently, is ever alert to what others dismiss as unimportant. "Mr. Speaker," Gross cries when a colleague seeks unanimous consent to pass a minor appropriations bill without debate, "reserving the right to object, can the gentleman tell us just what this is all about?" If Gross doesn't like the explanation—as in the case of a bill for a historic memorial in Texas in which the $115,000 appropriation did not even cover the cost of the land—Gross declares loudly: No! With nonpartisan passion, Gross crusades against spending. When Kennedy was inaugurated, Gross protested that an Army chauffeur was driving Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford around Washington.

He fought an addition of 80 White House police, bitterly asked if they would be used to guard Caroline's ponies. He objected to President Eisenhower's being restored to five-star general's rank unless Congress agreed that Ike would get only his $25,000 annual presidential pension and not his $20,543 Army salary as well.