Steed-Sam Rayburn

Tom Steed Remembers Sam Rayburn

Lasalier: In 1949, Tom Steed went to Congress. In that particular year, you started in Congress under Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Democrat of Bonham, Texas. What are your recollections of Sam Rayburn, Congressman Steed?

Steed: Well, there are many, of course, because he was a man that you couldn’t be around without he makes some very deep and lasting imprints on you. I think that, ah, a quotation that he said once would start me off on how I reacted to him. Somebody had asked him, said, “You served under eight presidents, didn’t you?” And he said:

“I did not serve under any presidents. I worked with eight presidents.”

And that showed you how he felt about the House and its responsibilities.

Now he served longer than any man in history, although there were two interruptions in his 12 years. John McCormick who was his majority leader and who succeeded him as speaker, served 10 continuous years. So he was the longest continuous speaker and Rayburn was the longest total speaker.

Now, this – circumstances that happened during Rayburn’s speakership were so nationally and internationally important that he is known as a great Speaker, which he really was. That kind of blots out the fact that he was one of the greatest lawmakers we ever had. One of the greatest committee chairmen. And he’s the fellow that all these years before he got to be speaker that made it possible for a lot of legislation – now, for instance he was the one that made the difference in Wilson’s New Freedom program through. He was the one that got Roosevelt’s New Deal program through. He’s the one that got Truman’s Fair Deal and Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society. Now these were many items in them, and some of them highly controversial, and some of them very tricky, and, ah, one of the New Deal things he got was the Holding Company Act, you remember?

Lasalier: Uh-huh.

Steed: Well, that brought a lot of enemies down on him and there was a fortune spent down in that district of his to try to defeat him. And he found out that those farmers around Bonham there were glad to have the money, like the cotton crop, but they still kept Sam Rayburn. (laughs) But, ah, you could have a full-time study of the man either way – as a legislator or as a speaker because he’s the only one I know that had two great records to commend him. And part of that because of the fact that he got frustrated several times. He wanted to go up to majority leader and speaker and something would happen – one year – his best chance to go up early, that’s when he had that hard campaign, and he had to go home and the vacancy occurred while he was down there and he couldn’t afford to leave the campaign, so he lost out on it. But it all worked out to his advantage in the long run and also to the advantage of a lot of freshmen guys like me.

Lasalier: I was going to say, in addition to being a legislator and a speaker, he must have been a good – a good teacher for you.

Steed: He would do his best to help you all he could. And he was always available to any member, especially freshmen. If you had a problem and you go (garbled) with him and he’d give you the best advice he could. Or he’d get somebody else around there that he knew could handle what your problem was and get you straightened out. Now he would ask you, very rarely, to support a bill, especially something that had to do with the leadership’s management of the work program of the Congress. If you’d given him your word and then something happened, like back home or somewhere where it was going to be real hard for you to keep that promise – if you went to him and told him, he’d say, “Now look, I’ll release you from that promise. You look after yourself first. That’s first. He said, “Now, ah, I don’t want you to do something that’s going to hurt you.” Now, if you gave him your word, though, and didn’t tell him, you had it. He was like the Oklahoma Indian, he said, “You cheat me once, it’s your fault; you cheat me twice, it’d be my fault, which you ain’t going to do!” And, ah, this he did, also, to teach you that don’t give your word unless you’re going to keep it. And so, it makes you think a lot of times whenever they’re putting the pressure on you whether you want to say yes, I’ll do it or not. You don’t jump to conclusions. And you have to get your fingers burned, like teaching a kid to keep his hand off a hot stove. And, finally you learned what to do and not to do.

But always he was a kind man. He was innately kind. He loved the Congress with a passion. He was very adamantly critical of members who brought any criticism or slur on the House or its reputation. He thought it was a tremendous institute of our country. And I’ve heard him say if this country ever falls it’s because [sic] men like us caused the people to lose their respect for their institutions. He said, so we owe the unborn generations a holy service to keep this thing high in the esteem of the people. He really believed all that. You know, he had a short marriage and the rest of his life he was a bachelor, and it was often said that his wife was the House of Representatives. He also made presidents understand that they couldn’t make him read in the paper what the House was going to do or not do.

Lasalier: Uh-huh.

Steed: They found out what was House would do or not do when they conferred with him. (laugher) And they all – he treated them all alike, too.

Lasalier: It seems that every speaker of the House has various sayings or quotes which seem to be some of their favorite comments. Do you recall some of Congressman Rayburn’s?

Steed: Well, you’re right, they do. And Rayburn, of course, was the master of all of them. And, ah, he had so many that the ones I liked, I copied down. If you’d like, I can – I can’t quote them all from memory, but I can read some of them.

Lasalier: Please do.

Steed: And, ah, the one that I knew the most was that he said “Knowledge is power. Do your homework.” And I saw that demonstrated over and over and over again. That – sometimes when I had to back down because the other guy had beat me to it – he had learned more about it than I did, and the first thing I know I’m in deep water. Other times, I caught some of them off base and I let them have both barrels because I knew what I was talking about. And Rayburn was trying to do this, not to – as an individual benefit to you, but to make you contribute to better legislation. And of course, you know, the incessant seeking after information – well, people don’t think Congress listens, but we have more hearings, we see more people, we listen to more sides of every issue. There’s no place on earth where that’s concentrated like it is in the United States Congress. And, so, ah, ah, and it may be for different motives, but, ah, survival at the poles is pretty good incentive and that’s why you get a lot of help.

