President, GOP Declare a Spirit of Cooperation

President Clinton and Republican leaders, in an elaborately staged effort to dispel the partisan acrimony that has soured previous sessions of Congress, met Tuesday and declared their determination to work on balancing the budget and other issues of common concern.

The entire event was so tightly scripted that even the setting--the President’s Room on the Senate side of the Capitol--was carefully chosen as a metaphor for compromise.

Yet even as the nation’s political leaders tried to set a dramatically different tone in public, both sides have been working behind the scenes to scuttle each other’s top priorities.

Clinton is bitterly opposed to the GOP-backed constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, for example, and his call for campaign finance reform is falling on deaf GOP ears. The Senate has been riven by partisan disputes over hearings into campaign-funding irregularities at the Democratic National Committee. Even on education, Republicans are saying nice things about the issue but are savaging some of the particulars of Clinton’s proposals.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Clinton and congressional leaders focused on several areas in which they believe they can reach consensus early this year: cutting taxes, providing incentives for employers to hire welfare recipients, cracking down on juvenile crime, giving a boost to education and helping the ailing city government of Washington, D.C. They also reiterated their mutual commitment to balancing the budget.

The occasion for Tuesday’s bipartisan love feast was Clinton’s journey to Capitol Hill for a meeting with top House and Senate leaders of both parties. More remarkable than the vague agreements they reached was the discipline participants showed in restraining their long-standing habits of partisan bickering.

“The atmosphere was the best I’ve seen in some time,” gushed Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). “We’re trying to find a way to take the minimum number of pot shots at each other.” Clinton was “delighted with the tone and with the free exchange and with the candor,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

The paeans to bipartisanship might sound like mere political platitudes but they marked a huge departure from Republicans’ strategy and modus operandi during most of the last Congress. After taking control of Congress in 1995, Republicans sometimes seemed more interested in drawing clear lines between the parties than they did in producing laws. And leaders like House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his top lieutenant, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), often criticized Clinton in the harshest personal terms.

Now, both Republicans and Clinton seem to have concluded that it is in their political interest to tone down the rhetoric and accomplish something legislatively.

“We’re interested in changing law,” said Assistant Senate Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-Okla.). “We’re not looking for campaign issues.”

The idea of inviting Clinton to Capitol Hill was mostly the brainchild of Lott, who has worked hard to close deals with Clinton.

The meeting took place in an especially ornate room in the Capitol where presidents used to sign legislation at the end of a session of Congress. A congressional historian was brought in to explain the significance of the room--something not lost on Clinton.

“I think it was rather unique that in this case it was used by the president to launch an effort, working with Congress, that hopefully will result in a lot of bills to sign down the road, which we will do with great fanfare,” McCurry said.

The seating plan was another element of the theater of bipartisanship: Each politician was seated between two members of the opposite party, an arrangement that juxtaposed some of Washington’s bitterest foes. Across from Gingrich sat House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), the speaker’s chief tormentor in the long Ethics Committee investigation of his political affairs. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), an ardent advocate of rolling back federal environmental regulations, sat next to the administration’s environmentalist-in-chief, Vice President Al Gore.

Still, all sides emerged from the hourlong meeting praising the constructive tone.

Republicans gave a warm reception to Clinton’s proposal to provide new tax incentives for employers who hire welfare recipients. They agreed to review the president’s education proposals and to pursue legislation to crack down on juvenile crime. They voiced bipartisan commitment to doing something to shore up the ailing District of Columbia, and instructed Congress’ tax writers to produce a bipartisan bill to cut taxes.

On the budget, Lott said that there was some discussion of trying to reach agreement by April 15 but he shied away from setting a firm target date.

The politicians’ pronounced effort Tuesday to cool the partisan rhetoric had a little bit of the air of an alcoholic swearing off the bottle.

“This is something that is relatively new for us,” Gingrich said.

Indeed, even within areas of consensus, there are key points of roiling partisan controversy. Clinton and the GOP are squarely at odds over a constitutional amendment to balance the budget and any consensus on education will have to overcome deep Republican opposition to key elements of Clinton’s agenda, such as his call for standard academic tests.

A bipartisan tax bill would have to bridge big differences between the parties on capital gains tax cuts. Clinton wants very narrowly focused breaks for families that sell their homes and Republicans want broad reductions for businesses and individuals.

Conspicuously absent from the list of consensus items endorsed by the party leaders was a top administration priority: campaign finance reform.

Clinton is pushing for reform legislation that would set voluntary spending limits for candidates and take other steps to restrain the growth of campaign spending. Earlier in the day, Clinton and Gore met with the 12 Republican and 17 Democratic House sponsors of a campaign finance reform package.

“I think that there can be an engine of bipartisan and grass-roots reform here that we have not seen before,” Clinton said.

But many Republicans treat the legislation as essentially dead on arrival. Their interest in the subject has centered on upcoming hearings into alleged improprieties in fund-raising by the DNC.

“It’s their problem, not our problem,” said a Senate GOP leadership aide. “They obviously have an enormous political vulnerability.”