‘Do-Nothing Congress’ One for History Books

Despite taunts from Democrats that congressional Republicans produced a do-nothing record this year, the session about to end has been one for the history books in at least three ways.

It is the first Congress in a generation to write a balanced budget. It is only the third in history to open an impeachment inquiry. And, along the way, it has inspired an extraordinary rise--and an abrupt fall--in public approval of the institution of Congress.

After lawmakers reached their landmark balanced-budget agreement with President Clinton in the summer of 1997, polls found that public approval of Congress rose to its highest levels in decades. But after the House voted Oct. 8 to open an impeachment inquiry stemming from Clinton’s relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, approval of Congress dropped 11 percentage points in a matter of weeks, according to Gallup polling.

Part of the problem is that lawmakers did relatively little between those two signal votes. As a result, the 105th Congress--expected to adjourn after votes today in the House and Wednesday in the Senate on a massive government spending bill--is likely to be remembered as much for what it did not accomplish as for what it did.

Myriad policy initiatives that once seemed to have powerful political momentum--tax cuts, regulation of health maintenance organizations, tobacco control efforts, reform of bankruptcy laws--sputtered and stalled before the legislative finish line.

Although Democrats point to this list in making their “do-nothing Congress” claim, the roots of the policy vacuum are more complex. The public itself, content with the booming economy, seemed to demand little from legislators. And with the Republican Party divided over key issues and Clinton’s leadership shadowed by scandal, neither side found an agenda with enough public support to power past the obstacles of a government divided between a GOP Congress and a Democratic president.

“With the end of the Cold War and the balanced budget agreement, we have a new political ballgame for the two parties,” said William F. Connelly Jr., a political scientist at Washington & Lee University. “They are both casting about to determine what new direction to move in.”

Against this backdrop, both parties view the Nov. 3 elections as a referendum on the policy initiatives Congress failed to pass.

Republicans are urging people to vote for them to get more tax cuts and a stronger defense next year.

“We will be back in January with more Republicans,” said House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). “Then we can have a tax cut.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) pointed out that with only one more Republican, the Senate would have enough votes to approve a new missile defense system (partial funding is included in this year’s spending bill).

Democrats, meanwhile, promise HMO reform, a minimum wage increase and more aid for school construction--all casualties of this Congress--if they are given more power on Capitol Hill.

“These are really the issues that people care about and that we’re running on against this do-nothing Congress,” said House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). “We need to change the Congress to change the agenda.”

Recent polls have found that much of the public seems to agree with Gephardt that this Congress produced little of note. But Republicans said that is not necessarily a bad thing, especially among voters who are happy with the state of the economy.

More troublesome for the GOP has been the sudden drop in public approval of Congress since the House voted on opening the impeachment inquiry. Earlier in 1998, approval of the way Congress was handling its job jumped to more than 50% for the first time in decades, according to the Gallup Poll--a jump most analysts attributed to the healthy economy and satisfaction with the balanced budget deal.

Approval of Congress reached 55% in mid-September, then dropped to 44% in early October, Gallup found. Other polls registered a similar trend. Some of that decline may reflect growing uncertainty about the economy. But most analysts saw it more as a backlash against the proceedings against Clinton.

Those polls were conducted before the year-end budget agreement, which may bring some rebound in Congress’ standing with the public--if the public notices and likes what it sees. The budget includes money to hire more teachers, boost the Pentagon’s budget, help the nation’s farmers and increase drug interdiction efforts.

That adds a few notches to Congress’ record for the year, which also included an overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service to curb abuses of taxpayers, a bill to revamp public housing programs to give more power to local officials, a measure to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include three more East European countries and a sweeping transportation bill that included billions for highway, transit and other infrastructure projects.

Those are significant matters but have been eclipsed by the sheer drama and historic magnitude of the House impeachment debate. The legislative record also pales in comparison to the budget-balancing agreement and tax cut enacted last year--and in comparison to the scope of the things Congress failed to do this year.

Proposals to establish new patient protections for participants in HMOs would have reached deeply into the lives of millions of Americans, especially in states such as California where managed care plans dominate. A comprehensive effort to curb teen smoking would have reined in a powerful industry, raised the price of cigarettes and blitzed teenagers with stern anti-smoking messages. But despite early interest by both parties, the tobacco and health bills died in the face of determined industry opposition.

Democrats and other advocates of those measures may have overestimated the public’s interest.

Republicans, for their part, failed to marshal the political momentum to push a tax cut past Clinton. That is largely because Clinton, by insisting that the budget surplus not be spent or used to cut taxes before Social Security is shored up for the baby boomers’ retirement, managed to recast the debate.