State’s Issues Add to House GOP’s Discord

Once known for voting in lock-step, House Republicans are beginning to step on each other’s heels.

The “contract with America” is now a distant memory, squabbling has broken out within the GOP on issues ranging from immigration to the Endangered Species Act--and area lawmakers are in the middle of the fray.

“I’ve never seen this kind of behavior in the years I’ve been in Congress,” veteran Glendale Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead said last year after a tiff with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach. “Usually people in your same party are at least halfway polite to each other.”

It’s a far cry from the launch of the “Republican revolution” about a year ago, when GOP lawmakers kept dissent to a minimum, working out disagreements behind closed doors and putting on the face of a party moving ahead together.

Of course, Republicans have disagreed on things in the past. But with the Democrats ruling Capitol Hill for decades, Republican disunity wasn’t a high-profile problem. But now that they control Congress, their disagreements draw more attention--and can have a greater impact on public policy.

On illegal immigration, for example, California Republicans are pitted against GOP colleagues who take a less aggressive stance on the issue.

Last fall, the state’s GOP delegation wrote to House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), urging him to schedule floor debate for immigration reform legislation in December. Aware that Armey opposed key provisions of the bill, the California lawmakers feared he was trying to push immigration to the back burner.

Armey delayed, so the Californians turned up the pressure--with some lawmakers even subtly threatening Armey’s job as the No. 2 man in the House. Eventually, Armey agreed to allow the bill to advance to a vote in mid-March and withhold any public criticism of the legislation until it reaches the floor.

Once that debate begins, intraparty warfare is expected to break out on several fronts.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), for instance, will go head-to-head with Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) over a proposal requiring employers to call a toll-free number to check on the immigration status of new hires.

While Gallegly considers worker verification an essential aspect of the bill, Chabot dismisses it as an unfair imposition on small businesses and a threat to individual liberties.

Already the immigration bill has been amended so the worker verification pilot project would not take place in Chabot’s home state. Still, he is seeking to kill the plan, infuriating Gallegly.

“I’m really disappointed with Steve Chabot,” he said. “I’m offended he has been as aggressive as he has been in trying to eliminate a proposal that is a pilot project and that is not even in Ohio.”

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Gallegly has also pushed a controversial plan that would allow farmers to sponsor more immigrants as guest workers--as long as there are provisions ensuring that the workers go home when their stints are over.

But heavy opposition is developing among those who contend that guest workers often remain in the country after their temporary stays have expired. Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) has joined Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) in trying to block a guest worker bill.

Aware of the criticism, Gallegly has decided against introducing such a measure himself, handing off the hot potato to Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy).

Pombo, however, has problems of his own. He headed a task force set up last year to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, which he says has been used to impose unnecessary and expensive regulations on landowners.

But his bill, which offers financial compensation for property owners affected by the act, has not moved far, largely because of concerns within the GOP that it goes too far.

To tone down the legislation, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is expected to name Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) to head a new environmental task force. Boehlert was one of a group of moderate Republicans who recently wrote to Gingrich saying the party’s agenda on the environment had become too extreme.

Another messy dispute has snagged Moorhead, the elder statesman of California’s House Republicans and a lawmaker who generally skirts spats.

Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach has relentlessly tried to push a patent reform bill through Moorhead’s subcommittee on courts and intellectual property. Moorhead, however, has his own patent bill and doesn’t particularly care for Rohrabacher’s approach.

The dispute centers on the length of time inventors will be protected under patent law. Under a change included in the 1994 GATT world trade agreement, patents are no longer valid for 17 years from the date they are issued. Now, the patents last 20 years, but the clock starts winding down as soon as the application for a patent is filed, not when it is issued.

That technicality has Rohrabacher and many small inventors up in arms, saying the change could knock years off the length of a patent. To pressure Moorhead to make a change, Rohrabacher has taken to the House floor to denounce his longtime colleague and rallied inventors to criticize Moorhead in his Glendale district.

The bickering between Rohrabacher and Moorhead has come to a stop--at least for a while. But if no agreement is reached in the coming weeks, Rohrabacher’s camp intends to start the battle anew.

“We have an unofficial truce with Congressman Moorhead,” said a Rohrabacher aide. “We’re working toward a compromise, but the clock is running down.”

Tensions within the GOP burst into the open late last year during the second shutdown of the federal government. Republican freshmen and other hard-liners were intent on forcing President Clinton’s hand in the budget talks by keeping much of the government closed.

But more moderate Republicans sought to abandon the strategy when the public’s wrath seemed to turn against the GOP Congress rather than the Clinton White House.

Gingrich eventually ended the shutdown, and sternly told any Republicans who disagreed that they could challenge him as the GOP leader. As a strong-arm tactic, he also refused to campaign for the relatively few GOP dissenters.

Of course, no party has ever been able to keep all its troops in line. Experts consider internal party squabbling perfectly natural, especially when a legislative body is seeking such drastic change in government.

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“It’s American politics in action,” said congressional observer Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. “Frankly, it’s surprising that the Republicans held together so long. There will be cracks in the unity and there will be more open disputes this year.

“But if the Republicans want to keep the majority, they will try to keep those differences from getting out of hand.”

For his part, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) finds himself at odds with a Republican senator.

McKeon spent much of last year attempting to pass his first piece of legislation, a restructuring of the nation’s job training, literacy and youth employment programs. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by the House in September, 345 to 79.

But McKeon’s bill is not yet law.

The Senate approved its own job-training reform bill, and a joint House-Senate conference has been attempting for months to work out the differences between McKeon’s plan and one offered by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas.

McKeon’s bill would replace the scores of existing programs with three block grants administered by local boards. Kassebaum instead would give spending authority to state governors.

“We’re all Republicans, but we see things differently,” McKeon said, downplaying the disagreements. “ . . . This is just part of the process.”

Lacey is a Times staff writer. Ferry reports for States News Service.