Now, he said – for instance he said,

“Any – any fellow who would cheat for you will cheat against you, so don’t have that good a cheater!”

He said that “If a man has good common sense, he has all the sense there is.”

And, ah, “The size of a man has nothing to do with his height.”

“It’s better to be silent and pretend dumb than to speak and remove all doubt.”

He said, “When two men agree on everything, one of them’s doing all the thinking.”

He said, “Always tell the truth the first time and do not need a good memory to remember it.”

And he said, “A man who becomes arrogant and conceited wasn’t big enough for the job.”

He said, “There’s no degree of truthfulness. There’s no degree of honesty. You are 100% or you are not.”

And he said, “Damn the man who is always looking for credit. If he does his job and does it well, he’ll get more credit than he deserves anyway.”

He said, “A jackass could kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.” (laughter)

“It is a wise man who realizes that a church is bigger than it’s pastor.”

“I have greater trust in people who send their Congressmen and hand-written letters on tablet people than those who send telegrams.” And there’s a lot of that going on, I’ll tell you.

“Some men ripen earlier than others, and burn out earlier. Powder will flash, but it won’t burn.” (laughter)

He said, “A brilliant uniformed order is no match for a poor speaker who is informed.”

“Whenever you’re mad and ready to say something, wait a minute.”

“If you can’t lead by persuasion, you can’t lead at all.”

“To get along, go along, but I’ve never asked a man to cast a vote that would violate his conscience or wreck him politically.”

“If there is anything I hate more than an old fogy, it’s a young fogy.”

“Legislation should never be designed to punish anyone.”

“The real test of a man is the way he carries success.”

“There’s a time to fish and a time to mend nets.”

And then he ends up – my favorite is that “Any man who is ashamed to show his patriotism, probably doesn’t have any.”

Lasalier: That’s a good reflection on Sam Rayburn.

Steed: Well, it, ah, he, he didn’t sit around just mouthing these things. They came out in – see, in endless conferences with different groups of the House and outsiders and all and under pressure. This is his way of – of course, the way I always said it, if somebody came and gave me a snow job, I’d look out a minute and I’d say, “That’s very interesting, now give me a for instance so I’ll understand it.” (laughter) But, ah, he, ah, ah, he hated to see any member of the House in trouble. He hated, ah, if he thought you had talent – the best way I know how to describe people like Sam Rayburn, the leaders, when the freshman class shows up and they’re sworn in they’re like the football coach with his freshman. They hope there’s an all-American – at least some all-Americans among them. They hope they’re all going to be good lawmakers because if they are you’re going to help them carry that load. And so they’re going to let you have every opportunity to show yourself just like the football coach does, and whatever you come up with, that’s going to be your measure from then on. But – they’ll help you every way they can, but in the final analysis, you’ve got to carry that football. If you can’t carry it, why you just don’t get on the team. And, so, I think it has a lot to do with the fact you see some fellow rise above the heard and become very influential and very good lawmakers and others just sink out of sight.

And, then another thing that’s – that Rayburn was very strong about. He knew who did – who worked after hours. If you were the kind of a guy that went over to your office on Sunday and poured over next week’s hearings and if you were the kind of a guy that burned the midnight oil and down to your office before breakfast – he knew all that. And then when he had to appoint special committees and look for men he could depend on and trust, he always knew. And you never saw him get a lot of phonies on some of these committees. And if it had anything to do with the morals or the character or the credit of the institutions, you’d always find him picking men that he’d know would call it like it was no matter what. And, ah, because he just thought you couldn’t quibble with the quality and the merit and the character of the Congress without it being in the long run a deadly thing.

He, ah, he was an old farm boy – his first political job was in the Texas legislature and he got to be speaker there before he came to Congress. So he’d had a little gavel experience. One interesting thing, you know, he was bald-headed. And, ah, he was kind of sensitive about it. But, ah, you know, back behind the rail there was a cloak room and they’d whisper around, said, “Don’t go out there now ‘cause the top of Rayburn’s head is red.” If he was getting mad, you could tell it! And if you didn’t see the top of his head, the sound of that gavel when he banged it got a little bit louder and a little bit louder, and sometimes he’d break the head of it off, and that’ when you better be out of the chamber all together!

Lasalier: He broke the gavel on occasion?

Steed: Oh, sometimes he would if these stormy – see, you can’t imagine how that many strong minds, whenever they all get a little out of control – you know, debate is kind of controversial thing to start with. And he’d preach it, you know, one thing he said now, “If you want to be liked around here, you learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.” And that takes some practice, I’ll tell you. And, ah, but you find out, though, that the Republicans and Democrats that battle each other verbally on the floor – just hammer and tong – they’ll go out and have dinner together and their wives associate. They leave these differences, their respective – you have to respect the other man’s viewpoint. There’s no one on earth that knows better or learns stronger that they’re two sides to every question than lawmakers. They have to – to learn it. Because there are two sides to everything, and if you ignore it, you end up like the Oklahoma legislature did one time when they passed a fish and game creation bill and it had a red worm clause in it and it made all the farmers mad in the state and every legislator who was accused of voting or proved that he voted for that was defeated. So, you see, sometimes the small print can be very deadly. And as you learn those things then you like to work under a man like Rayburn.

