After Bipartisan Budget, a Year of Capital Pains

Bipartisanship was the word in the air one year ago today when President Clinton, surrounded by congressional leaders from both parties, signed into law a historic agreement to balance the federal budget.

“I hope,” Clinton declared in a festive ceremony on the White House South Lawn, “we can tap into this spirit of cooperation . . . to meet and master the many challenges that remain before us.”

But that hope, like many of Clinton’s political dreams, is now in tatters. Rather than opening a new era of bipartisanship, the budget agreement instead marked the virtual end of cooperation between the parties in Washington.

In the last year, congressional Republicans have shelved Clinton’s proposals systematically, while the president has just as resolutely blocked the GOP’s top priorities. The result has been an across-the-board stalemate that has left both sides with few accomplishments--and little chance of producing many before Congress adjourns in October. Now, with Clinton bracing for the denouement of the Monica S. Lewinsky controversy--and Congress steaming toward serial confrontations with the White House over spending priorities--this fall is less likely to see a return to compromise than an escalation in conflict.

“While last year was the year of bipartisan harmony,” says Marshall Wittmann, former Washington director for the conservative Christian Coalition, “this is the year of partisan frustration.”

Given the ideological distance between the parties in the 1990s, disagreement may be their natural condition. Fierce partisan battles over everything from crime and health care to Republican budget plans marked most of Clinton’s first term.

But beginning in 1996 the two sides demonstrated that, when motivated, they could bridge their differences. Worried that swing voters would punish them for gridlock, Clinton and the Republican leadership (particularly Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who replaced Bob Dole as majority leader late that spring) engineered a series of compromises just before the 1996 election that produced a massive rewrite of the welfare laws, health insurance reform and an increase in the minimum wage.

That same political calculation--combined with an economy that swelled federal revenues--prodded the two sides toward their sweeping agreement last year to balance the budget while cutting taxes and increasing funding for Clinton priorities, such as education and scientific research.

In public opinion surveys, the budget deal drew high marks from voters across the ideological spectrum. But the strain of compromise produced tensions inside both parties that made it difficult to replicate. Instead, in the year since the agreement, a constellation of forces encouraged first the GOP leadership and later Clinton to place top priority on propitiating their own political coalitions--a mission inimical to compromise across party lines.

Almost immediately, the budget accord generated an intense backlash from conservative leaders such as Steve Forbes, who denounced its spending increases as a capitulation to the president.

Complaints that the Republican leadership was too reluctant to confront Clinton also helped inspire the aborted coup in the House against Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) last summer and the threats of social conservative leader James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, to bolt the GOP last winter. All that unrest left GOP congressional leaders extremely leery of any deal that “can be attacked from the right,” said Wittmann, now director of congressional relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Though not as dramatically, Clinton also changed course after the budget agreement. After liberals grumbled about the budget and openly revolted against his bid for fast-track trade negotiating authority last fall, Clinton offered a fence-mending 1998 agenda in January that put greater emphasis on traditional Democratic priorities--such as hiring more teachers and expanding access to Medicare. That agenda muted liberal criticism of the administration and strengthened Vice President Al Gore’s position for 2000, but it placed on the table few ideas with much appeal to Republicans.

The Lewinsky controversy further clouded the prospects for agreements between the White House and the congressional majority. With the controversy overshadowing all other news, Clinton has been unable to generate much pressure against Republicans for blocking his agenda. Even more important, many on Capitol Hill believe that Clinton has become reluctant to make legislative concessions to Republicans that could alienate congressional Democrats who constitute his last line of defense against a potential impeachment inquiry.

“Monica has changed the whole dynamic, the power dynamic between us and the White House,” said one senior House Democratic aide. “They are much more solicitous of our views on everything.”

One case in point was Clinton’s recent decision to veto a Republican-passed plan to create tax-free accounts parents could use for education expenses, including tuition at private schools. Before the veto, Clinton received some indications that Republicans might be willing to partly fund his educational initiatives in return for his signature on the bill.

Though White House and Senate GOP sources both said no explicit offer ever was made, Clinton took the reports seriously enough to raise the possibility of such a deal in a meeting with House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), according to two sources present in the room. But when Daschle and Gephardt told Clinton that any deal including the savings accounts--which are staunchly opposed by teachers’ unions--would face strong resistance among Democratic legislators, the president let the idea drop, sources said.

The reaction of Gephardt and Daschle to a potential education deal underscores a third key to the return of gridlock. Convinced that voter turnout will be extremely low in this fall’s elections, both parties seem less interested in settling their disputes than in provoking confrontations that they hope will rally their hard-core supporters to the polls in November.

Republicans, for instance, have included so many provisions Clinton opposes in the 13 appropriations bills required to keep the government running that the president already has threatened to veto seven of them--raising the possibility of another government shutdown this fall. Some Republicans, such as House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, have begun to suggest that Clinton might even provoke a shutdown to give energy to Democrats and to divert attention from the Lewinsky controversy. Even on proposals to regulate health maintenance organizations--perhaps the last issue with any discernible pulse in this Congress--Clinton and the GOP are digging in rather than reaching out for agreement.

With all of these forces encouraging confrontation, White House officials all year have hoped that (as in 1996) public disenchantment with stalemate might push Congress toward a late series of compromises. But so far that public pressure has not materialized. With Americans broadly content over the country’s direction, Congress’ approval rating has remained high even while its output remains low. In that way, bountiful times in the country are contributing to a fruitless season in the capital.