April 22, 2020 — It was December 2000, and both houses of Congress were itching to go home. They just needed to wrap up the budget — the new fiscal year was already 10 weeks old. At last, the House of Representatives announced that agreement had been reached.
There was only one problem. The Clinton administration was proposing restrictions on the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery, and the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, was having none of it.
“The fishing limits,” he said, reportedly pounding on his desk, “will put a considerable number of people out of work. Federal control of these magnificent fisheries is not going to be approved by this senator.”
As the man who controlled the purse strings, Stevens, an iconic World War II veteran known to Alaskans as “Uncle Ted,” was arguably the country’s most powerful senator and couldn’t be ignored.