Now, the – the historians tell us that there are seven speakers who will be remembered by history because of the circumstances that happened while they were speakers. Of course, like Harry Truman, he’ll always be remembered because it fell his lot to have to drop the atomic bomb. And, so, these, ah, we have an artist that we pay with the profits off of our souvenir stand that the historical society operates. And we have committees that decide what you can paint inside the Capitol. They have to be historic scenes and they have to be material submitted and passed on to make sure that it’s authentic history. So they have a place there in one of the halls where they want to put the portraits of the seven speakers who have won, they think, a place in history because of circumstances that happened while they were speaker. And, of course, Rayburn is one of them and the first one, of course, was this guy Henry Clay. And, ah, they claim that his ingenuity as speaker at a time when the Civil War was approaching and this issue was just becoming deadly as all sin – they say he caused the Civil War to be delayed several years because of the great leadership he put in. And in looking at his whole record, ah, they say that he stands out to where you could never ignore him in American history. They you had a fellow named Grow of Pennsylvania and he served during the Civil War and he was the right arm that Lincoln had to help hold the nation together and they say that he made a major contribution to proving to the world that our system would work and would hold together and would survive. And, ah, they thing that because of that deadliness when brother killed brother of the Civil War made him – he proved his mettle, and so they put him on the list.

Then old boss, Joe Cannon, he was a fellow from Illinois and he began to read the House rules and found out there was some open windows around and the first thing you know, he had surrounded himself with chairmanships and power and he became a dictator. Well, ah, I’m not sure he used it badly. Historians don’t argue about that, but the members finally got sick and tired of having one man boss everything. And, it was supposed to be a democratic organization, and so there was a lot of rebellious feeling began to grow, and fortunately they got rid of him before they did have a rebellion. And then old Champ Clark of Missouri came along and he had just the opposite attitude. And he began to replace all this dictatorship the speaker had assembled back into the committees and in the hands of the members. And he was very popular and so he had a tremendous influence because he was a member’s speaker instead of a speaker’s speaker, so to speak. And, ah, and he served an awful long time.

And then, finally, we get down to Rayburn. Now there’s other speakers in between these, but these are the things that made the landmark differences in the history of our country. Then after Rayburn, John McCormick, who had been his majority leader, he succeeded to the chair, and served 10 straight years. And we had a – the space program was the big thing under him and he had to be a – he was a great speaker, too. And he’d get on the floor and he talked the House many times into keeping the space program when it might have fallen by the wayside.

And then, of course, came Carl Albert of Oklahoma. Now Carl was a speaker that all the members liked. Sometimes I used to fuss at him – I thought he was too kind, you know. He just couldn’t believe there was any orneriness in other people. And, ah, he just knew if he tried hard enough he could settle anything, get along with anybody. And he was very good at it. But here came this Watergate. And there he sat. And under the law, you know, he’s – the speaker of the house is third from the president’s chair, and so there was that storm blew up. He was caught in the middle. And the way he handled himself with the president resigning, with having to appoint – with the vice president – ah, Vice President Agnew came to see Albert and stayed about an hour in his office and 30 minutes after he left there, he resigned. And Albert won’t even tell me – his closest friend – what went on in that room. But I know the results of what went on in there.

Then, we had amended the Constitution so that, that in the case of a vice president who was appointed, his confirmation would have to be passed by both houses instead of just the Senate like everybody else. So that’s – he had to preside over the first time the House ever had to vote on confirming an appointed vice president. Well then, we – we picked Jerry Ford, of course, of the House, he being the Republican leader. He and Albert had worked very closely together and Ford was my classmate, so – and their families and ours were good friends – so we didn’t want a senator, anyway! We figured Ford was our best bet to get in there. Well, Ford, of course, became president when Nixon resigned.

Now Carl Albert had to preside over this nation at a time when the president of the United States – and now they both – Agnew and Nixon both resigned under fire. The House Judiciary Committee had already with a 10th vote proved they were going to impeach Nixon if he didn’t resign. So then that brought another vacancy in the vice president and that’s when Nelson Rockefeller came in. So the House had to confirm him. So, you see, Albert presided over the one time in our history of our country when the highest level of our leaders were in turmoil and these decisions had to be made. And, ah, so, that’s why they included him in the list, because no other speaker ever had to go through such an ordeal. And I think, then, that it’s probably well done because I’d like for all Americans to go there and go through their Capitol to see the men who, who, who faced the test and passed the test to keep our country together and keep it as great as it is. And this is the demand on men that goes way beyond the call of duty. It, ah, tears you up inside and you have all kinds of emotional pressures and, ah, it’s kind of like when I asked Harry Truman one time why he had Herbert Hoover come down once a week and talk to him, and he said, “Well, he’s the only living former president, so he’s the only man that knows what I’m going through.” And so that’s why the speakers will have such an affinity for each other that – the pressure they get – and they have to get along with their committee chairmen and their leaders, you know, and there’s – you’ve got 435 generals and no privates and he’s the commanding officer of the bunch and that’s pretty much of a disrupted army sometimes!

Lasalier: Do you suppose Sam Rayburn would have any difficulty with today’s Congress? What would be his attitude do you suppose about . . .

