Lack of Trust May Derail Key Capitol Hill Deals

All the ingredients are there for a grand political compromise on Social Security, tax cuts, Medicare and more. President Clinton wants to burnish his legacy. Republicans want to shed the moniker of a do-nothing Congress. And the budget surplus may provide the grease that such deals require.

For all that, however, a crucial catalyst seems to be missing: Trust.

Washington is awash in a brand of mistrust unusually corrosive even for this cynical city. And that may pose an insurmountable obstacle to the passage of important legislation before next year’s elections.

The suspicions run so deep that even a man known as one of the nicest guys in Congress, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), can’t negotiate a cease-fire. The House Appropriations Committee, a longtime bastion of cozy bipartisanship, is struggling to get its bills moving. The Senate is so rife with tension that it can’t even clear the usually noncontroversial nomination of a United Nations ambassador, in this case Richard Holbrooke.

“If the parties cannot agree on something like who’s going to be ambassador to the U.N., how could they possibly agree on Social Security?” asked Eric M. Uslaner, a political science professor at the University of Maryland. “Overall, the level of mistrust between the two parties is probably about as high as it’s been since the . . . Truman presidency.”

The coming months of maneuvering pose the toughest test yet of whether an impeached president and the GOP Congress that sought to oust him can let bygones be bygones and get anything done.

“There is a fundamental lack of trust between the president and the Republican leadership,” said William Hoagland, staff director of the Senate Budget Committee. “In that kind of environment, it is very difficult to cut deals.”

Congress’ divisive climate may reflect not just fallout from impeachment but also the increasing levels of mistrust in society as a whole.

“From the explosion in litigation rates to road rage [and] talk show guests attacking each other on television, American society is far more contentious than it used to be,” Uslaner said.

Indeed, when a national survey asked, “Generally speaking, do you believe most people can be trusted, or can’t you be too careful in dealing with people?” only 40% were trusting in 1998; in 1960, 58% were.

Back then, politicians were more trusting too. Those were the days when the Senate was a lot like a gentlemen’s club, and House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s watchword was, “To get along, go along.”

New Heights of Suspicion

But partisan divisions have been widening over the last 40 years, especially in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The political parties frequently have found themselves dominated by their ideological extremes. In the 1990s, Congress has become so rancorous that lawmakers have held special retreats to practice being civil.

Capitol Hill veterans say the level of mutual suspicion has reached new heights this year for two principal reasons: impeachment and the politics of the 2000 campaign.

That the battle to drive Clinton from office has left a bitter residue is no surprise; the impact of next year’s election on this year’s Congress, however, has proved greater than anticipated. With control of the House up for grabs next year--the Republican majority is a mere six votes--both parties are viewing virtually every issue through the lens of its political implications. And each side accuses the other of acting on political motives.

Democrats accuse Republicans of moving legislation--such as the big tax cut that Clinton has promised to veto--to create an issue, not a law. Similarly, Republicans accuse Democrats of blocking legislation, such as the GOP version of managed health care reform, because they want to run in 2000 against a do-nothing Republican Congress.

GOP leaders also complain about what they view as mixed messages from Clinton. After meeting with the president at the White House on Monday, Republicans hailed his assurances that he wanted to work with them. But the next day, Clinton was on the stump blasting the GOP tax cut. Republicans are particularly wary of assuming the best about Clinton in the wake of the impeachment imbroglio.

“We saw in a very tangible way that this man could stand in front of the American people and lie through his teeth,” said a senior Republican aide.

Said Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.): “I’m not going to say the president is untrustworthy, but it’s awfully difficult to count on him to keep his word.”

In the current climate of suspicion, conciliatory gestures that at another time might look like breakthroughs are viewed with skepticism. When Hastert in May made a big concession on gun control--endorsing key elements of a bill passed by the Senate and promising a House vote on them--Democrats accused him of being a tool of the National Rifle Assn. for not holding the votes sooner. After Clinton recently offered an olive branch on budget issues, opening the door to compromise on a tax cut, many Republicans shrugged.

Both parties have endorsed the idea of managed health care reform. But in the Senate debate on the issue this week, hardly any lawmaker has shown a real interest in ironing out differences in the two parties’ approaches.

The assumption that everything is being done for show rather than substance confers an air of unreality on Capitol Hill routines. When the House Ways and Means Committee met Tuesday to draft its version of a GOP tax cut, “no one expected it to become law,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento).

In a clear sign of that, Matsui said, his office received only three calls from lobbyists the day the bill was brought up; typically, he would receive 30 or more calls about something as vital as a tax-cut measure.

The traditional bipartisanship of the Appropriations Committee has eroded as the panel has produced government spending bills that Democrats say are grossly underfunded and that they intend to fight.

Senators Face Added Scrutiny

“About 80% of what is happening on the floor every day is totally detached from reality,” said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.).

In the Senate, partisanship has brought an arcane but treasured tool of Senate power under new scrutiny: the informal power of any senator to put a “hold” on a bill or nomination. Fearing that this power had been abused as a partisan weapon, the Senate recently decided “holds” could no longer be lodged anonymously. Since then, however, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has come under fire for reportedly putting a secret “hold” on the Holbrooke nomination for reasons unrelated to the appointment itself.

Against this backdrop, it is easy to forget that Congress and Clinton have ever shown they can work together. But they did as recently as 1997, when they passed a five-year budget-balancing plan.

That, however, was before impeachment and before Democrats were so tantalizingly close to regaining the majority in the House.

What’s more, the five-year plan postponed some of the toughest spending cuts--until this year.

“The 1997 deal was like handing out candy to everybody,” said a top Democratic aide. “Now we’re getting to the pain.”