The Chairman: No Easy Way Out?

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Dan Rostenkowski employs the hard grammar of power with such sovereignty that it was difficult to imagine last week that his words might be hollow. Seated at the ornate, curved rostrum of the House Ways and Means Committee's hearing chamber, the chairman of 13 years was blunt about his plans for passing a health bill. "If we can be bipartisan and achieve universal coverage," he growled, "great." Pause. "If we can't, I will do whatever I need to do to to get at least 20 votes" -- a majority.

The Illinois Congressman knows how to make good on a threat as well as a promise. Yet when the critical vote counting starts, he may not be around to deliver. Last week it was widely leaked that his lawyer, Robert Bennett, had met with prosecutors in the chairman's long-running criminal case and suggested that the Congressman might be willing to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. If that proposition were rebuffed, the accounts went, U.S. Attorney Eric Holder would probably request a felony indictment of Rostenkowski by Memorial Day.

The timing is excruciating. Rostenkowski has promised to unveil his outline of a health bill immediately after Congress's Memorial Day recess. Yet under the rules of the House Democratic Caucus, if a committee chairman is indicted for a felony punishable by more than two years in prison, he must cede his chairmanship, though not his committee membership. (He can return later if vindicated.) And so at precisely the moment when he planned to move Bill Clinton's most important legislation through the key House committee, the chairman might be stepping down in shame.

The outlook for Rosty may be even bleaker than the talk of a plea bargain , would indicate. The rumored charges seem difficult to construe as misdemeanors: embezzling from the House mailing office, abusing its stationery store to subsidize gifts for campaign workers and paying no-show workers in his Chicago district office. Rostenkowski's defense team has not yet denied some of those specifics. In fact, according to a source close to the Congressman, Bennett has given up on the idea of saving his client's chairmanship and is offering a plea in return for a reduction or elimination of prison time. Of the possibility that a deal might permit Rosty to keep the committee, the source says, "That's just not there."

If Rostenkowski were to plead guilty to a lesser felony, Holder's office might be willing to go along with it in order to avoid a jury trial. Said a source with knowledge of the government's case against Rostenkowski: "It's not a head shot." This means that regardless of what the feds think they can prove the Congressman or his employees did, the prosecutors lack overwhelming evidence to prove it was done with intent to perpetrate a major fraud. The prosecutors believe, moreover, that juries in the District of Columbia tend to favor the defendant. A Rostenkowski confidant says that if the two sides are to reach any kind of accommodation, it will probably be later this week.

On Capitol Hill, the standard thinking is that Clinton's health-care plan is lost without the big Chicagoan. That may be overstating it. In the event of his ouster, Florida's Sam Gibbons becomes the acting chairman and would be expected to work with three committee members -- New York's Charles Rangel and California's Robert Matsui and Pete Stark -- to try to usher Rosty's vision through Ways and Means. Clinton no doubt hopes that between them, they are up to Rostenkowski's job.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Elaine Shannon/Washington