Steed: Well, he’d probably work the sergeant-at-arms to death because if he told you you weren’t dressed properly and ordered you off the floor and you defied him, you’d be dragged out by the sergeant-at-arms. They say, “You don’t have a right to do that.” And he said, “I have all the rights in the world to protect the dignity and the prestige of this House. It belongs to the people. It’s one of their institutions, and I’m the speaker and I’m not going to let you disgrace it.” Well, of course, you’d not very often run into a fool that would defy the speaker, but, ah, this is one of the housekeeping jobs they have to go through. No one likes to kick a peer – equal member – around, but you do. So a lot of this rowdyism that they’re putting up with now – I went up there earlier this year, and I’ll tell you I was glad to get out of there. It ain’t like it was when I was there just a few years ago. I don’t see how some of these characters got elected. (laughter) They sure wouldn’t do very good in Oklahoma, I bet you!

But anyhow, the Congress changes – it pretty much mirrors and reflects the people of America. The quality of service they give you will just be a few points higher than the quality of citizenship that the country gets. And the only reason that anybody could tell me why that they’d do a little bit better than citizenship, you see, the ego of the people in the – will make it add a little bit more. See, the average citizen is busy with his own business and so he hasn’t got any ego-trip. But politicians have one, and so they try a little harder to – to feed that ego. And so, that, ah, you do no use to cuss Congress – they’re just reflecting what you and all the other people are. And after all, you know, we have a perfect government, but it’s imperfect because we use it with imperfect people. I don’t think they’ve ever found any perfect ones yet to run it, and as long as they have to use our people like they do, why, it will have it’s faults and problems. But it is a unique thing. It’s the only – it’s the longest continuous government in the world today. And it’s the only democratic government that has a certain ingredient that will cause it to survive when all other parliaments have failed. And that is that the equality of the two houses of the Congress [sic]. They are co-equal, and 100 senators and 435 congressmen and they’re still equal. And the reason is that that’s the only way they could make two heads be better than one, and three better than two, and on like democracy is supposed to work, is to make them co-equal.

So we pass a bill and they change it in the Senate, we go to conference. When you go into conference – that surprises me why more teachers of American government and the press don’t make more mention of what is – what goes on in a conference. For instance, I had to go to conference on my bill, and if I took all five of my subcommittee members to conference, which is a rule you always do, the Senate would show up with 10. Well, it would be five of us and 10 of them, but we’re still equal. Only I have the advantage, believe it or not. All I need is two of my other members, and that’s three of us. That makes us a majority and if they’re backing me I can cast our vote any way I want. Well, the guy over on the Senate side of that table has to get six – he has to get five and you join him so they’d be a majority of six. So it’s tougher for him to be in charge of his vote than it would be me. Now what you do, you talk. And you go up the hill and down the hill. Sometimes you talk for hours, and sometimes for days, and until you get an agreement, you just talk. Now, one-on-one, one one way and one – that’s a tie. It’s got to be two to nothing. Well, then you’re just going all over the place. You make all kinds of offers and deals and compromises and until you do find some basis on which you can revise this that everybody can be for it, you just don’t get any law. So what you do, if there’s anything going to happen at all, you’ve got to have two heads better than one. And we’ve always made our country operate that way, and that’s why we’ve never had a dictator. That’s why we can’t have a dictator. I think our founding fathers hit that little secret pulse when they put that in there.

Lasalier: Compromise.

Steed: You can’t really appreciate how important it is until you’ve set in charge of a House conference committee as many times as I have – you sure learn the hard way. You learn how to be a horse trader, too, if you want to ever get any results and not have to cow-tow to a bunch of stupid senators.

Lasalier: Sam Rayburn give you a lot of guidance and instruction in committee etiquette?

Steed: One time I had a fight – I had a fight with a senator, with the Senate, and they voted 96 to 2 to censure me.

Lasalier: The Senate did?

Steed: Senate did. Because, ah, we were getting in a lot of hard scrambling. Now, they had put an amendment in the bill, taking away from the House the right of the frank. Well, you know, they have a rule (garbled) – one house doesn’t write rules for the other. And so Rayburn and Chairman Cannon of the House, they said, you cannot go to – if you set the precedent – then the big shots over at the Library of Congress came to see me. They said, “If you set the precedent of going to conference with the Senate to beg for its rights,” he said, “you have begun the decay of this institution. You have got to get a commitment out of the leaders of the Senate that that will not be an issue in conference before you can go to conference.”

Well, then, this was a long story and I won’t go into it, but, so Rayburn and Cannon, they got me down there and they said, “You’re going to have to say some rough stuff. And we’ll help you all we can, but you’re in the driver’s seat, and it’s going to be tough on you, but if you don’t win it, then God help the future of this country.” And this – see, the first Congress ever met – I got more history on the Congress itself that – the first Congress ever met couldn’t agree on anything. And so, the only thing they did, they passed a resolution that paid House members five dollars a day and senators ten dollars a day and they adjourned. That’s all they got done. Well, when they got to conferring around they found that every senator thought he was – he didn’t think of senators as they are now – he was a delegate from a state to a loose, cheap organization called the United States government. He wanted to be president. Well the House just decided that since they had to elect the president – in those days they did, you know – they said they’ll never be a senator elected president. Well they just couldn’t stand this, and they began to get out there and bargain. And that’s where the rule that taxes and appropriations would originate in the House and that each house would do this and do that. They call it the rule (garbled). And the Senate violated it by putting this, ah, no franking privilege on the House. Well, finally, it now – the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, they led the floor over there in my favor, and finally made the Senate back down and give us our privilege back. So then when we went to conference in order to make it legal, the chairman of the Senate Appropriation – when we got to that amendment, he moved to strike it and that was it. I didn’t open my mouth. See, we didn’t have to set any precedent.

