Appease the party activists, push enough initiatives to neutralize Democrats' attacks and hightail it out of town, the sooner the better. That's the three-pronged strategy that congressional Republican leaders hope to pull off when they return to Washington in September. Standing in their way is just one must-do piece of business: passing 13 appropriations bills -- the measures that fund federal operations -- for the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The only alternatives are shutting down the government or settling on "continuing resolutions" to keep the money flowing and buy more time. They'll roar over the spending bills come September, but all that GOP lawmakers really want to do is go home.
Republicans across the ideological spectrum generally agree that an ugly, prolonged standoff with the White House this fall over the appropriations bills must be avoided. They learned that lesson when President Clinton outmaneuvered them during the government shutdowns of the winter of 1995-96. These days, Congress has high approval ratings, the economy is booming and the public is content. The last thing Republicans want is to undermine those good feelings. "The American people would not countenance a breakdown" over spending priorities, said Rep. John Edward Porter, R-Ill., chairman of the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee. "It just won't happen."
The trouble is, Republicans are somewhat empty-handed as they go home to face the voters in the midterm elections, given the don't-rock-the-boat strategy they've followed since hammering out the ballyhooed five-year balanced budget deal with Clinton in 1997. Congress's most notable achievements since then? Passing two political no-brainers: mammoth highway legislation full of local pork projects and a bill to overhaul the much-hated Internal Revenue Service. In the first six months of 1998, Congress passed about half as many measures that were signed into law as was the case at similar points in the past two election years.
"This is a remarkably issue-less election," said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Interior Subcommittee. "In one sense, incumbents in both parties would just as soon keep it issue-less, but at the same time, they want something to point to their own strongest supporters to show why those supporters should come out."
Republican lawmakers plan to use the remaining weeks until the targeted Oct. 9 adjournment to try to put their stamp on the appropriations measures and to move a few other big bills -- such as health maintenance organization reform and tax cuts -- that will energize their hard-core supporters or inoculate themselves from Democratic attack. But their attempts to score political points in the final weeks of the session won't be without risks or complications, and it's far from clear that the leadership can achieve the discipline needed for a quick and easy escape.
Ideological divisions continue to tear at the GOP, especially in the House, where hard-charging conservatives this summer have been attaching controversial riders embodying their pet legislative agenda-items to the appropriations measures. The conservatives are determined to press their case more effectively than last year, when they felt GOP leaders tilted too far to accommodate Democratic spending programs.
"The leadership is weak -- and I don't mean that as a reflection on the leadership's ability -- but it's a matter of arithmetic, sheer numbers," said former Congressional Budget Office director Robert D. Reischauer, referring to the House GOP's slender 11-seat edge. "When you have narrow majorities, you can't afford defections. All the members know that, and so they don't play team ball, because they think they can get more out of their leaders by acting as renegades."
The trick for Republican leaders is to shape the spending bills so that they appeal to core conservative supporters who are the most likely to go to the polls -- without alienating important swing voters or damaging the electoral prospects of moderate incumbents, some of whom are viewed as highly vulnerable.
On the right, the Christian Coalition and other activists have sought signals in the closing months of the session that Republicans are addressing their concerns. They haven't been disappointed. GOP hard-liners have used appropriations measures to turn up the heat on abortion-related issues; to limit support for the International Monetary Fund; and to press, albeit unsuccessfully, to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
But to successfully negotiate the shoals ahead, the leadership must also protect Republicans on voter-friendly issues like HMO reform. "Republicans have to make sure that they take the HMO stuff off the table," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster and partner at Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies. "As long as Republicans have something that they are for, it kind of cuts the legs out from underneath the Democrats."
Further complicating the Republicans' year-end strategy is the onrushing investigation of Clinton, an investigation that could even result in impeachment proceedings this year. Though allegations of perjury in the Lewinsky affair may weaken Clinton's negotiating position in dealing on the spending bills, Republicans recognize the dangers in overplaying their hand against a popular president. "It is a hand grenade sitting out there ready to explode on anybody who handles it," said House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, R-La. "It could blow up on the Democrats. It could blow up on the Republicans. We just don't know."
But just because a 1995-style showdown, and resultant government shutdown, are unlikely this year doesn't mean there won't be plenty of threatening noise. Expect a healthy measure of bellicose posturing in September, as Republicans turn up the rhetoric to champion their spending priorities, and Hill Democrats and Clinton answer in equally partisan terms.
Already, the president and other White House officials have blasted many of the major appropriations bills making their way through the House and Senate and have issued a string of veto threats. They have attacked GOP proposals to sharply cut or even eliminate a slew of education and other social programs, to "roll back environmental protections" and to deny funds for statistical sampling in the 2000 census. With Congress behind on passing the 13 measures, a fallback continuing resolution -- "CR" in Washington-speak -- on Oct. 1 seems a foregone conclusion, but even reaching agreement on CRs can be troublesome.
