The House’s ‘Odd Couple’ Reasserting Congress’ Power of the Purse

In a hyperpartisan House, one bipartisan friendship stands out.

You can see it in action within the dozen funding bills that the House passed this fiscal year, and sometimes in speeches on the House floor.

“Once, our mutual friend and former colleague Ambassador Rahm Emanuel called us ‘the odd couple.’ That may be true,” Rep. Tom Cole, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said on the floor in early February.

The other half of that “odd couple” was sitting on the opposite side of the chamber with a smile on her face: House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro.

Later that day, both members would celebrate the House passing the last of the 12 appropriations bills for this fiscal year — a rarity in an often gridlocked Congress that’s typically polarized and ineffective. That achievement, at least in part, is thanks to the common ground that Cole and DeLauro have been able to find.

“Rosa DeLauro knows how to throw a punch without punching below the belt,” Cole told NOTUS. “It’s a fair shot, and I like to think we do the same thing in return.”

Within the last year, the government entered the longest shutdown in history, and Cole had characterized dealmaking in Congress as more challenging than ever in his two-decade tenure. Despite deals on the rest of the spending bills, Congress failed to reach an agreement on the bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, a stalemate that doesn’t appear to have a near-term resolution.

And while the House chamber has devolved into a place where some lawmakers have tried to censure and expel one another, with finger-pointing being the norm, Cole and DeLauro haven’t been shy about keeping a friendship.

“As different as we are, we like one another personally. She knows her business. I mean, she knows the bills exceptionally well,” Cole said of DeLauro in an interview. “You can bargain with her. She works within the realm of the possible, and she always keeps her word. I mean, she always keeps her word.”

“And he does as well,” DeLauro told NOTUS over the phone.

They may not seem like they have much in common at first glance. DeLauro, an 82-year-old liberal Democrat, hails from Connecticut and sports purple-highlighted hair and a trendy social media personality. Cole, a 76-year-old establishment Republican from ruby-red Oklahoma, is known for his love of cigars, whiskey and football.

When the pair first met, they sat down for breakfast and both ordered their bacon burnt, DeLauro said. They discovered they had even more in common during that meeting, like an interest in biomedical research. They’d go on to increase funding for that research at the National Institutes of Health during their eight years leading the Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. (“Nobody knows the Labor-H bill better than Rosa DeLauro,” Cole said, using the shorthand for the funding bill that is traditionally one of the hardest to get through the chamber.)

Now, as the pair sits atop the full Appropriations Committee, they’re “not partisans,” but “legislators,” Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior appropriator, said.

“They have different agendas and different points of view on things, and that’s okay, but they know: You’ve got to work together. I’ve seen them do it for years,” Simpson said. “I never thought we’d get Labor-H done and across the floor, but when Cole became chairman and Rosa was there, it was amazing what they got done.”

Cole said he and DeLauro also care about first-generation college students and early childhood education, but they disagree in other areas, like abortion. They’re careful not to let that “get in the way of the working relationship, ever. And we surely don’t let it get in the way of friendship,” Cole said. “I genuinely consider her my friend as well as my working partner.”

The pair agreed on a strategy this cycle to keep most of the negotiating between the top Republican and the top Democrat on each funding subcommittee. “Decentralizing” that process and keeping decisions away from the leadership level, DeLauro said, allowed the committee to get “a hell of a lot done.” Cole often argues that as issues are passed upward for leadership to decide on, they’re more likely to be politicized, making the subcommittee level ideal for decision-making within appropriations bills.

When the pair does have to make high-stakes decisions, they listen to one another. DeLauro insisted that the controversial Department of Homeland Security funding bill should have a separate vote from a larger funding package that was much more likely to pass with bipartisan support. Cole said he took that advice to his party’s leadership, and the DHS bill was subsequently separated. The DHS bill passed the House by a small margin, and then failed as part of the package in the Senate. While Congress eventually approved a funding deal including a two-week patch for DHS, the department later entered a funding lapse.

“We have very private conversations about process, where that’s not ideological. How could this theoretically get pieced together where we could have coalition?” Cole said.

“You have to learn how to be operational, to get it done. And that’s where Tom Cole is coming from, getting it done,” DeLauro said.

Over years of working together, Cole and DeLauro developed a strong trust in one another through honesty and transparency. They’re always willing to negotiate, even in “the strangest places,” DeLauro said, adding she once picked up a phone call from Cole while at the opera. Both lawmakers told NOTUS they can rely on one another, and they never walk away from a conversation unsure of the other’s intentions. There’s no blindsiding, no gotcha games.

“He’s a great friend,” DeLauro said. “At the center of this, there’s a very, very strong and personal friendship.”

“He’s got a great sense of humor. We laugh about cigars and we laugh about bourbon and we laugh about wine,” DeLauro said. “We laugh about lots of things.”

DeLauro still serves as the top Democrat on the “Labor-H” funding subcommittee, alongside Chair Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican. Aderholt told NOTUS that DeLauro is “very reasonable,” and even if you’re on the other side of the aisle, “you can sit down and talk and try to get a solution.” In some places, Aderholt said, that has become rare in Congress. But he pointed out that the Appropriations Committee, with DeLauro and Cole at its helm, is a bright spot.

“The Appropriations Committee has, for the most part, been one of those places that people have tried to say, ‘We may disagree, but let’s find out the areas that we can agree in,’” Aderholt said.

At a time when President Donald Trump’s administration has used executive authority to slash agency budgets and move money around, and years since Congress put its stamp on spending bills instead of moving massive bills or short-term funding patches, Cole and DeLauro share a focus on reasserting one of Congress’s most important levers.

DeLauro told NOTUS they share the objective of “understanding and reaffirming the power of the purse,” something “very central” to the committee’s progress this year.

“We share the view of wanting to make the system work,” DeLauro added.