A House Leader Plays Grinch on Bipartisanship

While George W. Bush preaches the need to cooperate with Democrats, a top House Republican leader Wednesday threw down a partisan gauntlet in year-end budget talks--demonstrating how old habits may die hard.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) took a hard line against compromise with Democrats in the lame-duck session of Congress, going so far as practically to dare President Clinton to close the government if the current stalemate continues.

“If he wants to shut down the government, that’s his problem,” DeLay said to reporters.

And, while many other Republicans have seemed chastened by an election that gave them only tenuous control of the House, the Senate and--they hope--the White House, DeLay exulted in the prospect of GOP control of all three institutions for the first time since 1954.

“The things we’ve been dreaming about we can now do,” DeLay said, making clear that he expects Bush to prevail in the disputed presidential contest. “We have the House. We have the Senate. We have the White House. Which means we have the agenda.”

DeLay’s combative tone was reminiscent of the strident stance among Republicans that helped produce two partial government shutdowns in 1995-96 and the impeachment proceedings against Clinton in 1998-99.

It was also a reminder that, if Bush becomes president and tries to run the government with his more conciliatory brand of “compassionate conservatism,” he still will have to deal with congressional Republicans who remain more confrontational and mistrustful of Democrats.

“DeLay is not in the bakery business,” said his spokesman, Jonathan Baron. “He’s not in the habit of sugarcoating things.”

One of the party’s most vitriolic critics of Clinton and an architect of the drive to impeach him, DeLay long has been a darling of the GOP’s conservative wing. Democrats have charged that, since the 1998 resignation of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), DeLay has been the true power within the House GOP majority. Allies of Gingrich’s low-key successor, Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), have insisted that is not the case and that DeLay’s clout is overrated.

Although Bush and DeLay are fellow Texans, they have not been especially close. Bush called DeLay last week, Baron said, and endured some good-natured ribbing about the closeness of the presidential race, but that was the first time the two men had talked since election day.

During the campaign, Bush often seemed at pains to distance himself from the GOP’s congressional leaders and the partisan tactics they favored. He explicitly repudiated a House GOP proposal to cut tax subsidies for the working poor. DeLay declared testily at the time that Bush had a lot to learn about Congress.

Fears of a Potentially Disruptive Force

Given the Texas governor’s oft-repeated pledge to promote more bipartisanship in Washington, some Republicans fear that DeLay will loom as a potentially disruptive force for a Bush administration. Bush may find a more natural ally in the more conciliatory Hastert, whom he invited along with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to his Texas ranch last Saturday for consultations about legislative strategy. Perhaps significantly, DeLay said Wednesday that he has not been briefed about that meeting.

DeLay escalated his rhetoric on the current budget talks just as other congressional leaders were mounting a fresh effort to reach a compromise with Clinton on education spending and other thorny issues left for this lame-duck session to settle.

Before the Nov. 7 election, budget negotiators from both parties struck a tentative deal that would increase federal education funding to $43.5 billion in the current fiscal year, up from about $35.6 billion the year before. That would represent a 22% increase.

But the deal was quickly scuttled by House Republican leaders, including DeLay, who argued that the budget package did not do enough to limit new ergonomics regulations for workplace safety that Clinton sought. Now, believing that they have new leverage because they expect Bush to be president, DeLay and his supporters openly question the proposed spending levels for education.

Although Bush campaigned heavily on proposals to improve education, he has deliberately stayed away from this lame-duck argument, leaving it to congressional leaders to chart their own path.

Seeking a Year-End Deal With Clinton

Hastert and Lott want to try to cut a deal with Clinton to wrap up this year’s work. But DeLay wants to put off decisions on the issues still in dispute until after the new president is sworn in. He wants to pass a stopgap bill--known as a continuing resolution--that would simply extend current spending levels for many government programs through the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

“When you finally realize there is no way you can get an agreement, the only alternative you have is a continuing resolution,” he said Wednesday.

Other Republicans argue that his approach is unrealistic because a bill freezing spending for that length of time would be vetoed by Clinton--and probably would not pass the Senate. And many influential Republicans do not like the idea of leaving this year’s controversies unresolved for the new president.

“I’d like for us to start fresh with a new agenda,” Lott said. “Let’s try not to shift our problems into the future.”

Also hoping to derail DeLay’s approach are moderate Republicans who argue that the message of this year’s election was that bipartisanship will have to rule. To support their view, they point to the closeness of the presidential election and the fact that, if Bush becomes president, the Senate will be divided 50-50 between the parties. Republicans will control the chamber solely because Bush’s running mate, Dick Cheney, will serve as Senate president.

“It is clear that, while the direction of government will be Republican, the final product is going to be bipartisan,” said Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), who called a news conference Wednesday with a coalition of centrists pledged to bipartisan cooperation.

Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.) added: “It is natural for a Tom DeLay to say, ‘By God, you know, we’re the Republican Party and we’re going to have it all our way.’ As the rank and file, we know that that’s not really the reality. . . . We know that nothing will get done in the Senate if it’s not bipartisan.”

The Clinton administration, for its part, dismissed DeLay’s talk that the current budget disputes could lead to a government shutdown. “We ought to avoid the divisive rhetoric and get to work,” said White House spokesman Jake Siewert, noting that other GOP leaders “have indicated an interest in getting this work done.”