JOE BARTON doesn’t really wear Texas on his sleeve. Actually, he wears it on his tie–or at least he does on the day I arrive at his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Cut from what can only be called Texas-flag cloth, his tie is red, white, and blue and has, rightly placed, a lone star. The tie distinguishes Barton, who represents the infamously contorted 6th district (“the most heavily gerrymandered district in the history of the Constitution,” according to the Supreme Court). Even so, he isn’t very well-known outside of Texas. That should change, if only because he is a relatively young 52, likes politics and happens to engage difficult issues of increasing salience, like energy and the environment. Like Dick Armey, Barton was first elected to Congress in 1984. But as Armey prepares to retire this year after spending his final four terms as majority leader, Barton is, you could say, just getting warmed up. Born in Waco and graduated from Waco High School, Barton now lives in Ennis. He studied industrial engineering at Texas A&M, of which there probably is no greater booster in Washington. After collecting a graduate degree in business (from Purdue), he soon found himself in Washington as a White House Fellow. Not surprisingly, he spent his year as a fellow (1981) at the Energy Department as an aide to Secretary James Edwards. In 1985, Barton’s first act as a member of Congress was to introduce a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget and a supermajority for any tax increase. Like most of the more than 10,000 amendments introduced since the First Congress convened in 1789, Barton’s amendment has been unable to win the two-thirds’ vote the Constitution requires for proposal to the states. A conservative whose voting record annually displeases liberals, Barton has worked to improve the privacy of financial records and to protect human rights in China. But his abiding interest remains the broad range of issues involving energy and the environment. He now is the third-ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose chairman is Rep. William Tauzin of Louisiana. Recently, Barton has had to think about Enron, the energy and trading company whose collapse has become the lead story in Washington. What kind of problem is Enron? For some liberals, Enron is a problem caused by deregulation, specifically the deregulation of electricity and gas, which the company’s chairman, Ken Lay, aggressively–and successfully–advocated. Barton says, however, there is little sentiment in Congress for “going back and reregulating,” i.e., reinstituting “the old system” that protected electric and gas monopolies from competition. Barton never has been fond of that system, having supported measures that dismantled it, including 1988 legislation that deregulated the price of natural gas. Barton says Enron is a management problem, which surely it is, to judge by the scathing report issued last week by Enron’s own special investigation committee. But, as that report also shows, and Barton emphasizes, Enron also is a “transparency” problem, meaning that the company engaged in fancy accounting that obscured the nature of numerous transactions and its real worth. “Is it good public policy,” asks Barton, “to allow companies to hide assets and liabilities? Instinctively, one says no. If it’s an asset, we ought to know that. If it’s a liability, we ought to truly know that. We ought to know the true value and then let the market determine whether a company’s done well or poorly.” For Barton, a properly functioning free-market system, which depends on accurate and available information, demands no less. Barton supports legislation that would ensure accounting practices designed to secure transparency–“you shouldn’t have to have an MBA and a Ph.D. and also understand body language to read an annual report,” he says. He is equally eager to have enacted legislation he has pushed since 1999–a bill that would restructure the electric power industry in a way that would promote greater supply and lower prices. Also on his mind is how to revise, using free-market mechanisms, the Clean Air Act, scheduled to expire soon. Not incidentally, Barton is chairman of an energy and commerce subcommittee whose writ is “energy and air quality.” Barton would like someday to succeed Tauzin as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. That probably will happen. And given his age and the probability of perpetual re-election–his newly redrawn district finally will be compact and contiguous while remaining thoroughly Republican–Barton could serve long enough to leave a substantial legacy. Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard.
