Congress’ Blizzard of Bills Ushers In New GOP Tactic

After months of gridlock and thwarted Republican ambition, Congress last week opened the legislative floodgates and let loose a remarkable stream of bills affecting Americans of all walks of life.

The deluge represented more than an effort by Republicans to avoid heading into the fall’s election campaign virtually empty-handed. It also marked a major turning point in the evolution of Republicans’ legislative and political strategy.

The party whose leader, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, seized power in 1994 saying he would “cooperate, not compromise” with President Clinton, produced its biggest accomplishments only after embracing the virtues of half-a-loaf legislating. Republicans overhauled welfare but not as part of the comprehensive budget-balancing scheme they wanted. They got some of their beloved tax cuts but only by linking them to a minimum-wage hike that another GOP leader said he would fight “with every fiber of my being.”

The result is a spate of bills destined to be signed, not vetoed, by President Clinton, who hailed the spirit of compromise in Congress in his weekly radio address Saturday.

“This is truly a season of progress, because we’re turning away from extremism and coming together around our basic values of opportunity, responsibility and community,” Clinton said.

But the legislative logjam could not have been broken without compromises by Clinton as well, who, like the Republicans in control of Congress, is seeking reelection in November and needs to demonstrate his ability to get things done. Faced with a surly electorate that has thrown out incumbents in droves in the last two elections, Clinton and congressional Republicans had reason to fear the political consequences of continuing gridlock.

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While congressional Republicans and Clinton may share a political interest in racking up accomplishments, Bob Dole and congressional Democrats may pay a political price for it. It may now be harder for Dole to make a campaign issue of Clinton’s past opposition to welfare reform and other GOP initiatives--and it surely will be harder for Democrats to campaign against a “do-nothing” GOP Congress.

Whoever gets the credit or bears the blame for Congress’ legislative output, the practical result is a broad shift in policy that cuts a wide swath through American life. In the last few weeks alone, Congress remade the welfare system for the poor, increased the minimum wage for low-income workers, broadened access to health insurance for the middle class, provided tax breaks for businesses small and large, and imposed new drinking water protections for everyone who turns on a tap.

Clinton started turning Congress’ recent work into law Saturday when he signed three bills: a food safety bill that changes the way pesticides are regulated, a measure authorizing a study of the economic and social effects of gambling, and a bill to normalize U.S. trade relations with Romania.

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At the same time, however, Clinton threatened to veto legislation to crack down on illegal immigration. He said in a letter to Gingrich that he would veto the bill if it contains a GOP proposal to allow states to keep children of illegal immigrants from attending public school, which he called “an unacceptable and ineffective way to fight illegal immigration.” The immigration bill was one of the few major bills that Congress did not finish voting on last week.

Nonetheless, Republicans were so pleased with what they did accomplish that they even compared this session to the historic Congress of 1965-66 that produced Medicare and a raft of other laws that created the Great Society, a major edifice of federal assistance to the poor and middle class.

Less partisan observers suggest that Republicans are indulging in hyperbole. Only the welfare reform bill that passed Congress last week rises to the level of a landmark transformation of federal policy.

The health care bill will affect millions of Americans by making it easier to keep insurance coverage, but it is an incremental reform that leaves the basic structure of the health care system unchanged. Increasing the minimum wage is a big deal for the people who get the raise, but it is a routine legislative matter that was remarkable this year only for the strength of Republican opposition.

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“To compare this to the Great Society is preposterous,” said Alan Brinkley, a professor of history at Columbia University. “But Republicans certainly have in this last week redeemed the 104th Congress at least from the charge of being the least productive Congress in recent memory.”

Before the last two weeks, Congress had passed only a handful of laws. Some were quite important but in subjects that are relatively arcane or far removed from people’s pocketbook concerns: a sweeping overhaul of telecommunications law, the first rewrite of federal farm programs since the Depression and a long-debated measure to give the president line-item veto power.

Gingrich attributed the recent burst of legislation in part to an increasingly pragmatic attitude among his rank and file, who took control of Congress in 1995 with the unbending zeal of revolutionaries. Indeed Gingrich himself came to power treating “compromise” like a four-letter word.

Gingrich portrays his willingness to compromise now as a measure of GOP success, not failure, because the Republicans have pushed Clinton and the Democrats so far to the right on questions like balancing the budget and reforming welfare.

But Democrats say the GOP was forced to compromise and embrace more moderate positions because of Democrats’ success in portraying the GOP agenda as extremist.

Indeed, Democrats can claim credit for the minimum-wage hike because most GOP leaders fought it tooth and nail. The health care bill, however, was a bipartisan effort. And although welfare reform is an issue that Clinton has championed for years, the bill produced by Congress is vastly different from what he had in mind.