Now this shows you how – what you can get into and why you have to have leaders that are strong and understanding all this. You see, the television and newspapers were not very nice to me there, you know, and, ah, I had to – see they’d print anything the senators said. I found out the senators bought fingernail polish and free haircuts and had a secret room down there where they kept their tonic water and their whiskey and I dug up all kinds of dirt on them, but, ah, it didn’t hurt them any. And then finally I found out that one senator had two girls on his payroll that, ah, entertained his male friends. And when I got to the call-girl thing I had an audience. And I burned the Senate down – so they were glad then to compromise. But until you could put some heat on them they were just adamant. And they kept say, “Well, the House wants to waste the taxpayer’s money.” At the time they were doing that they didn’t need the frank, you see, they had a room down there where they did all – addressed the envelopes – see this was what they called box-holder mail, where you just send it out boxed. Well, the Senate had a – they spent a hundred thousand dollars a year with an outfit that addressed all their envelopes and kept up their mailing list. And so I went down to the Library of Congress – I handled their budget – and I said, “I want to know how many franks the Senators use.” “Well,” he said, “that’s information I can’t give you. And I said, “You’re kidding.” He said, “No, that’s their business. It’s none of yours.” And I said, “You know what, you can’t get a nickel in your appropriations bill without me. And you just got through losing all yours, because I don’t have to appropriate a nickel if I can’t find out what’s done to it.” And I said, “Just take my word for it. You’re out of business until I get that list. Now how tough are you? How long can you do without any money?” I got the list the next morning. And then I began to hand that out to some of their opponents and then they decided (garbled).

All this did, it proved in the long run that any time they get so smart one house wants to go meddle in the personal business of the other, you have nothing but trouble. And, ah, it was just my misfortune that they tried that while – they thought I guess I was just a country hick and sissy they could get away with it. But they didn’t know I had that old mean Clarence Cannon, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and that old tough Sam Rayburn right back of me. I had all backing a man – I had a whole army back of me. And so, ah, and I had, of course, all these Ph.D.s and professors and learned men in the Library of Congress backing me, too. They were interested in it for the historic precedent, and so they were feeding me all this information as to why I had to win that argument. And I could not afford to set a precedent. This thing flairs up several times in the history of our country, but there’s always been somebody that would knock it down again and stop it.

One of the reasons – I finally found out one of the reasons the Senate was so interested in knocking out that box-holder frank privilege we had there was 40 some-odd members of the Senate who had been in the House and they had used to run against incumbent senators and get elected, so they knew what it was. So you know what we did? When I found that out, I got the House to adopt an amendment that said that you could only use box-holder mail in your district. And it had to be official business. You couldn’t broadcast it out all over the country and so that protected the Senate from a guy in a district running against a statewide candidate, and they were pacified. It just shows you how the evolution – now there’s a lot of these young people come there and they want to revise – revolutionize the whole thing. Well, you see, every rule they have is a product of evolution, trial and error, and a Johnny-come-lately is just going to make a foot out of himself if he starts trying to mess into that sort of thing. Now he may come up with a good idea and if he handles it right he probably can get it adopted eventually, but it will have to be something in the line of an improvement over what they’ve got rather than just being a rebel and trying to knock it out just because you don’t like it.

You can’t make Congress move faster than it does. It’s a juggernaut and has its own pace. If you know how to pace yourself with it, you can get a lot of things done, but until it’s time comes, you’re just butting your brains against a stone wall. And freshmen have this – I had it too – you have this gung-ho deal. You just got elected and you want to get the job done, you know, and so, you have to learn that that just don’t work that way, and so, ah, well, they’ll have, like probably the last time I checked it they had over 18,000 bills already pending this year and they’re probably going to take up 2 or 3 thousand of them. So you see, they just have to have some rules.

Sam Rayburn probably did the most of anybody of embedding these very important precedents and rules into the House. And I’m sorry he wasn’t here when they passed the budget committee because he wouldn’t have let it happen. It’s been the biggest monstrosity that happened while I was there, and you can see in the last year or so how much trouble it’s created and hasn’t saved a nickel. I can show you where it’s cost a lot of money. It’s a power grab that the so-called liberals in the Congress – I call them Socialists – wanted to try to do by indirection what they weren’t able to do by directly through the committees.

And, ah, so, ah, finally speaker – I mean President Regan has got somebody down there, somebody smart enough to know that he didn’t need all that budget thing he glorified in last year. He already had the ax to cut their heads off. See, under the law – I passed an appropriation bill with 62 agencies budgets in it. There would be hundreds of line items in it. Well, the president, when that bill comes to him, he can veto any line-item in there. He can – he vetoes the bill and he send out a message “I did it because this and this and this.” So when the bill comes back if you haven’t taken that out, he’ll veto it again. Well, in this Congress its impossible to override a veto. It takes two-thirds vote and the different pressure groups among the House and the Republicans – see, every time you get an issue, some Republicans run over on the Democrat’s side and they call them something or other, and then some Democrats run over on the Republican side and they call them boll-weevils. Well, there’s no way that the leaders can get all their horses in line and then recruit enough of dissidents from the other side, it off-sets itself. So there’s no two-thirds vote on anything like that. So the president could have saved all this fuss – didn’t care what they did, see, all he had to do was just say, “When that bill comes down here, I’ll fix it.” And he’s now – well, he’s vetoed the same bill twice already on the continuing resolution. And he, but he’s a, he’s a – don’t ask me to tell you why I say this, but he’s – he likes to put the monkey on somebody else’s back. He just wants the glory and somebody else the blame. And that’s typical of politicians, incidentally. And, ah, but, he, the Democrats in the House said, “Well, tell us what it is you want us to cut and we’ll take out the three million dollars you want to save.” And, ah, he hasn’t told them yet so they’re still hung up.

