Congressional Liberals Switch to the Offensive

For the first seven years of his presidency, Ronald Reagan put congressional liberals on the defensive, forcing them to fight rear-guard battles to preserve federal programs started during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.

Now, however, in the waning months of Reagan’s final term, his ideological adversaries have shifted to offense.

As a result, prospects are brightening for such long-forgotten liberal causes as an increase in the federal minimum wage, unchanged since 1981. At the same time, such perennial conservative favorites as the balanced-budget constitutional amendment appear doomed.

The shift signals a more active and forceful federal government. But Reagan’s legacy of record budget deficits will limit Congress’ expansionary zeal for years to come.

Budget Deficit a Factor

“The key will be how much it costs,” said Richard P. Conlon, director of the House Democratic Study Group. “A big-bucks agenda won’t fly. We still have the Reagan deficit--an 800-pound gorilla--taking up the couch at the moment.”

This year’s presidential election could change the outlook for the liberal-conservative balance. But Vice President George Bush, the all-but-certain Republican nominee, is widely regarded as more moderate than Reagan and thus less likely to block domestic spending programs should he be elected. A Democratic presidential victory would presumably accelerate the swing of the pendulum back toward a more active federal government.

And regardless of the outcome of the presidential race, most political observers believe the Democrats will retain control of both the Senate and House, giving them a firm base from which to pursue a liberal agenda.

Officials at the Heritage Foundation, the most conservative Washington think tank, acknowledge that they have already shifted from offense to defense on domestic policy, and they blame this year’s White House focus on foreign affairs.

“If the White House runs off the field, even a House led by (Speaker) Jim Wright can score after a couple of plays,” said Gordon Jones, a Heritage vice president. “The White House lost its nerve and pussyfooted around, and (Congress) never got the message.”

Conservative Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), by contrast, says it was the Democratic takeover of the Senate in 1986 that accounted for most of the change. As chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, Hatch said, he was able to bottle up measures that since have been brought to the floor under the leadership of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), whom Hatch called “the biggest liberal in Congress.”

Since Kennedy replaced Hatch as chairman two years ago, he has played a key role in advancing legislation to require advance notice of plant closings and major layoffs, to force employers to notify workers who face health risks on the job and to raise the federal minimum wage from $3.35 to $4.65 an hour.

With a chairman “beholden to organized labor, you’re going to have one after another of these bills that are socialism in embryo,” Hatch said in an interview.

Two of the measures that Hatch finds so offensive will probably not become law, at least not this year. Congress attached the plant-closing provision to the omnibus trade bill that it has sent to Reagan--and Reagan has cited that requirement as his main reason for his intention to veto the bill. Hatch led a filibuster to kill the health notification bill.

But Hatch conceded that the minimum wage increase has a “reasonable chance of passage” for the first time in a decade. The House is expected to approve the increase this month, and the Senate intends to act shortly thereafter.

Kennedy is not the only Democratic Senate committee chairman who has been able to advance the liberal agenda. Hatch also pointed to the Judiciary Committee, where liberal Democrat Joseph R. Biden of Delaware took over from arch-conservative Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

Bork Defeat

That switch, Hatch contended, contributed to the defeat of Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork and led to the burial of a bill to extend the death penalty to more crimes.

The 1986 Senate elections not only restored the Democrats as the Senate’s majority party but also brought in a particularly liberal class of Democratic freshmen--far more liberal than the Republicans they replaced.

A survey of 1987 voting records by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, for example, found the Southern Democratic senators who ousted Republicans in 1986 scored 71% by ADA standards, contrasted with a 9% rating the year before for the Republican incumbents they defeated.

Overall, the ADA said, Congress is more liberal than at any time in 20 years. The average Senate score jumped by 8.5 points to 53% on the ADA scale, while the average rating for House members rose by 5 points to 51%. Reagan lost more roll-call votes in 1987 than at any other time in his presidency and suffered more defeats in Congress than any President since Harry S. Truman’s final year in office, the ADA said.

The recent overwhelming votes in the Senate and House to override the President’s veto of a civil rights bill, with solid support from Southern Democrats in the Senate and House, represented a defeat as well for right-wing religious groups that once provided the shock troops for Reagan on social issues. The bill overturned the “Grove City” decision in which the Supreme Court held that federal aid could be withheld only from particular programs found to be discriminatory, not from entire institutions.

Politicians no longer want to oppose civil rights legislation because they have a sense “that’s not kosher anymore,” said Irene Natividad, director of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Heady Stuff

The victories for liberals have been heady stuff for a group that knew little but defeat during most of the Reagan era.

“Liberals are beginning to come out of the closet,” said Joseph L. Rauh Jr., a former chairman of Americans for Democratic Action. “My feeling is that there’s been a shift in public opinion, which now seeks more affirmative government. “

Rauh and other liberals, however, want to move slowly with new social programs because of the overhanging budget deficit. Conlon, of the moderately liberal House Democratic Study Group, said Reagan foreclosed many potential programs with the combination of his tax cuts and his military buildup.

“After that, it’s hold the line,” Conlon said. “Even if we Democrats win the White House, I don’t see an about-face, 180-degree change.”

The next Congress and the next Administration, he argued, must reduce spending or raise additional revenues--both painful choices--or forgo major new programs.

Despite the spending constraints, some issues that once appealed strictly to liberals are now attracting support from across the political spectrum. Hatch, for example, has introduced a bill to provide child-care assistance despite criticism from some conservative organizations that the bill is anti-family.

‘Look at Facts’

“We have to look at the facts,” Hatch said. Women, he noted, constitute 44% of the work force, and two-thirds of the women who work either are single heads of households or are married to men with incomes of less than $15,000 a year. In addition, Hatch said, his legislation would cost far less than a Democratic alternative, provide for greater state and local control and encourage home care of children.

“My state needs 100,000 (child care) places and it’s only got 18,000, and that’s just Utah,” he said. California, he added, required facilities to care for 1 million children.

Kathy Bonk, a former spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women, cited child care as an example of a changing congressional climate.

“I think the wind is shifting,” she said. “You see a new agenda emerging that would have been considered hopeless five years ago.”