But last week’s legislative legacy is also a far cry from what Republicans had in mind last year, when their revolutionary enthusiasm was at its peak. In 1995, Republicans packaged an ambitious agenda into a single budget-balancing bill to cut taxes, rein in the growth of Medicare and give states new power to run Medicaid as well as overhaul welfare. Clinton vetoed that bill in a protracted budget fight that featured two government shutdowns, which, polls show, the public blamed largely on the GOP. That left Republicans almost empty-handed and forced them to regroup.

“Congressional Republicans looked electoral disaster in the eye and blinked,” said Thomas Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank in Washington. “They changed their strategy. They said, ‘The only way to salvage some significant legislative harvest is to do business with Bill Clinton and the Democrats.’ ”

The contrast between last year’s agenda and the bills passed in the last few weeks is a monument to how much the GOP strategy shifted.

Last week Congress took the politically popular step of passing a health care bill that is a modest, incremental solution to a problem shared by millions of Americans: the danger of losing health insurance because of a continuing medical condition. Last year Republicans took the politically risky step of calling for a far-reaching overhaul of Medicare, a wildly popular program for older Americans that the public is loath to see changed.

Last week, Congress cleared the Safe Drinking Water Act, which would impose stricter antipollution standards on tap water and authorize more money to improve local water systems. Last year, Republicans suffered great political damage from their efforts to roll back environmental regulations and slash spending for antipollution efforts.

Congress also cleared a free-standing welfare bill that included some concessions to the White House, making it politically risky for Clinton to veto it. Last year, a more recalcitrant GOP made it relatively easy for Clinton to veto welfare reform by sending him the bill buried inside its enormous budget-balancing scheme.

As lawmakers left Washington to begin stepping up their reelection campaigns, the spate of legislation raised a central political question: Will it now be harder for House Democrats, in their campaign to recapture control of Congress, to continue portraying Republicans as extremist revolutionaries?

“First impressions are lasting ones,” Mann said. “It is possible that this flood of legislation will chip away at that initial impression, but I don’t think it will vanish.”

While Congress will return for a few weeks of work in September after a monthlong recess, the legislative legacy of the 104th Congress has for all practical purposes been written in these last few weeks. In September, there is a chance Congress will add to its list of accomplishments if it finishes work on bills to crack down on illegal immigration, take new steps to combat terrorism and reform federal housing programs.

But the rest of this session will be dominated by work on routine appropriation bills--and on hot-button social issues that have no chance of becoming law but have a good chance of being trumpeted on the campaign trail.

For example, Republicans plan to vote on overriding Clinton’s veto of a bill outlawing a form of late-term abortion. The Senate also will take up bills passed by the House to make English the official U.S. language and to allow states to deny recognition to gay marriages.

So the spirit of compromise of recent weeks may be short-lived. “This does not mean the end of polarization or partisanship,” said former Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.). “But they have suddenly found they can do some legislating.”

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Congressional Fast Track

Major legislation completed by Congress this year, nearly half of it in the past week:

* Welfare I: The initial bill to end the federal guarantee of cash assistance to all eligible low-income mothers and children and instead give broad authority to states to administer block grants. Vetoed by Clinton Jan. 9.

* Telecommunications: Reform measure deregulating the telephone business. Signed by Clinton Feb. 8.

* Farm: Bill replacing the decades-old system of commodity subsidy programs with a schedule of fixed but declining payments. Signed April 4.

* Line-item veto: Measure giving the president the power to rescind individual spending items and tax breaks without vetoing the entire bill. Signed April 9.

* “Partial-birth abortion”: Bill outlawing a controversial late-term abortion procedure. Vetoed April 10.

* Anti-terrorism: Bill expanding federal powers to prosecute and punish certain crimes related to terrorism. Signed April 24.

* Product liability: Bill capping punitive damage awards in product liability suits. Vetoed May 2.

* Minimum wage / tax cut: Bill raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $4.75 on Oct. 1 and to $5.15 on Sept. 1, 1997; it provides tax credits for adoption expenses, allows homemakers to set up individual retirement accounts and provides an array of tax breaks for small businesses. Sent to Clinton Aug. 2. * Welfare II: New bill still ends the federal guarantee of cash assistance to poor mothers and children but provides more than the initial bill for child care and includes broader guarantees for health care coverage. Sent to Clinton on Thursday.

* Health insurance: Reform bill guaranteeing that workers can keep their health insurance when they change or lose jobs, and can get insurance even though they already have medical problems. Sent to Clinton on Friday.

* Safe Drinking Water: Measure strengthening the anti-pollution standards for drinking water. Sent to Clinton on Friday.

* Food Safety: Measure changing the way pesticides are regulated. Signed Saturday.

Source: Times staff and Congressional Quarterly