But this is a – the three branches of government, they’re supposed to be counter balances. And, ah, sometimes it aggravates you to have them go through all this hoorah, but in the long run of it, it will work itself out. It always has. So if the people just have patience, the thing will rock itself down to a sensible solution.

Lasalier: Speaker O’Neil seems to be having some difficulty with President Regan now. Did Sam Rayburn have any particular problems with any presidents? Any presidents he really enjoyed working with? He enjoyed Harry Truman a great deal, didn’t he?

Steed: He was – he was fair with all of them. Now he had trouble with all of them, but here’s how he’d do it. He’d just go down to the White House and he’d say, “Now look, don’t try to put this over on me. It ain’t going to work!” (laughter) “I’m not going to let it work.” And, ah, even Roosevelt, he’d say, “Alright, Mr. Speaker, what will you let work?” And he knew that if he had anything that made sense that Sam Rayburn would back off, see? And he’d say, “Mr. President, somebody sold you a bill of goods. Here’s why that isn’t going to work. And I can’t get the boys out there to go with it.” He said, “Why, you’ll get half of them defeated if you run them through that rat race.” And he’d just use this old country logic. And, of course, all the presidents, even Eisenhower, they learned, you know, that they’re lucky to have a guy that will come down without all this precedence, publicity and everything, and get there and key advisors in there and work it out. And, ah, so Rayburn was one of those kind of guys. He didn’t like to wash his linen in public.

And he always had a great respect for every president. He had a responsibility to that president and he wanted to fill it. But he expected to be an equal. He didn’t want to be under them. And he proved that he didn’t. And they knew that and so they never tried it. He, ah, now, O’Neil isn’t there much. He’s, ah, he’s absent too much. And he’s always got some pinch-hitter. Well, you can’t run that kind of a show and be absent as much as he is, and he’s getting old and everything. I, ah, I like him very much, but, ah, he just is a pretty miserable man right now. And of course, he doesn’t have the troops to take the position he has, so he gets voted down a lot and that doesn’t make him heroic.

It isn’t what it used to be, it’s changed. And it’s mostly the personnel. The only thing that’s different about it is the people that’s up there.

Lasalier: You served for 34 years and Sam Rayburn served a long period of time. Do you have any recollections about talking with Sam Rayburn about when sometime might come that you would grow tired and not want to go back to Congress? Did you ever just want to close the door and leave?

Steed: Oh yes. He talked about that. And he’d say, “Well, now, Tom, the people have invested a lot of their faith in you. You wouldn’t have this power and this seniority if they hadn’t believed in you all those years when you were a nobody and you just a freshmen. Don’t you think you owe them something? You want to take all that away from them now because you’ve had what you want and now the heck with them?” He said, “Think about that before you make your decision.” He’d put that old conscience of yours to work the slickest of anybody and, on the other hand, sometimes he’d get a fellow in there and he’d say, “Now, look you’re in the wrong business. Why don’t you save yourself a lot of misery, quietly bow out with your flags flying and get out of this thing because here’s what’s going to happen in your district – this has to come and when it does it’s going to crush you. There’s no more way you can escape it.” He had sense for all those things. LBJ had it, too. And, ah, they, they just didn’t like to see anybody they liked to get ground up in that sausage grinder. And, of course, some (garbled) circumstances bigger than an individual.

Lasalier: That’s interesting because some people would – were critical of Rayburn saying that he had too much power, that he would be a lot like Boss Cannon and just not give him much in the way of the democratic process and that he wasn’t a very sentimental person.

Steed: On the contrary. He was just the opposite. Now, for instance, when I got there, he’d make you come – he’s got some easy deal where anybody can preside over the House, he picks you to preside. Let’s you get the feel of the gavel. Let’s you learn who the members are. Ah, ah, he’d break you in easy. And finally, if you had that leadership quality he was looking for and if you had a knack of remembering who – see you’ve got to recognize the members who are all – ten of them standing up wanting to be recognized you have to say the gentleman from so-and-so. You have to have – me, I have to have some paid helper there whispering in my ear who they are, see, and because I spent most of my life in a committee room and didn’t have time – I never did know over 200 members of Congress at any one time personally. You’re just too busy in dungeons around there to get that – now there’s some people have a knack of remembering everybody they meet. And, of course, some of them make excellent presiding officers. I just didn’t like to be up there. It, ah, you couldn’t even – you can’t even have the privilege of getting up and going to the men’s room when you’re running that gavel, because you’re the only guy that has to stay awake and keep everything going, and you’ve got to know what your rules are and everything else, and it’s a lot of parliamentary law involved, and I appreciated the fact that he let me do it, you know, and get the feel of it, but I didn’t want it as a permanent thing because it, ah, I’ve got something else to do with my time, instead of sitting up there banging that gavel and listening to a lot of senseless speeches. And, of course, the only guy that has to listen to every word said is the speaker, which is a penalty in itself.

