WASHINGTON - Dan Lungren listened quietly to the small group of business executives during the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's annual Cap-to-Cap lobbying trip a few weeks ago, and then launched into a monologue.

Lots of people come traipsing up to Capitol Hill with their wish list of projects they want Congress to earmark for funding as if it were an entitlement, he said, but no one has a clue about how to pay for them.

"When I left Congress in 1988, there were very few earmarks," said Lungren, the former Long Beach-area congressman and state attorney general who was elected in November to return to Congress representing the Sacramento suburbs.

"I'm told that last year there were somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 earmarks," the Gold River Republican said. "I don't know how you can run a government with that happening."

This is not a message that chamber members have been accustomed to hearing.

"It's very clear Representative Lungren is coming from a different place," said Susan Gonzales, senior communications director for Comcast, who was in the meeting.

"He was very open and honest, rather than letting people believe there were plenty of funds for everyone's projects," she said. "It was real."

In the four months since Lungren's return to Congress, he has made five trips back to Sacramento, conducted four town hall meetings with his constituents, introduced the Defense of Marriage Act and co-sponsored 28 other bills, been appointed to a key homeland security subcommittee, spent 10 days on a congressional trip to China and joined a congressional delegation to Rome for the installation of Pope Benedict XVI.

While Lungren is relishing the revival of his public life, it doesn't mean he likes all that he sees now that he's back.

It's not just the growing use of congressional earmarks that delight the folks back home but divert funds for higher-priority needs.

And it's not just the soaring deficit, which he blames in part on the excesses of his own party.

Lungren dislikes the extent to which members of Congress have delegated their work to members of their staff. He is troubled by the compressed work schedule in which the House typically operates frenetically, but only three days a week. And he is disturbed by the acid-laced partisanship that he thinks a longer workweek could help defuse.

When House Republicans met in caucus last month in an effort to extract themselves from the deepening ethical quicksand related to various investigations into House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his connections to an influential lobbyist, Lungren voiced concerns about the risk of political arrogance.

"Whatever I said in conference has been listened to," Lungren said in an interview Wednesday, just hours before the House voted to rescind the controversial rules that Democrats charged were intended to insulate DeLay from investigation.

More than half the 435 House members were elected since the chamber fell under Republican leadership with the 1994 elections. For many Republicans that means they have no experience with the kinds of problems and ethical lapses that brought down former Democratic Speaker Jim Wright in 1989, spearheading the Republican revolt, and what lessons might lie within for them.

Among these newer members is Rep. Paul Ryan, a 35-year-old Wisconsin Republican who said Lungren's stern warning to the caucus was "very influential."

"He spoke what a lot of people felt but were afraid to say," Ryan said. "Dan has such a historical perspective that we can all learn from."

These are bittersweet observations that Lungren said he hears all the time. He is cast in the role of the sage and wise, but not as the cutting-edge conservative firebrand he was when Ronald Reagan was president and Lungren was a faithful lieutenant.

In fact, because of his work as attorney general enforcing the state's gun control laws and his stern belief that the way out of the illegal immigration controversy is a guest-worker program coupled with tough employer sanctions, Lungren often is characterized as a Republican moderate - a continuing source of frustration.

He considers himself "a Ronald Reagan conservative," but the ranks of members who even know what that means are thinning.

As Ryan told Lungren on the recent congressional delegation to the pope's inaugural Mass, "I was just in the third grade when Ronald Reagan was elected."

Lungren represented Long Beach from 1979 to 1989. His seniority stuck with him after his election in November, winning him the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee's economic security, infrastructure protection and cybersecurity subcommittee.

Some interest groups are critical of that assignment. Lungren's last job was as a lawyer-lobbyist for the Venable law firm, whose expanding fields of interest include homeland security.

"This represents one of the worst cases of the revolving door," charged Craig Holmes, campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "He's established a history of close networks and contacts and then it's back to Capitol Hill, where he exploits the interests of his former clients."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of," Lungren retorted. "They obviously don't know me."

Neither a freshman nor a seasoned Sacramento congressman, Lungren, 58, is somewhere in between - laboring under an exhausting schedule to carve out a new political career among a new set of constituents.

On the weekend he flew to Rome for the pope's inaugural, this was his schedule: He left Friday morning on an Air Force jet from Andrews Air Force Base to Rome, returning late Sunday evening. At 7 a.m. Monday, he was on a flight from Dulles National Airport, 25 miles from his Alexandria, Va., home, headed for San Francisco. After a two-hour drive to Sacramento, Lungren was whisked by staffers to a two-hour town hall meeting with constituents. He was back on the airplane shortly after dawn for the return trip to Washington in time to cast votes Tuesday night.

The Rome trip, while an honor for the Catholic congressman, also forced him to postpone two fundraisers in Sacramento - and they would have been the first major events for Lungren's 2006 campaign. So far this year, he has raised barely $15,000.

What seems to be winning him admiration, however, is a forthright relationship with his constituents. During the chamber's Cap-to-Cap trip here, Lungren arranged for a room where he could meet personally with each large group.

Citrus Heights City Council member Jayna Karpinski-Costa said Lungren couldn't have been plainer speaking when her group raised the idea of federal money to redevelop Auburn Boulevard - something that was a high priority with Lungren's predecessor, Rep. Doug Ose, but not with him.

"Doug Ose got money for everything," Karpinski-Costa said. "(Lungren) is no Doug Ose. Dan talked a lot about the problems with the federal government and the deficit. I think he does have a deeper concern, and I think he's being very realistic."

    About the writer:

        * The Bee's David Whitney can be reached at (202) 383-0004 or dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com.

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, carries granddaughter Reagan Maria as he heads to the House floor Friday.  Special to The Bee/Ryan K. Morris

A coffee mug bears the likeness of President Reagan. Special to The Bee/Ryan K. Morris

Rep. Dan Lungren sees himself as a "Ronald Reagan conservative" but has found that the ranks of House members who know what that means are thinning. Special to The Bee/Ryan K. Morris

He talks to granddaughter Reagan Maria. Special to The Bee/Ryan K. Morris