Michael R. Lemov Counsel, House Banking Committee (1970-1971) Counsel, House Energy and Commerce Committee (1971-1975) Chief Counsel, House Energy and Commerce Committee (1975-1977) Oral History Interview Final Edited Transcript October 26, 2010 December 22, 2010 October 26, 2011 Office of the Historian U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. "Somebody once told me, a fellow legislative staffer, that you can do more with the stroke of a pen up here than you can do with a year’s work of brief writing at a law firm, or a year’s worth of lobbying for a corporation. There is immense power in the legislative branch. And my experience tells me that he was right. Overall, I think politics at the staff or elective level is a noble profession." Michael R. Lemov October 26, 2011 Table of Contents Interview Abstract i Interviewee Biography i Editing Practices iii Citation Information iii Interviewer Biography iv Interview 1 Notes 196 Abstract As the consumer rights movement began to take shape in the early 1970s, Michael R. Lemov worked for the House Energy and Commerce Committee as counsel, examining unsafe products and the companies that manufactured them. For six years, Lemov and his colleagues worked to regulate energy and insurance rates, standardize automobile safety, and investigate products ranging from lawnmowers to professional football helmets. Lemov’s interviews reveal the inner workings of House committees, including the tension that can emerge, in this case, between the full committee chairman and his subcommittees. In the early 1970s, as subcommittee chairs across the House fought for more autonomy, including the right to hire staff and hold investigations, Lemov supported Congressman John Moss of California as he and other reformers attempted to usurp power from the chairman of the Energy and Foreign Commerce Committee Chairman Harley Staggers of West Virginia. Throughout the oral history, Lemov describes the behind-the-scenes efforts by committee counsels to draft consumer protection legislation, organize hearings, select witnesses, and lead markups. Biography Michael R. Lemov, the only child of Mildred (Weisman) and Irving Lemov, was born in New York in 1935. Growing up in the outer borough of Queens, Lemov’s father, a trial lawyer, occasionally brought him to his hearings. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1952, Lemov attended Colgate University, in Hamilton, New York. Lemov’s mother, who worked from home for most of his childhood, went into the workforce in order to support him through college. Lemov majored in political science, played on the soccer team, and became president of the Young Democrats at Colgate. Through the university’s Washington Study Project, he worked in Washington, D.C., for Congressman Abraham Multer of New York during his junior year. Lemov graduated in 1956 and followed his father into the legal profession. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1959 and moved back to New York to work in private practice. In 1966, Lemov returned to the nation’s capital to work at the Department of Justice. He moved to Southwest, D.C., with his wife, Penelope, and their newborn daughter, Rebecca. For two years, Lemov worked as a trial attorney and represented a number of federal agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission. Lemov and his wife later had a second child, Doug. In 1968, Lemov left the Department of Justice and took a job with the newly established National Commission on Product Safety. As general counsel, Lemov researched potentially dangerous products—everything from swimming pools to pajamas—selected witnesses, and held hearings. The commission submitted its i final report in 1970, complete with proposed legislation to improve the safety of consumer products in America. Determined to turn the draft legislation into law, Lemov searched for a job on Capitol Hill. The House Commerce Committee had no staff openings, so Lemov worked as counsel for the House Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Foundations, which dealt with issues relating to nonprofits, charities, and other large giving organizations. A year later, Lemov took a position with Congressman John Moss of California on the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee’s Commerce and Finance Subcommittee, continuing his work on consumer legislation. For four years, Lemov conducted investigations, held hearings, and drafted legislation. He played a vital role in creating and passing the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Acts, and the Federal Trade Commission Improvements Act. In 1975, Congressman Moss became chairman of the Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and hired Lemov as the subcommittee’s chief counsel. Under Moss’ leadership, the subcommittee focused specifically on investigating federal departments and government commissions that oversaw the nation’s insurance, health, and energy policies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Lemov left Capitol Hill in 1977, but continued his legal career in the Washington, D.C., area. In 2009, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley appointed him as a member of the Maryland consumer council. Lemov is now retired and living in Maryland. ii Editing Practices In preparing interview transcripts for publication, the editors sought to balance several priorities: • As a primary rule, the editors aimed for fidelity to the spoken word and the conversational style in accord with generally accepted oral history practices. • The editors made minor editorial changes to the transcripts in instances where they believed such changes would make interviews more accessible to readers. For instance, excessive false starts and filler words were removed when they did not materially affect the meaning of the ideas expressed by the interviewee. • In accord with standard oral history practices, interviewees were allowed to review their transcripts, although they were encouraged to avoid making substantial editorial revisions and deletions that would change the conversational style of the transcripts or the ideas expressed therein. • The editors welcomed additional notes, comments, or written observations that the interviewees wished to insert into the record and noted any substantial changes or redactions to the transcript. • Copy-editing of the transcripts was based on the standards set forth in The Chicago Manual of Style. The first reference to a Member of Congress (House or Senate) is underlined in the oral history transcript. For more information about individuals who served in the House or Senate, please refer to the online Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov and the “People Search” section of the History, Art & Archives website, http://history.house.gov. For more information about the U.S. House of Representatives oral history program contact the Office of House Historian at (202) 226-1300, or via email at [email protected]. Citation Information When citing this oral history interview, please use the format below: “Michael R. Lemov Oral History Interview,” Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, [date of interview]. iii Interviewer Biography Albin J. Kowalewski is a Historical Publications Specialist with the Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives. iv —MICHAEL R. LEMOV— INTERVIEW ONE KOWALEWSKI: This is Albin Kowalewski from the Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk. Today’s date is October 26th, 2010. I’m in Room 247, Cannon [House Office Building], about to begin a series of interviews with Michael R. Lemov, the former Commerce Committee counsel from 1971 to 1978. We hope this [will] be a long, very fruitful series of interviews. So without further ado, let us begin. All right. Mike, thanks for being here with us today. For this first interview, I think we should just kind of talk about your early life, childhood, your experiences at Colgate and Harvard and then at DOJ [Department of Justice], and with [the] National Commission on Product Safety [NCPS]. LEMOV: That’s fine. KOWALEWSKI: Sound all right? So, just [to] ask a few simple questions, to begin with. Where and when were you born? LEMOV: Well, I was born in 1935 at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in New York City. KOWALEWSKI: Okay. LEMOV: My family, however, lived in Queens, another borough of New York City. Queens was known as the Bedroom Borough. KOWALEWSKI: What were the names of your parents? What did they do for a living? LEMOV: Well, my dad was Irving. He was a lawyer. He got there the hard way. {laughter} My dad came from the Ukraine with his parents in about 1907, when he was seven years old. His father had been a teacher in the ghetto in http://history.house.gov/Oral-History/ 1 Kiev, the city they lived in. Something pushed the family to get out of Russia and the Ukraine. So, they came to the United States. My grandfather’s name was Boris. He had been a teacher, but all he could do in the United States was open a hand laundry. He pushed a laundry cart around the streets of East New York. I guess he couldn’t master the language and was in his middle years and couldn’t, obviously, get a college degree here in this country. There were older children, but my dad, second to youngest, was the first one in his family to go to college. As a lawyer, he represented individuals and small businesses, usually against much larger entities. You could call him a plaintiff’s lawyer or a small business lawyer. He never made much money. He never had big clients—big corporations or other big clients. He was very interested in politics, my dad. KOWALEWSKI: What did your mom do? LEMOV: My mom’s name was Mildred. At first, she was a stay-at-home mom, as many women were in the era of the 1940s, when I was growing up.