Now, Sam Rayburn was a – he had a subtle way of rewarding you if you behaved yourself, if you played on the team, if you shot straight with him, if you tended to your business, if you didn’t stay absent most of the time, if you were somebody that if you agreed to do something did it, and he had a chance to put you on something – we have all kinds of little things like the board of visitors to the academies and things like that, it’s a nice little honor. Once a year you have to – find some people to go down and inspect the mint and see if it’s got all the gold it said it had, and that’s the kind of a nice little honor. He had all kinds of little things like that he can do to reward guys that, that, learn to be depended upon. And Rayburn was a great – that’s how Carl Albert got started. He, he, he got to looking Carl over and they were just across the river from each other, and he found out that Carl was not only a good speaker and smart, but he also was a guy that would do what he said he would. So, he – Pursy Priest of Nashville got in back health, so he made Carl the assistant whip. Well, Pursy died, and then, so Carl automatically became the whip. Well then when Congress wasn’t in session, the – one of the speakers (garbled), I think, and anyhow the majority leader, probably who was – I forget now who it was, but maybe Joe Martin or somebody, but any rate, Carl went up to the majority leader post by vote. I was his campaign manager, and then after that when McCormick left, of course, then, it was an easy run for Carl to go from majority leader to speaker. And mostly it’s like a lot of other places – you’re vice president and then you get to be president and so on.

Well, Carl was the kind of a guy that could substitute for any of them. He knew all the ritual. See the procedures on the floor – the rules of the House are like the ritual of an organization. It’s – they say the same thing over and over again. I asked unanimous consent, without objection it’s ordered, they go through this rigmarole over – if you don’t know all that some of these old pros will tie you up in a knot and get you off the floor and you won’t even know how they did it. That’s why old Rayburn said, “You spend time on that floor and you listen to how these things are done.”

I seen men that had been there 10 years still didn’t know how to open an amendment, and then they wonder why they got beat. But Rayburn was a – he noticed all these sort of things. He noticed whether you were on the floor or not. He noticed whether you were learning how these things worked. If you showed any – well, the fact of the business, when I got on Appropriations, I was only put on one subcommittee. We had members on three. And I stayed on there several months, and old man Cannon, you know, he – whatever you told him you wanted, he’d see you never got it. It was just a cranky old guy, and I knew that, so he’d ask me what I wanted and I’d say, “Whatever you think I can do that will help you.” He didn’t want you to say that, see, because that would put him on the spot. Well, one day I got called down to Rayburn’s office. And I was number 23. See, they had 30 of the majority and 20 of the minority, and if you’re not in the first 20 you’re not permanent, see what I mean. If the next election switched the parties, why if you were that last 10, you’d be off the committee. So a chairmanship or anything like that is supposed to go to the first 20. So you’d still be the ranking minority if the thing changed.

Well, he called me down to his office and their sat old man Cannon and they said, “Now Tom, we haven’t given you a second committee for a very important reason.” They said, “Mr. Norrell of Arkansas has had a stroke. He’s chairman of the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee and all the other members on that subcommittee are already chairmen, so we’re going to put you on that committee and want you to go down there and learn all you can about that because within a year you’ll be chairman.” I said, “Well, gentlemen, I’m very flattered and I appreciate it, but I think I ought to call your attention to the fact that I’m number 23. I’m not in that first 20 yet.” Rayburn said, “Don’t you worry.” He said, “You’ll be in it before we have to give up our 30 seats, and besides,” he said – that’s after id’ had this conversation with him about how I felt about the dome. He said, “I want somebody on that committee that understands what this building stands for.” And, ah, so – that’s how I got – he’s going to build that east front, you know, and that’s how I got mixed up in all that having my name on those bills that the press was screaming about – the Rayburn Building, you know. They just almost tore us apart on that.

Anyhow, that’s how I got made a chairman of a subcommittee way out of turn. Just because of that – and he remembered what I had said about that building. And he wanted somebody that had charge of its budget that felt that way.

Lasalier: You were chairman of the subcommittee for the Rayburn Building for the east extension?

Steed: All the legislative branch. That included the Government Printing Office, Library of Congress, all the House and Senate, the Capitol grounds, the Botanic Gardens. It’s a big thing, and, ah, here I am – you ought to see Dr. Mumford and his staff from the Library of Congress when they found out that I was their new chairman and they look up your pedigree first off. Well, you can imagine every one of them had a string of degrees as long as your arm, and here they got a high school drop out for chairman. Well, ah, the first time they came into committee it was kind of funny. And, you know, they don’t know what to do and they don’t want to get in any difficulty with you, because, after all, they have to get along with you because you’ve got their money. Well, they didn’t know that Dr. Bizzell at OU was – when I ran the Oklahoman Times news bureau there had made a great lover of libraries out of me and had impressed on me how important they were to educational institutions. And I always was kind of a bookworm.

