the counciL of tRent 305
South had been managing two of Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaigns.
Right after the Democrats’ disastrous 1994 midterms, Clinton confided
his frustrations to Morris, who convinced him to open a back-channel
dialogue with Lott. Two instinctive Southern politicians who wanted to
get things done ought to be able to find common ground, Morris said.
When Lott invited Morris to his home in Pascagoula for a chat before
Congress convened, Morris revealed he’d been talking with Clinton.
“This could be great,” Morris said. “You take over the Senate, I’ll take over
the White House and we’ll pass everything!” Morris was only half joking.
He became the intermediary between the president of the United States
and the majority leader of the opposing party. The relationship even sur-
vived Morris’s embarrassing exit from Team Clinton over revelations that
he had a paid mistress and some kinky proclivities. The Council of Trent
and the White House agreed to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and a
major welfare reform initiative, with Gorton as a key strategist.^2
indisAn And enviRonMentALists were dismayed to find Gorton with
more power, especially as chairman of the Interior Appropriations Sub-
committee, which oversees the budgets for the Bureau of Indian Affairs
and Forest Service. In fact, all of Interior’s agencies, including Fish &
Wildlife, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management,
were now Gorton’s turf. His hope was that the 104th Congress would
move to amend the Endangered Species Act to allow social and economic
concerns as part of the equation. He was prepared to play the budget card
“if we don’t start moving down a path of meaningful reform.”^3
Gorton was even more adamant after the National Marine Fisheries
Service announced its biological opinion on the cost of increasing water
flows on the Columbia and Snake Rivers to help save endangered fish.
The lost hydropower penciled out to at least $120 million a year. The head
of the Bonneville Power Administration expected overall costs to be
closer to the $175 million to $180 million estimated under a salmon plan
prepared for the Northwest Power Planning Council. “We figure that each
saved Chinook would cost its weight in gold,” Gorton said. Northwest rate-
payers would have to decide whether saving the salmon was worth that
much. “When almost everything else is being cut,” Congress was unlikely
to foot the bill. “There is a cost beyond which you just have to say very re-
grettably we have to let species or subspecies go extinct.”^4
On the Elwha, the question was nearly moot. Impressed by a compro-
mise forged by a Port Angeles citizens group, Gorton helped secure $30
million in 1997 to buy the lower dam on the Olympic Peninsula river. He