To Congress, Passing Bills Not the Point

You don’t have to turn on the TV to see campaign ads these days. You can watch Congress.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate have begun taking up bills, not with any expectation they will become law, but with the intention of stoking the presidential campaign and energizing the party’s political base.

Congressional Republican leaders are bringing up measures -- such as constitutional amendments to ban flag burning and same-sex marriage -- to highlight differences between the parties and between President Bush and the Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Consider the proposed amendment, supported by Bush, to ban same-sex marriage. In the Senate, it fell far short of the votes needed to break a filibuster. No matter that it’s already dead; the House plans to take up the measure before adjourning in early October.

“If you can’t make a law, you make a point,” said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College.

Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky added: “There’s no doubt that Congress is trying to use votes on hot-button topics for political gain before the November election. There is perceived political gain in just having a vote.”

Senate Republican leaders are expected to schedule a vote before the election on the amendment banning flag desecration, another issue Bush has highlighted on the campaign trail. It’s seen as an effort to force Kerry and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who is facing a tough reelection challenge in South Dakota, to cast controversial votes. Kerry and Daschle have opposed the constitutional amendment as an infringement on the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech.

“The majority party will try to produce votes that can be used for campaign fodder,” said Vanderbilt University political scientist Bruce Oppenheimer.

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Bob Stevenson called the flag-burning amendment a priority of veterans’ groups and said he believed it stood a chance of passing. But he also acknowledged, “It is the political season.”

On Tuesday, the House approved, on a largely party-line vote, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, a business-backed measure that would mandate sanctions against attorneys who file “frivolous” lawsuits.

The bill is expected to languish in the narrowly divided Senate, as have other House-approved legal measures such as bills to limit medical malpractice awards, shield gun makers and sellers from suits related to gun violence and prohibit lawsuits to hold restaurants liable for a customer’s weight gain.

The bill is aimed at curbing a group whom the Republicans disparage: trial lawyers, a significant source of campaign contributions to Democrats.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) acknowledged that there might be a political motive in bringing the bill up for a vote, but he also defended the action.

“It is part of the process to get members on the record as to how they feel about an issue,” he said.

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), said: “The Republicans are more interested in making partisan political points than in making progress. They know that these bills are on a fast train to nowhere in the Senate, but they want the campaign wedge issue.”

Although the minority party doesn’t control the agenda, Democrats also have used votes to make political points.

Last week, Democrats won a rare victory in the Republican-controlled House by passing legislation to block Bush administration rules that critics have said would deny overtime pay to millions of workers. A Senate committee on Wednesday also voted to block the regulations. The measure is not expected to make it out of Congress, but the vote gave Democrats an opportunity to assail the Bush rule as antiworker.

And on Tuesday, Tony Knowles -- a Democratic former governor challenging Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska -- assailed her for voting against an amendment to a homeland security spending bill that would have provided another $100 million for Coast Guard activities, “despite the fact that Alaska has the greatest expanse of territorial sea of any state.”

Chuck Kleeschulte, a Murkowski spokesman, said the senator voted against the additional money -- which was part of a nearly $36-billion domestic spending bill approved by the Senate on Tuesday night -- because the measure already raises funding for the U.S. Coast Guard.

“To be fiscally responsible, especially in an election year, requires that you vote against unlimited federal spending, even though political opponents will always attack every single vote against additional spending to attempt to gain partisan advantage,” Kleeschulte said.

On Wednesday, a House committee approved the “Pledge Protection Act,” a bill that would limit the jurisdiction of federal courts to rule on legal challenges to the “under God” language in the Pledge of Allegiance.

An effort also is expected to be made in the House in coming weeks to relax the strict gun control law in the District of Columbia. And Senate Republicans are expected to schedule more votes on Bush’s controversial judicial nominees to highlight what they call Democratic obstructionism.

“We have a very short window between now and the election,” said University of Maryland political scientist Ric Uslaner. “With control of the White House and the Senate in the balance, each side will pull out all of the stops it can.”