As the U.S. House adjourned for Christmas, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made clear lawmakers were not returning until January. The House had just completed a session that could only be dubbed, well, turbulent.
It featured the dethroning of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and three subsequent weeks of disputatious maneuvering to choose his successor. Almost as soon as Johnson grasped the gavel, Republican lawmakers were again arguing over the venue of temporarily funding the government through a continuing resolution — the same controversy that had sparked the vote that deposed McCarthy.
A few older reporters and Hill staffers began discussing what the House was like before things got partisan and social media gave individual House members their own particular following.
And, more than occasionally, they recalled the late Rep. Elwood "Bud" Hillis, R-Ind. Out of Congress since 1986, Hillis died nearly a year ago (Jan. 4) at age 96. But, almost incredibly, the lawmaker that politicians of both parties all seemed to like widely recalled and remembered on Capitol Hill — and often held up as a striking contrast to many House members of today.
"I had the great fortune to work with Rep. Hillis professionally, as well as be in his company socially," John Palatiello, veteran Hill staffer and lobbyist, told Newsmax. "He was always a gentleman. And like his close friend and colleague from Indiana, my boss, Rep. John Myers, lived by the adage that you should disagree without being disagreeable. That's something today's Congress would be well served to practice more."
Bud Hillis was practically born and raised with politics in Kokomo, Indiana. His father, Glen Hillis, who earned his law degree at Indiana University Law School alongside legendary composer Hoagy Carmichael, was an active Republican who won his party's nomination for governor in 1940. But the elder Hillis lost to Democrat Henry Schricker by fewer than 4,000 votes.
As the son of Republicans who disliked President Franklin Roosevelt and campaigned hard for fellow Hoosier Wendell Willkie when he was the GOP nominee against FDR in 1940, Bud Hillis grew up with their political views. But while working a summer job at Continental Steel, Bud Hillis realized, as he recalled to the Kokomo Tribune, "there were sides to issues and to look carefully at them."
He explained, "I made the mistake one day of making an anti-Roosevelt statement to one of the workers. Instead of getting upset, he spent the rest of the summer educating me on why Roosevelt was a great man."
After graduating from Culver Military Academy, Bud Hillis was a U.S. Army officer in the Occupation Forces in Germany. As a reservist, he went home to earn business and law degrees at Indiana University.
Bud Hillis spent 14 years in private law practice before deciding to run for the state House of Representatives in 1966. He won and, while compiling a conservative record, he nonetheless worked with Democrats on issues of reform. Both Bud Hillis and Democrat state Rep. Adam Benjamin (who would later serve together in Congress) joined forces to make the Lake County Superior Court system strictly nonpartisan.
When Republican Rep. Richard Roudebush left the Kokomo-area House seat to run for the Senate in 1970, Bud Hillis jumped in and topped a crowded primary field that included Roudebush's top aide, Max Friedersdorf (later President Ronald Reagan's congressional liaison). In all of his subsequent trips to the polls, Bud Hillis emerged triumphantly and almost without difficulty.
Arriving in Congress, Bud Hillis found himself in a freshman class that was eclectic — from fellow conservative Republicans such as Jack Kemp of New York and future House Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Archer of Texas to moderate-to-liberal Republicans such as Stewart McKinney of Connecticut and Bill Frenzel of Minnesota to far-left Democrats such as Bella Abzug of New York and Roman Catholic Father Robert Drinan of Massachusetts.
Bud Hillis liked all of them and found himself working on several issues with colleagues of all stripes. A believer in defense preparedness during the Cold War, he was the premier mover-and-shaker on the House Armed Services Committee in getting congressional authorization for the M1 Abrams tank. Bud Hillis' friendship with Democrats was pivotal as he took the lead in securing the government's bailout of the Chrysler Corporation in 1979 (which the auto company eventually paid back under President Lee Iacocca).
"I felt that we should do this," Bud Hillis recalled to the Kokomo Tribune. "A lot of people could have been out of a job if Chrysler failed, and these were my people. I worked for them. They employed me. At the same time, these people contributed to our economy; they paid taxes and served our community."
Like so many House Republicans of his generation, Bud Hillis gave up hope he would ever serve in a chamber in which his party held a majority. So he stepped down in 1986 and returned to law practice in his beloved Kokomo.
Bud Hillis is silent and unseen now. But his memory resonates among those who knew him or simply heard of a congressman who quietly accomplished much by seeking out opponents and finding an area in which they could agree — and do something.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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