On July 31, a seemingly anxious House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., urged Clinton to disavow that he is purposely pursuing a shutdown strategy designed to gain political advantage. "We want to publicly reaffirm our determination to keep open the vital functions of the federal government at the end of this fiscal year," the two leaders wrote to the president. "We ask you to give the same reassurance to the American people."
Just a few days later, Clinton responded by drawing a line in the sand. "The last budget of the 20th century should be preparing our nation for the challenges of the next," he said during an Aug. 3 speech, in which he vowed to veto the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. "I will not accept a budget that fails to do this." Pressed subsequently by reporters about whether the president "would veto any continuing resolution and thereby trigger another government shutdown," White House spokesman Barry Toiv replied: "He has now given the Congress a fair warning.... They're the ones creating this issue."
A Game Of Chicken
Congressional Democrats, too, are poised to attack. They plan to argue that in failing to even pass a budget resolution -- something that was supposed to be done by April 15 -- and in ducking other major issues, Republicans have proved themselves incompetent. "If the general impression is that they have not done their work, we can create the image that this crowd can't shoot straight... as they did to us in 1994," said House Minority Whip David E. Bonior, D-Mich.
Democrats will also try to make some political hay by exploiting the GOP's internal divisions. Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, having served on it 29 years, questions whether the Republican leadership will resist the demands of the most conservative, take-no-prisoners wing of the party.
"It's like the guy who's in a game of chicken, driving 100 miles an hour down the road. He's terrified, but he keeps stepping on the accelerator," Obey said. "I don't see what their endgame is. What they have done in every instance is to respond to the temporary pressure of the moment, depending upon which group in their caucus squeezed them."
Some rank-and-file Republicans are sweating so much over the possibility of a replay of a politically damaging denouement this year that about a dozen of them recently circulated a letter urging their colleagues to stand by the leadership on procedural matters. The letter, ultimately signed by a majority of the House GOP, even recommends disciplinary action, including loss of committee chairmanships, against Republicans who don't fall in line. "This is truly the time of the year when the majority party shows the public that it can govern -- that means passing the appropriations bills, obviously," said Rep. Bob Ehrlich, R-Md., one of the authors of the letter.
Even top GOP leaders, however, sometimes cannot resist stepping out of line for their own political purposes. For instance, tensions between Livingston and Majority Leader Richard K. Armey of Texas -- both of whom would like Gingrich's job should he leave to run for president -- have hampered the movement of some appropriations bills. Other powerful chairmen also have their own prerogatives that occasionally run counter to the party line.
Ultimately, even hard-line Republicans recognize the constraints facing their leaders as they struggle to finish the 105th Congress's business in a manner that pleases, or at least doesn't annoy, voters. Many conservatives may be satisfied if the proposals they champion are simply given a fair airing. For example, when the House on July 21 overwhelmingly rejected their push to eliminate funding for the NEA, members of the Conservative Action Team -- who call themselves CATs -- remained sanguine.
"It put everybody on record," said two-term Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., the CATs chairman, of the NEA vote. "A lot of people wanted to have it both ways: They wanted to go to their Christian Coalition base and say, 'I don't think we should have NEA funding for obscene art,' and then go to their donors at the country club... and say, 'Oh yeah, I'm with you; I think we should have funding for the NEA.' "
But the GOP leadership, in an adroit move, also took the opportunity to use the battle over NEA funding to help a vulnerable moderate incumbent. After funding for the agency was eliminated on a technical motion on the House floor, it was Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, R-Conn., who was chosen to make the parliamentary motion to restore the full $98 million.
Johnson, first elected in 1982, barely survived her re- election bid two years ago, after she was pilloried for being too soft in her role as chairwoman of the Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics) Committee when it investigated Gingrich. By taking the lead on a high-profile, controversial measure and winning, Johnson may well get a bounce in support back home. "Clearly there are a lot of votes that people perceive to have political value, and the NEA obviously was seen as some value to Nancy Johnson," said House Democratic Caucus chairman Vic Fazio of California.
Still, no-nonsense conservatives did not seem put off by the maneuvers to help Johnson. Many of them were first elected in the Republican takeover of 1994 but these days talk more often of pragmatism than of revolution. "I personally have learned that we need to do things incrementally and act strategically," McIntosh said.
As for the endgame on the appropriations measures, Rep. Tom A. Coburn, R-Okla., one of the most aggressive members of the CATs, predicts that this Congress will adjourn with more of a whimper than the bang that he, personally, would prefer. A spending agreement will be hammered out at the 11th hour, he said, adding, "Congress is not noted to be typically courageous in an election year."
Veto Threats And Exit Fees
Administration officials insist, at least publicly, that the current veto threats have nothing to do with rousing core Democratic constituencies. Perhaps, but there is something about the prospect of a messy appropriations process that seems to make them smile. "We don't perceive this to be some act of base- mobilizing, as I think possibly [the Republicans] do," said Lawrence Stein, Clinton's director of legislative affairs, while quickly adding, "I shouldn't characterize their motives."