So, and I just loved the Library of Congress. I just – from the first time I saw it until this day, I just thing it’s the greatest institution you ever when in in your life, and, of course, when I got to be their chairman you can imagine I got to go behind all the scenes and see the whole thing from ground up. I got to see all of Thomas Jefferson’s stuff that’s not put on display, you know, and things like that. So I told him, I said, “Dr. Mumford, I want you and I to get along, and understand each other.” I said, “I want the Library of Congress to become the greatest institution the world has ever known. I want it to be an international library, not a Library of Congress.” And it’s almost that there now. And I said, “But I don’t know beans about how you make a great library.” But I said, “I’ve got as many degrees in that college where you learn how to get money out of Congress as you’ve got in the colleges you went to, but after I get the money I don’t know what to do with it. Now you tell me that if you had the money you could make this library I want. Is that right?” He said, “Yes sir.” I said, “Can you and I make a deal? If I get you the money will you get me that library deal.” He said, “You just sure made a deal.”

We became, as you can imagine, great friends. So he gave me a little red book one day to read on how you could computerize library materials. And I read that thing and I called him up and I said, “You propagandized me, didn’t me?” And he said, “Well, I hoped I could.” I said, “Well, how can you get started on this thing?” He said, “Well, I have to have some money for research first to see whether it’s feasible or not.” And I said, “Well, how much money are you talking about?” He said, “Oh, it might take as much as a half a million dollars.” I said, “OK, you got that, now what else you going to do?” And he said, “What?” And I said, “Well, you said you needed a half million and I want you to do it, so you got it. We’re getting ready to mark up.” And I said, “I’ve got my committee and subcommittee in my pocket and, and, so you’ve got the money.” Well, he said, “Better just let us have that for a while until we find out some answers and then we can come back and at you for more.” And that’s how that computerizing – that wasn’t bad for a high school drop out, was it?

Lasalier: No, that wasn’t bad at all.

Steed: And old Dr. Bizzell – I wish he’d have lived to know the day that what he did for me paid off because I know that nothing would have made him happier than to have seen that library increased and enlarged.

Lasalier: You had your basic elementary schooling under Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Steed: Yes, and I’ve often thought how lucky I was to go there at a time when that guy had that gavel and he took the interest in guys like me – freshmen – that he did. I seen some other speakers, they’d have liked to have done it, but didn’t have the knack to do it. They didn’t have this for instance stuff that he uses – all these sayings of his, you know, you and I would maybe say “for instance.” He’d just say one of those things, and that got the message across. And he really, if you wanted to be a good congressman, it just tickled him to death. He wanted you to be a good congressman and he wanted you to be somebody – now if I’d ever gone on the floor improperly dressed or something, why he’d never have forgot it. You just – he had a reason for this, see, and it was his dedication and devotion to that institution and it’s importance to people. And I think that all good speakers have that, just like all presidents want to be a good president. The fact that they can’t sometimes is their shortcoming, but I just can’t believe that any man sits in that chair and not want – he wants to be good. See, he’s at the top of the totem pole. There’s no where else to go except to be good. And I just don’t think any man would have the ego to go through all the long hauls he goes through to ever get to that point unless he had that strong element in him. The fact they fail is because the job is so big and tough. And he has to have so many people to help him. And if he didn’t have the good sense to pick them out in the first place, why he’s going to have lots of trouble. Because there’s laws on the books – I’ve got a book in my home in Shawnee – that covers the duties of the president of the United States and there are laws that make him be up to as many as 38 places at the same identical time. Well, that’s physically impossible, so obviously he’s got to send somebody in his place and that guy will make him as good or as a bad as he’s got the ability to do it. And he is the last man on the totem pole and if that guy makes a flop, he flops. See, whatever they do, he did. And there’s no way you’d have a president accept that.

And so, that’s why, I always say that I don’t care, you can be a strong man like Roosevelt, or you can be a very determined organizer like Eisenhower – see he was a military man, he did everything through channels – that’s how he avoided getting himself into some of these embarrassing situations – they had to be screened before they would even show it to him. The military’s like that, you know, go through the channels. Well he didn’t know as much about the government as some of them did, but he stayed out of more trouble than most of them did because before – all the bear traps in it had been ironed out before it got to him – by experts, and so, that’s – and of course, they do use experts. They have a sifting system all the way up through that channel. They – the guy is not that good, they get rid of him and get somebody that is. So it is – it made him a good president.

Now John Kennedy probably brought the brainiest bunch down there of anybody. And, ah, LBJ did pretty good because he kept a lot of those experts. Carter brought the sorriest bunch of all and that’s why he got in the most trouble. And it’s a shame because he was personally a very nice fellow. . .

Lasalier: Well, Sam Rayburn. . . .

Steed: He was a graduate of the navy academy, you know, and he had a lot of practical experience, and he wasn’t a rich man – he’d learned what the common man was. But he just had that fixed notion that everyone in Washington was evil and that he had to get rid of the old guard and bring in a new wave, well, of course, you bring a lot of innocent people up there, and those wolves in Washington eat him up.

Lasalier: Sam Rayburn could have helped him a great deal.

Steed: Oh, he would have been – if he would have been Carter’s speaker, he’d had Carter straightened out in the first six months. He’d go down there and say, “You’ve got to get rid of these guys or I’m going to cut off their budget. They’re hurting you and hurting the country.” And he’d prove it. Now he wouldn’t do that unless he knew he was on sound ground, see. But he had that knack of – well, he was a brain-picker, too. He associated with people that he could learn from and, and, see he was totally dedicated to being an in-house representative. That was his life, his wife, his everything. And I guess there has never been a man that lived and breathed the legislative branch of this country like that fellow did.