Congress Is on the Job, but There’s No Heavy Lifting

After months of desultory political chatter, a recent flurry of activity on Capitol Hill suggests that it may be too soon to dub this a Do-Nothing Congress.

But what the Republican-led House and Senate are doing is a far cry from the issues that propelled the GOP to power in 1994. And it seems far removed from the issues that Americans regard as their biggest problems. Call it, instead, a Don’t-Rock-the-Boat Congress.

A highway bill bulging with pork-barrel projects. A supplemental appropriation for disaster cleanups. A budget calling for a nominal tax cut. A tobacco bill that was on neither party’s radar screen until it was thrust upon them by the tobacco companies and the states.

The whole modest agenda seems to be driven more by forces beyond Congress’ control--floods in California, public backlash against smoking, a booming economy--than by a clear sense of where either party wants to take the country on issues like drugs, education and health care that rank high among voters’ concerns.

The sense of drift is the result of a mix of factors: the weakness of both parties’ leadership in Congress, the exhaustion of the Republican revolution’s ideological impetus, the distraction of the White House by President Clinton’s endless legal battles and the strangely paralyzing prospect of a congressional election in November.

So while Americans across the country are tuning Washington out, even many of the capital’s politicians are hardly surprised. “It’s no wonder that there’s apathy,” said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). “You’ve got a Congress that’s been neutered . . . and a president that’s been diverted in focus and attention.”

After an unusual spate of late-night sessions last week, Congress left town for a long spring recess--the latest break in an election-year calendar that gives lawmakers plenty of time to go home and campaign. Democrats are gleefully promoting the “do-nothing” characterization, calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Congress has managed to send only 12 finished bills to the White House so far this year. There were no blockbusters among them--four do nothing but name post offices and federal buildings.

President Clinton razzed Republicans all the way from Africa: “This is a Congress with nothing to do and no time to do it.”

Preparing his troops for such attacks, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) sent a memo last week reminding fellow Republicans of the accomplishments they could tout to constituents. At the top of his list: banking reform. But within hours after the memo was sent, the banking bill was shelved for lack of support.

Armey’s boasting points also included House approval of legislation renaming Washington’s National Airport after Ronald Reagan, an anti-paperwork measure and aid to California flood victims and to people in other states hit by natural disasters. These may be important bills for Reagan fans, businesspeople and disaster victims--but they are hardly the stuff of a conservative revolution.

The same could be said of the two bills that may become this session’s biggest accomplishments. A measure funding highway construction for the next six years and legislation redirecting national tobacco policy are ambitious measures that could have a great direct effect on people’s lives. But they are not issues that were high on either party’s priority lists.

In fact, many Republicans see these bills as a striking detour from the straight and narrow path the party promised to follow. Conservative true believers blasted the highway bill as a shameless return to big spending--and a threat to Republican efforts to provide a significant tax cut in this year’s budget.

“Whatever happened to the promise that government would be made smaller and people’s take-home pay would be bigger?” asked Steve Forbes, who is expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2000.

But GOP spin-meisters insist that the transportation bill is consistent with the party’s message. “One of the things that made us secure as a nation is highways,” said a Republican leadership aide.

The tobacco bill is, in its own way, a big-government initiative that should be anathema to proponents of deregulation. It expands the regulatory power of the Food and Drug Administration to carry out a very intrusive effort to reduce teenage smoking.

The bill also puts Republicans in the awkward position of repudiating one of the party’s biggest financial backers: the tobacco industry.

Movement on both measures was greased by that good old-fashioned political lubricant: money. The highway bill sprinkles road, bridge and transit projects in hundreds of congressional districts. The tobacco deal promises a flood of new revenue for politicians’ favorite programs.

The highway and tobacco measures also have the advantage of bipartisan support, unlike closer-to-home issues such as education and health care, where party lines have been starkly drawn.

Action in those areas has been stymied, in part, by a fact of current political life that will not change before the next election, if then. With a Democrat in the White House and Republicans holding Congress by narrow margins (12 votes in the House, 10 in the Senate), neither party has the political might to muscle its own agenda through on partisan issues.

Most Republicans seem unfazed by the prospect of facing voters this fall with relatively few new legislative accomplishments. They figure that last year’s handiwork--the 1997 tax cut and budget-balancing agreement--are all the trophies they need. And who wants to make waves when the stock market and Congress’ approval ratings are going through the roof?

“It’s a sit-on-your-lead strategy,” said Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.), who noted that Republicans have laid low to avoid diverting attention from Clinton’s ethics problems. “But you don’t keep a lead in politics. You’re either moving forward or moving backward.”

Republicans have been promising action later this year on a variety of tax matters, including a tax cut for married couples, overhaul of the tax code and a measure calling for a radical rewrite of the code by 2002.

The tax talk may be important to the party’s conservative base but polls indicate that the issue is not a priority for other voters.

When a Times Poll in January asked people to identify the most important problem facing the country, only 3% said taxes. That was far below the level of concern expressed about drugs, moral decline, the economy and education.

Asked how the federal budget surplus should be spent, only 12% called for cutting taxes, a distant fourth behind those who would shore up Social Security, increase funding for education and reduce the national debt.

Even when this Congress has addressed the issues that people seem to really care about, the debate has seemed more symbolic than real.

Both parties are clamoring to improve schools, but the bill most likely to clear Congress this year--a tax incentive to encourage savings for elementary and secondary education expenses--is a modest gesture in the face of a monumental problem, many proponents conceded.

The cramped confines of this year’s legislative agenda is frustrating to some lawmakers.

“We ought to be having much more of a fight over the overall budget priorities and whether we’re going where we ought to be going,” said Kerry. “The country wants to deal with more.”

But other analysts are not so sure how much the country wants from Congress anyway, at a time of peace and prosperity.

“When times are good, there is very little fuel for political fires,” said John F. Pitney Jr., professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont. “Congress and the American people are reaching a de facto agreement to leave each other alone.”