Says she does well on two of three priorities
NOELLE STRAUB Star-Tribune Washington bureau | Posted: Sunday, October 21, 2007 12:00 am
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Wyoming's congresswoman compares her job to a three-legged stool.
Her responsibilities include constituent services, such as such as sorting out passport delays and
helping small businesses navigate bureaucracies; the legislative process, such as working with colleagues on issues and bills; and voting on the House floor.
"I'm doing two parts of that job exceptionally well," Rep. Barbara Cubin said in an interview in her Capitol Hill office. "I would put my record against anyone's on two of those items."
The third leg has fallen victim to the tough year Cubin has had, especially her husband's poor health. With another campaign season coming, Cubin said she will decide within the next few weeks whether to run for re-election.
'It would be tough'
The Republican congresswoman has missed 452 out of the total 982 votes this year, or 46 percent, according to a Washington Post vote database. That's more than any other living member of Congress, it showed.
The majority of those missed votes came when her husband was ill. Dr. Frederick "Fritz" Cubin has been hospitalized for all but roughly 45 days this year, she said.
Cubin also missed some votes when her brother died in February. She missed a week in March when she had the flu, and other votes when she visited Iraq, broke her foot, and for other reasons, she said.
"I do not in any way want to understate the importance of voting," she said. "I think it's very important to vote. And I regret that I haven't been able to vote. But it was always a deeply considered decision where I should be."
Cubin noted that she flew back to Washington to vote on two issues she thought were important. The first was in early May -- a vote on a war spending bill. The second was last week's vote to sustain President Bush's veto of a State Children's Health Insurance Program expansion.
"Things that I thought were really important for Wyoming on issues like that, I would come back," she said. "But you know, I hate it more than anybody. It hasn't affected the way I do this job. It has not affected constituent services."
Cubin also said the public should know that many votes are on procedural matters rather than issues of substance.
"But you know I don't want you to think I don't think I should be here," she added. "Given almost any alternative I would be here to vote."
Cubin's votes have been an issue in past elections. During 2001-2002, she missed 267 out of 996 total votes, or 26.8 percent, according to the Post database. Her first and third terms in office, she missed just under 6 percent of the vote. In three other sessions she missed between 10 percent and 13 percent.
Last fall Cubin narrowly won re-election by about 1,000 votes. She said the fact that so many other Republican lawmakers lost at the time speaks well of her win. But she acknowledged a 2008 race probably would be close.
"I have never been in a campaign that wasn't a tough match from the beginning to the very end," she said. "So I expect it would be tough, I would expect it would be 55 percent or lower, if I were to run."
Listing her successes
During weeks when she is absent from Congress, Cubin works on legislative and constituent issues, she said. Still, she noted, of the 96 bills the president signed into law this year, two of them were hers.
One was to name the post office in Laramie after Gale W. McGee. The other was to add 50 acres of donated land to Grand Teton National Park.
She also ushered three resolutions through the House: honoring the Wyoming Cowgirls on their basketball success, expressing condolences on the death of Sen. Craig Thomas, and granting federal designation to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson.
She offered further examples of this year's accomplishments:
* A bill she introduced last session would promote research and development on new drugs for infectious diseases. Cubin hopes recent news coverage of drug-resistant infections will spur a hearing on the bill.
* As a woman who has had a heart attack, she cosponsored women's heart health legislation.
* She was a sponsor of a family methamphetamine treatment bill that would require treatment centers across the nation in rural areas.
* She has worked on country-of-origin labeling, Farm Service Agency office closings, senior mental health, border control, abandoned mine land funding, veterans services and other issues.
Better communication
Thursday's conversation with a Star-Tribune reporter was Cubin's first face-to-face interview with her hometown newspaper since before the 2006 election. Cubin acknowledged she hasn't been readily available to the Wyoming press and said she will work to get word out about her accomplishments.
"Because all people know is that I haven't voted," she said. "And if I'm not talking to the media I can't complain ... I can't complain when I haven't been talking."
She added, "I know people have the idea that voting is the main thing that we do here, and really it isn't. It certainly is of equal importance with other things, but like I said earlier, only 96 bills have been signed into law ... two of those bills were mine out of 96. So I don't think the senators, either one, can say that."
A long siege
Cubin's husband has been diagnosed with thrombocytopenia, a condition in which there is a deficient number of circulating blood platelets, the cells that help blood to clot, her office has said.
On Thursday, Cubin said he had improved somewhat. After surgery on his spleen, she said, it swelled so that he had a mass in his abdomen the size of a gallon jug. Doctors have treated that so he doesn't have as much pain, but he still has a staph infection, she said.
"It's scary," she said. "He feels better, his pain's a little better. Our son's coming home (Friday), so he gets perky when that happens."
Cubin still has a bruise on her face from the accident in which she also broke her foot. (She stumbled and fell while tending to her husband at the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper.) She walks gingerly with crutches and has a motorized scooter to zip her from her office to the House floor for votes.
Cubin notes that it's been more than just a tough year. She lost her sister a couple of years ago. Her mother has advanced Alzheimer's, and her dad takes care of her at home. Cubin's husband has been sick off and on since 2000.
"It has been hard, but there have been really good things happening as well," she said. "And you have to look for the good things because otherwise it would defeat you."
Cubin says her family members are close and support one another. And the people of Wyoming who have written, called and prayed for her also give her strength, she said.
"If you sit around and think of all that's wrong, it sounds pretty bad," Cubin said. "But, if you just take it piece by piece, one bit at a time, you get through it. It's a matter of survival. It isn't any particular wisdom. It's how do we survive this."
Speaking about her husband's illness, an emotional Cubin teared up.
"We have had the opportunity to say everything we ever wanted the other one to hear," she said. "I feel real lucky for that. We're closer than we ever were, closer than we ever would have been, I'm sure. So that is really a blessing, to have no regrets."
Cubin said her broken foot was the third time in three years that she and her husband have both been in the hospital at the same time. She had a heart attack a year ago, over the Fourth of July, and also has had a hysterectomy.
"This hasn't just been a year-long siege," she said.
Cubin told the Associated Press recently that she plans to run for re-election. But she said Thursday that she will make a decision and announcement in the next few weeks.
"I just need to make the announcement at a time that is right," she said. "Certainly whatever I decide to do, there are people I need to notify first before it is in the media - staff, family, all those kind of things."
She said no one from the Republican Party has been talking to her about her decision.
"Any decision that I make, it'll be good for Wyoming, it'll be good for the party, and it'll be good for me," she said.