Gore Dares Bush to Press Congress

Vice President Al Gore challenged Texas Gov. George W. Bush on Monday to “pick up the phone,” call the Republican leaders of Congress and ask them to break the logjam on issues ranging from raising the minimum wage to paying for prescription drug benefits under Medicare.

“It is time to get some legislation for people, not the powerful,” Gore said.

“Gov. Bush, who is now head of the Republican Party, says nothing about this and his silence aids and abets the do-nothing Republican Congress and the same special interests who are contributing so much to his own campaign,” Gore charged.

Such a phone call, the vice president said, would prove Bush’s “newly proclaimed moderation is real, and not just rhetoric.”

In recent weeks, Gore has sought to portray Bush as beholden to unpopular special interests such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, oil companies, health maintenance organizations and big polluters.

On Monday, Congress was added to the list.

The exercise in populist politics not only was designed to try to convince voters that Bush’s policies favor special interests and the wealthy, but also to portray Gore as a champion of the common people.

The theme also is aimed at blunting the message of Ralph Nader and at bringing traditional Democrats, particularly lower income white voters, back into the party fold by November.

Nader is seeking the White House on the Green Party ballot.

“Here’s the reality of the Republican leadership in this Congress; instead of taking bipartisan action for prosperity and progress, they have taken a different course,” Gore charged in a speech at Central Connecticut State University.

Bush Blames Clinton for Some of the Logjam

The Bush campaign responded to Gore’s comments Monday by blaming the Clinton administration for some of the gridlock in Washington. But aides also distinguished Bush’s role as a candidate from the legislative job facing Congress and the administration.

“The governor sees himself as running his own campaign, setting forth his ideas and vision for Americans,” said Dan Bartlett, a Bush spokesman. “The Congress and the current administration will have to show that they can work together to get the people’s business done right now.”

“The governor has a strong record of working in a bipartisan manner,” Bartlett said, adding that Gore was “attempting to shift the blame for the administration’s failures.”

Some polls show Gore holding a slim, perhaps statistically insignificant, lead over Bush in Connecticut, where Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is considered a possibility for the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket.

Lieberman introduced Gore, who told the audience, “There is a broad bipartisan support for health reform, education investment and measures like a prescription drug benefit for seniors--not just across the land, but across the aisles of Congress itself.”

Gore’s theme linked him firmly to House and Senate Democrats who have been running their campaigns this year on the message that the Republican majority has been leading a “do-nothing Congress” beholden to special interests.

“The leadership in Congress should stop trying to pass massive tax breaks for the special interests, because we don’t want to go back to the era of deficit, recession and high interest rates,” Gore said. “This do-nothing-for-the-people Republican Congress should finally do something for our parents and grandparents and strengthen Social Security and Medicare.”

Gore Seeks to Link Opponent to Congress

Seeking to tie Bush even tighter to Congress, the vice president asked: “If hard-working families can’t count on Gov. Bush today, then what would happen if the results in November were a Bush White House and a Republican Congress?”

“The do-nothing Congress could then become the ‘do-the-wrong-thing’ Congress,” he said.

By running as a “compassionate conservative,” the presumptive Republican nominee has managed to implicitly create some distance from some members of his own party in Congress.

Gore charged that HMOs and insurance companies have “lavished” almost $9 million on the Republican Party in the last several years and that the group Citizens for Better Medicare has given more than $7 million.

He labeled the Medicare group a “phony organization” consisting not of citizens but a coalition of 30 large drug companies.

“The real problem here isn’t gridlock,” he said. “It’s the special interest lock that’s creating the do-nothing Congress.”