Abundance of Riches Leads to Poor Choices as Lawmakers Play Politics

Back when legislators came to Congress to legislate, the news that the president was projecting a budget surplus large enough to fund each party’s top domestic priority--with enough left over to completely pay off the national debt in a little over a decade--might have stirred some excitement.

But when President Clinton said last week that the surplus was now growing so large he was willing to meet Republican demands to cut taxes on married couples if they accepted a generous prescription drug benefit for the elderly, his overture inspired only scorn.

“I would not be interested in a raw deal where American families get just a few more pennies in tax relief and President Clinton gets a trillion-dollar blank check for more government spending,” huffed House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas).

“No horse trading!” cried Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), in a sudden outbreak of scruples akin to a World Wrestling Federation star insisting: “No flops!”

In fairness, there are legitimate reasons for these GOP leaders to be skeptical of the precise deal Clinton proposed. Clinton offered two spoons full of sugar without any medicine; many Senate Republicans (and centrist Democrats) understandably believe that any prescription drug benefit should be added to Medicare only in the context of broader reforms to control the program’s cost.

But that’s the sort of issue politicians are paid to negotiate. Clinton’s announcement was a reasonable opening bid: He moved significantly toward the GOP by offering to accept a tax cut for married couples (in the name of eliminating the so-called marriage penalty) nearly six times as large as he originally proposed last winter. Yet many Republicans seemed offended by the very concept of a deal, any deal, as if reaching an agreement (horse trading!) with a president of the other party was a sign of moral weakness.

That instinct was telling. It testifies to a generation-long change in the nature of Congress that has made it ever more difficult to get things done.

Once party leaders rose in Congress on the strength of their ability to assemble legislative majorities around complex problems. Figures as diverse as Lyndon B. Johnson, Sam Rayburn, Robert H. Michel and Dan Rostenkowski prided themselves on their ability to bridge the differences between their colleagues and bring difficult issues to the president’s desk.

“At one time congressional floor leaders were viewed as political tacticians whose principal goal was facilitating the business of the chamber,” Stanford University political scientists David Brady and Morris Fiorina wrote in a recent paper. “The most effective ones were pragmatists who had no strong policy views of their own, or at least suppressed those views for the sake of building coalitions behind legislation.”

That notion now seems as quaint as a spittoon. In both parties, almost all the key congressional leaders have come to view the legislative session far more as a way to frame the next election than as an opportunity to pass laws. Rather than suppressing differences, most legislative leaders on both sides now look to exacerbate them, in the name of sharpening choices for voters in the next campaign.

In this instance, the consensus among congressional Republicans is that they will be better off with a disagreement over taxes than a deal if the price for an accord includes an expensive prescription drug benefit that would anger elements of their base.

That calculation rests on the belief that Clinton wouldn’t dare veto legislation to cut taxes on married couples during an election year--and that if he does, Republicans will have a winning argument to take to voters. In other words, Republicans don’t have to offer Clinton any concession on prescription drugs to induce him to sign a marriage-penalty bill because they figure they will come out ahead whether he signs it or not.

But that’s exactly what Republicans thought last year when they passed a much bigger tax cut. Instead, Clinton vetoed it and the country shrugged. Congressional Republicans were left without either an accomplishment--an actual tax cut they could tout--or a live issue.

Congressional Democrats like this confrontational GOP strategy because it points toward stalemate. Without an overarching agreement, Congress and Clinton appear headed for a veto-filled fall. Even assuming that Senate and House Republicans can agree on a marriage tax cut (likely), Clinton is almost certain to veto it because it’s too large. And if the two chambers can agree on a prescription drug benefit (much less likely), the president will almost certainly veto it as too small. That would give congressional Democrats what they want most: the chance to run this fall against a “do-nothing” Congress.

The minority party in Congress always likes stalemate because they want to deny the majority achievements on which to campaign. The Republican comfort with gridlock is a little more difficult to explain. It is in many ways an artifact of good times. With voters demanding relatively little from Washington, Republicans have come to believe that they can protect themselves in the campaign merely by passing their own version of popular ideas (like a prescription drug benefit or a patients’ bill of rights). Negotiating the substantive changes it would take to win Clinton’s signature brings few additional benefits, they figure--and might even create problems by alienating conservative voters. The gesture is enough.

Even in an era of contentment, this low-risk strategy carries its own risks. After months of gridlock, the approval rating for Congress in the latest Gallup Poll has fallen below 40%. That’s where it stood in the fall of 1998, when Democrats became the first party holding the White House to gain House seats in a midterm election since 1934.

Between now and election day, the congressional GOP may yet decide it needs some old-fashioned bill-signing ceremonies to pump up its approval rating and improve its chances of maintaining control in November. That would demand a deal with Clinton. The question then may be whether anyone in Congress still remembers how to pull one together.

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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.

See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.