As Congress Returns to Work, Cooperation May Take a Vacation

They left town on a bipartisan high after reaching a historic compact with the White House to balance the federal budget while cutting taxes. But as members of Congress return to work this week from their August recess, their summer of love appears likely to beget an autumn of trench warfare.

The budget deal, in fact, may have made a partisan bloodletting inevitable by blurring the philosophical distinctions between the two parties. Many rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans are clearly eager to sharpen their political differences as another election year approaches, one in which control of Congress will be at stake--especially the House, where the GOP holds a slim 21-seat margin.

“The mayhem and bickering are about to return--and just in time,” said Paul Gigot, an influential right-of-center commentator. “The era of bipartisanship is over precisely because of the budget deal. . . . Let the brawling begin.”

David Mason, senior fellow in congressional studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, echoed Gigot’s prognostication: “Everybody’s going to play for every advantage they can get.”

The appetite for ideology-driven combat should quickly manifest itself as both houses focus on the most pressing business at hand: enacting the 13 big appropriation bills needed to keep the government running.

Those measures, which follow the broad outlines of the balanced-budget legislation, must be passed and signed by President Clinton by Oct. 1, the start of the new federal fiscal year. Otherwise the government must shut down, unless all parties agree to a “continuing resolution” to keep the government in operation.

So far, the House has finished work on eight of the 13 bills, and the Senate 10. But not one has reached the Oval Office.

Complicating the task is the new presidential line-item veto authority, which Clinton has already used to kill three provisions in the balanced-budget legislation.

“As they sit down to hash things out, one of the things the appropriators will want is assurances from the White House that the president won’t use the line-item veto. And that’s going to eat up most of September,” Mason predicted.

In addition, if Congress intends to override Clinton’s previous line-item vetoes, it has 30 days to act. Also, Clinton’s line-item veto authority almost certainly will face a legal challenge.

Major Issues on the Agenda

Among the major issues Congress is expected to quickly take up is a presidential request for “fast-track” authority to negotiate multilateral trade treaties. The legislation allows such pacts to get an up or down vote within 90 days, without being encumbered by amendments. This authority expired at the end of 1994.

Another priority item is the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which expires Sept. 30. Lawmakers representing competing regional interests will have to agree on how to divvy up $157 billion in assorted transportation programs around the country.

Also awaiting congressional action is the proposed $368.5-billion legal settlement between the tobacco industry and state attorneys general.

If approved, the settlement would shield cigarette makers from lawsuits and punitive damages. In exchange the tobacco companies would agree to pay billions of dollars to settle smoking-related lawsuits brought by individuals and states. They also would curb their advertising and marketing and pay penalties if they fail to meet targets for reducing youth smoking.

Beyond those issues, GOP congressional leaders are divided over what to do--if anything.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) would like to get the 13 funding measures enacted and then adjourn for the year, allowing members to go home and boast about their accomplishments.

“Rather than stomping on our own lines, we ought to just relax awhile. We’ve had a good year--this is a crowning achievement,” he said, referring to enactment of the five-year balanced-budget accord.

But some congressional GOP strategists, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who just finished a series of coast-to-coast public appearances, are contemplating “broad themes” to be articulated in the run-up to the off-year elections.

“I believe we will have a vision in September and October that . . . will move us into the ’98 campaign with a clear choice for America’s future. That will set the stage for the 2000 campaign,” Gingrich said in a recent interview with National Journal magazine.

Not everyone foresees an autumn filled with discord.

“I actually don’t anticipate the kind of utter collapse and partisan warfare that some see,” said Thomas E. Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. “That doesn’t serve in Clinton’s interest or the Republican majority’s interest.”

The 13 funding bills, because of their must-pass nature, already are attracting an array of controversial amendments, on issues ranging from abortion to arts funding. Any one could cause prolonged wrangling.

The funding bill for the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services, for instance, faces two abortion-related amendments in the House. One would require minors to obtain parental consent before getting services from federally funded clinics; the other would extend the prohibition on federally funded abortions to managed-care plans under Medicaid.

Similarly, the funding measure for foreign operations faces an amendment that would ban aid to overseas organizations that use their own money to promote or perform abortions.

Bipartisan Stumbling Blocks

Meanwhile, a House-passed appropriation bill ends spending for the National Endowment for the Arts. But it must be reconciled in a conference committee with the Senate bill, which contains $100 million for the NEA.

The defense appropriation bill, as passed by the House, bars funds for U.S. troops in Bosnia after June 30, 1998--a prohibition that is likely to provoke a Clinton veto. The Senate version does not contain the provision.

Two festering disputes over contested election results could generate some of the most partisan rancor. House and Senate Democrats alike have threatened to disrupt all legislative business except for the appropriations bills unless Republicans stop investigating alleged irregularities in the 1996 Senate election of Mary Landrieu (D-La.) over Republican Woody Jenkins and the House election of Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) over Republican Robert K. Dornan.

Bicameral disruptions also could occur over campaign finance reform.

Advocates have threatened to gum up the works unless GOP leaders agree to their request to allocate floor time for a full debate on whether to revamp the nation’s election-financing laws.

So far, GOP leaders in both chambers have refused to do so.

“We’re going to disrupt and cause interruption to the schedule until we get campaign reform on the docket,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

A further breakdown of bipartisanship looms with resumption of hearings on campaign fund-raising activities by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, chaired by partisan firebrand Dan Burton (R-Ind.), is expected to soon begin its own much-delayed hearings.

One of the more high-profile fights involves Clinton’s appointment of newly retired Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld, a Republican, to be ambassador to Mexico. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is refusing to grant Weld a hearing before his Foreign Relations Committee--to the consternation of not only the Senate Democrats but also some of Helms’ GOP colleagues.

Parties at Odds Over Taxes, Education

On taxes, Republicans plan to debate further cuts and whether to reform, or even abolish, the Internal Revenue Service.

Gingrich says he is working on a specific tax cut for next year’s budget and wants to resume a campaign to eliminate the capital gains tax and the estate tax.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) prefers to see the current tax code scrapped altogether. That sentiment is widely shared by Republicans, although it is likely to generate a vigorous intraparty squabble over whether to replace it with a flat tax or a national sales tax.

Gingrich also promises to fight Clinton’s efforts to modify the welfare reform law enacted last year. The speaker said he is especially perturbed by new Labor Department regulations requiring states to grant welfare recipients traditional employee protections, including the minimum wage. Gingrich told participants in a recent GOP conclave in Indiana that the policy dispute is shaping up as “a major national issue.”

Education reform also is on the GOP agenda. In the final hours of the balanced-budget negotiations, Republicans abandoned one of their cherished goals: the establishment of “education IRAs” that would allow parents to use tax-sheltered funds for public or private school tuitions. Republicans, led by Gingrich and Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), intend to revisit the “school choice” issue.

Congress also may take up a restructuring of the Food and Drug Administration and Amtrak.

Some Republicans intend to push tort reform and affirmative action, while Democrats plan a new push to raise the minimum wage.

In their spare time, Clinton and congressional leaders must appoint 17 people to the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Created by the new budget pact, the commission is required to convene by Dec. 1 and report by March 1, 1999, on ways to keep the colossal health-care program for the elderly and disabled solvent.

Whatever else the 105th Congress does, however, nothing can top what it already has achieved, says Roger H. Davidson, a University of Maryland professor of government and politics.

After the budget deal, he says, “anything else would be anticlimactic.”