Congress’ Accomplishments Fell Short of GOP’s Ambitions

As Congress recessed early Saturday for the homestretch of a bruising midterm campaign, Republicans left town with a record of accomplishment that paled in comparison to the grand ambitions they laid out following their 2004 election triumphs.

It remains uncertain whether the gap between what the GOP set out to do and what it achieved will haunt its bid to retain control of the House and Senate -- elections are decided by many factors beyond legislative scorecards. Still, the tally for the 109th Congress looms as a potential burden for Republican candidates.

During the two-year session, President Bush and his party abandoned or scaled back the groundbreaking initiatives they once promised voters: a remake of Social Security, a federal ban on gay marriage, strict new limits on special-interest political influence, and a broad overhaul of immigration law that would find a place for many illegal immigrants already in the country.

And, instead of returning home on the high note they expected after passing a key national security measure last week, spirits among GOP lawmakers clearly were soured by a new scandal: the sudden resignation of Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) amid revelations of sexually explicit communications he had with teenage male former House pages.

Questions about whether House Republican leaders knew of Foley’s improper advances months ago and failed to act seem a likely distraction for the party and its message in the short term. And as November’s vote nears, Democrats can be counted on to eagerly portray Congress as dysfunctional in general.

“This is the do-less-than-the-do-nothing Congress,” House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently, drawing from President Truman’s famed attack on Republicans in 1948.

Nonpartisan analysts also have been critical of Congress. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein -- two think-tank scholars who have written a book about the workings of Capitol Hill titled “The Broken Branch” -- calculate that lawmakers have set a modern record for brevity by sitting in session fewer than 100 days this year.

Given lawmakers’ penchant for three-day workweeks, Ornstein and Mann like to quote comedian Mark Russell’s line about what members of Congress tell their colleagues every Wednesday: “Have a nice weekend.”

Republicans fiercely dispute the do-nothing label, pointing to several key accomplishments. Last week, these included enactment of a new system for prosecuting suspected foreign terrorists and authorization of a 700-mile fence along the Mexico border.

Last year, Congress approved a tightening of bankruptcy law, new limits on class-action lawsuits and a major energy bill -- all long sought by the business community.

“Anyone who has worked in this town for a while would have to acknowledge that [those bills] represent an incredible year of legislative accomplishments,” said Bruce Josten, a veteran lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Earlier this year, Congress also completed a major overhaul of the nation’s ailing pension system.

Republicans blame Democratic obstructionism for the party’s failure to complete more of its agenda, including new cuts in the estate tax (the death levy, as the GOP terms it).

But many measures -- most prominently Bush’s initiatives on Social Security and immigration -- have foundered on divisions among Republicans.

The GOP’s vaunted party discipline broke down in part because of Bush’s dwindling clout as a president prosecuting an unpopular war. Also, unity has been strained by pervasive anxiety that the party will lose control of the House or Senate in the midterm election.

“This is a big-deal election,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster. “The overall tension is really high.”

Most Republicans are heartened by what they see as a campaign trail that appears less perilous than it did a month ago.

With political winds blowing strongly against them in the summer, Republicans returned to Washington in early September determined to press their main political advantage -- the greater trust that polls show voters have in them to deal with terrorism, compared with Democrats.

A priority was to clear the measure establishing new rules for trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals. Another was to give the White House explicit authority to conduct a warrantless wiretapping program that Bush secretly instituted after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Congress was unable to finish work on the surveillance bill. But final approval Friday of the tribunal bill set the stage for a signing ceremony at the White House that could keep the spotlight on the broader war on terrorism rather than the unpopular war in Iraq.

Many GOP strategists also anticipate that the party’s fortunes will be boosted if the price of gasoline continues to drop.

But Republicans remain spooked by low approval ratings that polls find for Congress and their party. A recent Pew survey, for instance, found that 38% said this Congress accomplished less than its predecessor. And by 50% to 39%, poll respondents said they were likely to support a Democrat rather than a Republican in congressional elections.

GOP lawmakers have sought to put the best possible face on their record. “Given the unprecedented -- and increasing -- frequency of obstruction and political gamesmanship ... we’ve accomplished more than might be expected,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said last week.

Gone from their rhetoric, however, is the list of ambitious goals Bush and other Republicans unveiled after the 2004 elections gave the president a second term and the GOP a wider margin of control in the House and Senate.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) set the tone when he said in his first speech of 2005, “In this Congress, big plans will stir men’s blood.”

His associates saw a historic opportunity to advance their agendas. “My fellow conservatives, we have waited our entire lives for the chance the American people have given us,” then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said shortly after the 2004 results. Now DeLay is in private life, driven from office by corruption charges.

As the Republicans focused on national security matters in September, Congress left unfinished several policy initiatives, including some that had seemed close to passage.

A bill to expand offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico stalled. Action to stave off a scheduled cut in Medicare doctor fees languished, despite heavy lobbying by the influential American Medical Assn. Grand promises to crack down on lobbying excesses, in the wake of the influence-peddling scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, produced only modest changes in House rules.

The tech industry, meanwhile, is baffled that lawmakers could not manage to extend a popular tax credit for research and development.

“We have clearly had far fewer accomplishments than we have had in previous Congresses,” said Ralph Hellmann, a former GOP aide on Capitol Hill who is a lobbyist for the Information Technology Industry Council.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) defended his party against such assessments, saying, “It’s always easy for people to look up and say the glass is half-empty. I’m going to say the glass is half-full.”

A key question, however, is whether the glass is full enough to satisfy core GOP supporters who had high hopes when Congress convened in early 2005.

The disappointed include some conservative activists who lament the demise of the same-sex marriage ban and the collapse of an 11th-hour effort to place new restrictions on a minor’s ability to get an abortion without a parent’s consent.

“There’s a sense of ennui” among anti-abortion groups, said Mike McMonagle, director of the Pro-Life Political Action Committee of Southeastern Pennsylvania. “The source of the ennui is our lack of realization of certain goals. Elected officials that we supported let us down.”

janet.hook@latimes.com

noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writers Richard Simon, Nicole Gaouette and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.