Massa says he was forced out so that Democrats can pass health care

Mar 8, 2010 — Washington Post

Paul Kane

By Paul Kane

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) prepared to resign his House seat Monday afternoon but not before lobbing a series of unsubstantiated accusations, including that the White House and House leaders conspired to force his resignation in order to boost the chances of passing a health-care bill.

Saying that he refused to go "quietly into the evening," Massa told radio listeners in southern New York on Sunday that he was the victim of a "set-up." The freshman Democrat has long opposed the health-care bill that his party's leaders want to see passed -- on the basis of it being not liberal enough -- and he said Sunday that his ouster would lower the number of "yes" votes that Democrats need.

Democrats rejected Massa's charges as having no basis in reality. "That's completely false. There is zero merit to that accusation," said Katie Grant, spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.).

And Democrats pointed to Massa's statements Friday that he is fleeing Congress in an effort to avoid an investigation by the House ethics committee, which is examining allegations that Massa sexually harassed junior male staff.

Massa also agreed to join Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck for an hour on Tuesday -- an unusual booking, given Massa's liberal politics and Beck's conservative populism. But Massa's criticism of what he now calls the "stop-at-nothing" effort to pass health-care legislation will play well with Beck's audience.

Beck promoted the appearance by tweeting, "I just spoke with him off air. All Americans need to hear him."

Massa's departure will effectively lower the number of votes that Hoyer and Democratic leaders need to corral for passing the legislation. Two members have resigned -- former representatives Neil Abercrombie (D), who is running for Hawaii governor, and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who took a think-tank position -- and John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) died last month.

Without Massa, there will now be just 431 members of the House, lowering the number of votes for a majority to 216. If Massa were still in office, a majority would require 217 votes.

The House is slated to consider a Senate version of the health-care bill later this month. If all Democrats voted as they did in the November vote on health care, Democratic leaders would have precisely 216 votes. Of course, dozens of lawmakers are considering switching their votes, -- with some "no" votes now considering approving the measure, and some "yes" votes considering going into the "no" column -- so Massa is working with inexact science in declaring Sunday that his vote is the "deciding" factor for the legislation.

At times screaming and other times quietly emotional in his last weekly radio show as a congressman, Massa, an ex-Navy commander, also:

• denied being gay but gave detailed accounts of several instances of what he called "grossly obscene" behavior with other members of the Navy;

• accused Hoyer of lying about his knowledge of the ethics investigation;

• said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was the "devil's spawn," who once confronted him naked in the shower of the House gym; and

• admitted to another minor ethics violation regarding fund-raising efforts.

But the theme Massa stuck to, repeatedly, was how he was in a Kafkaesque struggle against greater forces, and how he had been used as a pawn to maneuver the health-care bill toward final passage. Here's how he ended a 25-minute introduction to the 90-minute show:

"This is what the country does to their elected leaders? You have my apology and you have my resignation, because I'm a human being, but I will not go quietly into the evening. I will not be ashamed of my actions, other than the fact that I used inappropriate, verbal -- v-e-r-b-a-l -- language," Massa said.

"And I was set up for this from the very, very beginning. If you think that somehow they didn't come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote on the health-care bill, then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as to not understand what is going on in Washington, D.C.," he added.

Since announcing Wednesday his plan to not run for reelection this fall, Massa has been at the center of an increasingly odd political sideshow.

He initially cited a recurrence of cancer for his decision, but later admitted that his staff had been interviewed by the ethics committee about the harassment allegations. He denied any wrongdoing, admitting only to using "salty language" around younger staff.

He then announced Friday that he would resign at the end of the day Monday. At times during his Sunday radio show, he suggested he might return to Congress as an independent, but his chief of staff told Roll Call on Monday that the office is closing immediately.

Massa said he has had to deny being gay since reports filtered out, first on Politico.com and then into broader media, about the nature of his departure from Congress.

"Ask my wife, I think she can answer that question," he said on the radio show, "but I have gay staff members. I make no bones about it. I love many of them like sons, in fact, I love some of them like brothers. And, yes, I use the word love because I'm a human being."

He also, for the first time, gave a detailed account of at least one incident that led to the ethics investigation, coming toward the end of a staffer's wedding reception held on New Year's Eve. He bragged about dancing with the bride and a bridesmaid, after his wife had gone to their hotel room because of the flu, and then he returned to a table where his aides had gathered.

"One of them looked at me and as they would do after, I don't know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid. And his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that. And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, 'Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.' And then [I] tousled the guy's hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn't right for me to be there," he said.

That incident led to a complaint from a different staffer who felt "uncomfortable" about the remark, he said.

In a detailed statement last week, Hoyer said he first heard complaints in early February of Massa's behavior toward male staff and demanded that someone from Massa's office contact the ethics committee. Hoyer has declined to comment on the precise nature of the allegations.

Massa also addressed his record in the Navy. In the 1990s, while at sea, he found his bunk mate in the middle of an intimate act. "The other gentlemen was busy remembering his wife; I'll let your imaginations run wild. And I walked in and, instead of embarrassing him, I smacked him on the leg and said, 'You need any help with that, let me know.' And I went to bed. He was so hideously embarrassed, he moved out of the stateroom," he said.

Massa also described "grossly obscene," lewd acts that he and other newcomers to the USS New Jersey had to engage in during 1983 as their ship crossed the equator. But he said this was part of the culture of the Navy in that era, before "political correctness" had set in.

His worst offense, Massa explained, was his repeated use of bad language, something that he and Emanuel have in common. After he opposed climate change legislation last June, Massa received a foul-mouthed tirade from the White House chief of staff.

"He started swearing at me in terms and words that I hadn't heard since that crossing-the-line ceremony on the USS New Jersey in 1983," Mass said, "and I gave it right back to him in terms and words that I know are physically impossible. I told him to do things that the human anatomy cannot do."