Sensing Change, GOP in Congress Ready to Fight

On Capitol Hill, it almost feels like 1995 again.

With year-end legislative negotiations in shambles, Congress is in a budget meltdown that draws comparison to the government shutdown led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) five years ago.

Humbled by their defeat in that confrontation, congressional Republicans in subsequent years more often than not sought to cut year-end deals with President Clinton.

But suddenly the political calculations have changed and the GOP is ready to fight again. Republican leaders appear to see confrontation as a useful way of mobilizing conservative supporters on election day. And, after election day, their bargaining position could be stronger if Republicans win at the polls.

Democrats, meanwhile, are happy to deprive Republicans of legislative accomplishments and continue to deride a “do-nothing” Congress.

With control of Congress and the White House on the line, tempers on both sides of the aisle are running high.

“This is the fruit of five years of conflict,” said Robert D. Reischauer, president of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “Feelings are as bitter as I’ve ever seen.”

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are predicting another government shutdown. But short of that, anything is possible, including the increasing likelihood of an unusual postelection session of Congress to finish required legislation.

That scenario makes the outcome of next week’s election all the more crucial for Capitol Hill lawmakers. If power is about to change hands at the White House or in the House of Representatives, a legislative free-for-all could ensue.

So far, only seven of 13 annual spending bills for the 2001 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, have become law.

A number of agencies--including the Treasury, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Commerce, State and Justice departments--are operating on stopgap budget bills, known as continuing resolutions. Those resolutions, supported by overwhelming bipartisan majorities, are all that stands in the way of a partial government shutdown.

On Tuesday, with little else to do, Congress passed its 11th continuing resolution, this one to fund government agencies through midnight tonight.

The renewed Republican confidence in dealing with the White House is a remarkable turnaround. Only two months ago, the GOP seemed eager to reach agreement and leave town. Now, perhaps calculating that the political winds are blowing in their favor, they are willing to stand and fight.

“We are not giving in to this president,” House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said. “We’ll stay here as long as it takes.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) added: “We’ll negotiate, but we’re not going to capitulate.”

Lott, speaking the day after budget talks collapsed and Clinton vetoed a bill funding several government agencies for fiscal 2001, said that Republicans and Democrats are separated by only a small number of issues.

But the principles at stake, Lott said, are big: whether to advance workplace safety regulations heavily criticized by businesses, whether to allow a greater federal role in local school affairs and whether to allow what Republicans denounce as a “blanket amnesty” for certain illegal immigrants.

Democrats have their own take on those questions. In the ergonomics rules, targeting repetitive-motion injuries, they see protection for American workers. In school funding, they see an opportunity for Washington to lead a national education renewal. In proposals to ease immigration law, they see fairness for many longtime U.S. residents--whether here legally or illegally--who are working and paying taxes.

And so a warlike posture has been assumed by both sides. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House minority leader, last week even dressed up as the legendary Scottish freedom fighter in the film “Braveheart” to whip up his troops--a stunt that afterward drew bitter complaints from Republicans.

On Tuesday, Democrats continued to mobilize. They rallied at the Capitol with labor and teacher groups for education funding and workplace safety. The party’s congressional campaign strategists also sent out a memorandum urging candidates to take advantage of the impasse. The memo’s subject: “Using the failures of Congress to define your opponent.”

Clinton worked in another jab before he left Washington on Tuesday for a campaign trip. “It is the leadership of the other party in Congress and its excessive sensitivity to the special interests that has kept so many of these things from passing,” the president said.

Whether either side is ready or able to cut a deal at this point is unclear. Democrats crossed a significant threshold last week when they came out against a tax bill that included a provision raising the federal minimum wage by $1, to $6.15 an hour, by 2002. To justify their opposition to a measure so popular to their core political constituents, Democrats cited the GOP failure to include school construction tax credits in that bill, among other reasons. But it was also apparent that the party’s leaders were in no mood to let Republicans trumpet a legislative victory for the working class before the election.

Republicans, on the other hand, have noted repeatedly that the public is not tuning in to the congressional budget battle this year as it had in years past. And they hope that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush can defeat Democrat Al Gore and give them a stronger negotiating hand in less than a week.

That may explain why House Republican leaders--Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and DeLay--walked away Monday from a tentative bipartisan deal on a $350-billion bill funding labor, health and education programs. Their public reason: complaints about language on the workplace safety regulations. But privately, analysts said, they may just be deciding to wait Clinton out.

“We’ve realized, ‘Hey, it’s not so bad to be in town,’ ” said a House Republican leadership aide. “It’s not so bad to negotiate. Maybe we can get things done and we’re still not on the [public’s] radar screen.”

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Times staff writers Melissa Lambert and Janet Hook contributed to this story.