Act all wrapped up in one,” he said.
After exhausting their arguments, the Republicans prepared to make their closing statement. They reserved the privilege for a rising star in the House, a former conservative talk-radio host from Indiana who was first elected to the House in 2001, named Mike Pence.
Pence walked to the rostrum and looked down for a moment before beginning his speech. He was a striking figure, a handsome man with a square jaw and stark white hair. His training in show business was apparent the moment he started to speak. While other congressmen stumbled through their speeches, reading awkwardly from a script, Pence was at ease.
“It’s hard to know where to start,” he said, shaking his head. And then he paused, a long, dramatic pause that ate up much of his allotted speaking time but had great effect.
Everyone was listening. “This economy is hurting. American families are struggling under the weight of the worst recession in a generation,” he said, with great sadness and great compassion in his voice. “In the midst of the worst recession in a generation, this administration and this majority in Congress are prepared to pass a national energy tax that will raise the cost of energy on every American family.”
And then Pence did something that none of his colleagues seemed to have done during the course of an eight-hour day. He looked directly into the C-Span camera and talked directly to the viewers there, whoever they might be. He pointed his finger at them and exhorted them to get up and make a difference. “If you oppose the national energy tax, call your congressman right now!” he bellowed. “Alexander Hamilton said it best: ‘Here, sir, the people govern.’ We can stop this bill. We can do better. And so we must.”
It was an impassioned speech, but Pence’s rallying cry seemed oddly out of place. There didn’t seem to be some great crowd of voters in the C-Span audience ready to mount a rebellion against the Obama agenda. Pence finished his speech and stepped back in the gallery, looking like a pied piper with no one to follow him.
After several hours, the debate was finished, and the roll call vote began. Phillips and his colleagues watched as the votes were tallied, and their elation grew with every minute. The margin of victory became insurmountable. A one- or two-vote margin turned into a seven-point margin. The bill passed 219 to 212. Gene Green, the conservative Texas Democrat from oil refinery country, voted for the bill, as did Rick Boucher, from coal country. Remarkably, eight Republicans broke ranks to support the bill, more than Phillips or anyone on his committee might have expected.
When the vote was tallied, Phillips and his colleagues went to the staff office of the Energy and Commerce Committee. These were nice offices, a big space that was far removed from the basement warren where Phillips had worked for years. Bottles of champagne were popped open, glasses were passed around. Both Waxman and Markey were in the room, talking with staffers. Both men gave a speech. There was a tremendous sense of accomplishment in the room. As they drank and laughed and clapped each other on the back, everyone seemed sure that the bill would pass the Senate within months, probably by Christmas.
“We did what we set out to do,” Phillips said. “I totally felt like this is what I came to Congress for.”
* * *
Every quarter, Charles Koch held meetings in the company boardroom to evaluate the progress of each major division in his company. He peppered the business leaders with questions, probing their presentations for weak points and questioning their plans for the future. By the middle of 2009, Charles Koch was getting similar presentations from his political operatives. He sat at the large, polished wood table and listened as top operatives in his political network walked through the events of the past months, shared their analysis of the landscape, and laid out their plans for the future.
In the middle of 2009, the news from the political operation was unrelentingly bad. The Waxman-Markey bill had passed the House and was fast-tracked toward the Senate. To make matters worse, Obama’s stimulus bill was doling out billions of dollars to Koch’s emerging competitors in the wind, solar, and renewable-energy industries.
As with any business unit, Charles Koch absorbed this information with apparent dispassion. He asked for data and analyzed it closely. One senior political operative recalled sending Charles Koch a spreadsheet with polling data