WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Describing the Republican election victory as a "rare window of opportunity," officials representing the nation's manufacturers voted yesterday to lobby hard for two laws and to push the rest of their goals to the back burners. One law would reduce government regulation and the other would limit lawsuits against businesses.
Just the existence of a Republican Congress, and particularly one that might enact such cherished goals, lifted spirits among the 150 top executives attending a directors meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers, their first gathering since the election.
Not surprisingly, many expressed relief at no longer having to defend themselves against Democratic Congresses favoring tougher labor legislation or more environmental rules.
"When I go around now to talk to Republican leaders in Congress, we are on common grounds," said NAM President Jerry Jasinowski, who contrasted that with calls in the past on Democratic committee chairmen. Then, he said, "I was immediately put on the defensive."
But for all this improvement, there are tensions, and they surfaced at the two-day meeting here. Some executives wondered whether this Congress would come through for them any more than it had with the Democrats in control.
"You only have a nine-month window in which to act before the election season revs up again and kills substantive debate," said William D. Marohn, president of Whirlpool Corp.
And there was the hostility that many manufacturers perceived to be emanating from the new House Republic leaders -- a sense that big business, unlike small business, is considered less than a 100 percent ally.
The animosity stems partly from the tendency of big companies to split campaign contributions between the two parties, and from corporate endorsements of President Clinton's health proposals last year.
And the NAM, in the minds of some Republicans, is linked to Big Business.
Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., while recognizing the tension in an address to the delegates, tried to dissipate it. "We are not about to drive a wedge between small and big business," he said.
Still, several executives of big companies defended the practice of splitting contributions between the two major parties. "There can be significant shifts in power from one party to the other," Clifford L. Whitehill, a senior vice president of General Mills, said in an interview.
And Robert A. Lutz, president of Chrysler Corp., was annoyed. "Large manufacturers need to remind the Republican leadership that in the past, Republican positions and policies have been extremely damaging to big business," he said.
"On trade and on health care, the Democratic positions were very often more aligned to the interests of big business."
Mr. Lutz aside, the NAM, a powerful lobbying group, took pains to emphasize its small-business roots. Of the 13,000 members, 9,000 are small manufacturers. "We debated the health insurance issue last year, and we did not waffle -- we rejected the big company approach," Mr. Jasinowski said, noting that the association had opposed the Clinton plan.
The NAM lobbies on numerous issues, favoring, for example, a balanced-budget amendment to eliminate the deficit and opposing across-the-board reductions in Medicare spending.
But no issue seems to unite the members -- both big and small companies -- like their common desire to reduce regulatory requirements and to limit lawsuits.
Mr. Jasinowski asserts that the nation's regulatory costs are $600 billion a year to comply with safety and environmental rules and numerous other federal requirements.
The manufacturers seek not only a cutback, but much greater analysis of the costs and benefits of cleaning up, say, a hazardous waste site -- the goal being to avoid huge outlays to clean up sites that do not pose a health threat.
Mr. McCollum is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is considering a bill to restrict product liability suits. The manufacturers asked that it be expanded to cover litigation not only against companies but against groups and local governments.