Other White House staffers are not so circumspect. Given the virtual certainty that Republicans will fail to finish the 13 appropriations bills on time, they are ready to join Capitol Hill Democrats on the attack in exploiting GOP fissures. The mantra, said a White House aide, might go like this: "The people didn't send them here to do CRs.... They were so incompetent this year, they couldn't even finish a budget. What did they do this year? They renamed an airport and they renamed a lake."
Such battles in the final weeks of the session "could be very important," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. "First of all, they will determine whether there is or is not any core national issue that infuses all of these campaigns. At this point, there are a lot of issues being discussed, but there certainly is not a national texture to this campaign." And Mellman, pointing to managed care and education funding as two winners for Democrats, added, "What happens in these closing weeks will give individual candidates some additional arrows in the quiver."
Yet, as they head into this fall, Democrats will have to sort out their own conflicts over ideology and political strategies. "There are some Democrats who would rather have an issue than an accomplishment," a Clinton aide said. "The President always wants to take a good step forward." There have been times this year, for instance, when the White House has made quiet overtures to House Republicans on issues, hoping House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri -- who might disapprove -- would never find out.
At the same time, administration strategists will undoubtedly feel pressure from some Hill Democrats who want to go home, and Clinton cannot be too heavy-handed as he tries to pressure them to hang around Washington to increase his bargaining power. And Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill to some extent recognize, as do Republicans, that voters don't have much of an appetite for warfare in Washington, even if Clinton did come out on top following the battles of 1995-96.
So what would Clinton like to get done? Anything from his own priority list, especially initiatives that help him keep his job-approval numbers up as he continues to wrestle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
The president started the year with a long wish list of spending and tax-break proposals. In truth, the White House never expected Republicans to give away much in an election year. They knew the bonanza was never going to be as great in fiscal 1999 as it was in 1998, when both parties built plenty of padding into the first year of the five-year budget blueprint. Clinton's prospects for success declined further when the demise of a mammoth Senate tobacco bill took with it the $65.5 billion in tobacco tax money he counted on over five years to help pay for his new spending initiatives.
For the White House, the negotiations now are more about fighting the GOP over spending cuts in each appropriations measure, than about making great strides to get new spending to Clinton's desk. The best-case scenario, according to administration officials, is that Clinton might be able to make a "downpayment" this year, with some Republican backing, on his priorities, particularly in the area of education and training initiatives. The president would also be happy to get funding for the IMF, and perhaps some tax breaks for pensions and child care if there's a tax bill this fall.
The president's economic team knows Republicans are in a powerful rush to head home and campaign early in October. And with Gingrich openly talking about wrapping things up in CRs to get out of town, Clinton has some leverage to try to force the Republicans to pay an "exit fee" to win his signatures -- in the form of money for his favorite initiatives. "When people feel the pressure to get things done, there can be an ocean shift to do it," said a White House official.
Members of Clinton's economic team who've been around the longest say they've learned a couple of things about dealing with the GOP on the budget: 1) Republicans' ideological splits make everything more difficult to bring to the finish line and 2) the GOP caves to external political pressure. To take advantage of that posture and move things closer to his agenda, Clinton needs Republican allies -- to apply pressure from within Congress. At the same time, the president will use the bully pulpit (and carefully crafted, poll-tested rhetoric) to bolster his position and cajole special-interest groups to increase the pressure coming from outside Capitol Hill.
All the while, that looming investigation of Clinton may well have an impact in the waning days of the session. "I think there has always been a strategy on Gingrich's part to put the president up against the end of the session with the Starr report floating up here to complicate things," Fazio said. "My current reading is that [Republicans] are still rather chary of taking the president on, and I think they see the American people as not wanting them to pile on."
See You Next Year
In the world of budgets and fiscal policy, 1999 will be far more interesting to watch than 1998's election year. Why? Because irrespective of the results at the polls in November, Clinton will be thinking more and more about his legacy. And early on next year, his ambition will be to win approval for legislation to ensure the solvency of Social Security.
Second, after dealing with Social Security, Washington will leap on the sizable budget surplus, which offers temptations for legislative mischief by both parties. And third, the White House and some members of Congress will try to raise the budget ceilings established in the 1997 five-year balanced budget agreement.
The spending ceilings, set when Washington was still trying to erase the deficit, are viewed by some as unrealistically restrictive in a world of large surpluses. Skirmishes over tinkering with the spending caps have already flared up this year -- and will continue this fall -- as conservatives worry that Washington may be loosening its belt too quickly. In an Aug. 4 letter, Gingrich and Livingston asked Clinton not to demand any funding increases for specific programs this fall without also identifying offsetting cuts to ensure the spending doesn't violate last year's ceilings.
A renewed battle is all but certain next year, as budget hawks and activists on the right fight efforts by Clinton and other Democrats (and probably some Republicans, too) to fund new government programs or favorite initiatives, including tax cuts. That clash is likely to be contentious and protracted, but there is nothing all that new about it.
"What you always have to remember about budget disputes is that these are battles in an ongoing war, a war without an end," Reischauer said. "People often talk about them, particularly in the press, as if in the war itself there is going to be a winner and a loser, but the combatants know that they have to deal with each other again next year."
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