A Looming Storm

The Baltimore Sun

This week the new Democratic House is expected to move with lightning speed to pass legislation aimed at showing a disenchanted public that the days of the do-nothing Congress are gone.

House leaders are promising to vote quickly centscm+RDjlandaw:vote to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, to repeal subsidies for the oil industry, cut college-loan interest rates in half, require Medicare to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices for seniors and implement unfulfilled recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission.

Chairmen of congressional committees also are planning substantial hearings later into an array of controversial issues, including the conduct of the Iraq war, the National Security Agency's program of warrantless electronic surveillance of terrorist suspects in the United States and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

But, truth be told, despite all the excitement accompanying the Democrats' return to power after more than a decade in exile, the new leaders can expect a long, challenging struggle to keep their promises to revitalize Congress.

The bills expected to be passed in the House this week are unlikely to be considered by the closely divided Senate for months. Some could effectively be killed there. And the oversight hearings will make a difference only if they move public opinion enough to persuade significant numbers of congressional Republicans to challenge their president.

President Bush offered to work with the new Democratic Congress in a column published in The Wall Street Journal last week. But in the same piece he alluded to his new Iraqi plan - reported to involve the movement of 20,000 or more additional troops to Iraq, a step that defies public opinion and the views of many members of Congress.

Bush also flashed a warning of his veto power. "If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate." He noted that "Democrats will control the House and Senate, and therefore we share the responsibility for what we achieve."

As if to punctuate that caution, Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, broke up a Capitol Hill Democratic news conference on the party's legislative priorities Wednesday, warning that party activists expect them to end the war in Iraq and confront the White House on a change in Iraq strategy. "We didn't put you in power to work with the people that have been murdering hundreds of thousands of people since they have been in power," Sheehan said. "We put you in power to be opposition to them finally and we're the ones who put them in power."

Achieving a congressional consensus on just what to do about Iraq and then imposing that vision on Commander in Chief Bush without seeming to threaten the safety of U.S. troops will be an enormous challenge.

Beyond vetoes, Bush has previously shown a willingness - even when the Congress was run by Republicans - to interpret legislation in ways clearly not intended by those who passed it. And he has used sometimes secret presidential orders to achieve goals at odds with congressional sentiment.

Considering all that, and the looming distractions of the 2008 presidential race, the congressional Democrats clearly face a strategic challenge. And the public, increasingly frustrated by what it views as a record of congressional failure, is unlikely to be patient with missteps. In a recent Gallup Poll only about 20 percent of likely voters said they approved of the performance of Congress.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Historically, Congress has used its powers to pass laws, control federal spending and hold oversight hearings to check the authority of the president. Members of Congress took significant pride in the independence of their institution, shaped by the Founding Fathers to guard against an executive tyrant. Leaders in Congress, regardless of their party, have long stood ready to challenge the president or anyone else who challenged their prerogatives.

But a fierce political struggle in the 1990s followed by the trauma of the Sept. 11 attacks led to a dramatic shift in Congress from a decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the legislative process - the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation and the weakening of our system of checks and balances - have all compromised the role of Congress in the American constitutional system, according to two highly respected political scholars: Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right study center.

"The arrival of unified Republican government in 2001 transformed the aggressive and active GOP-led Congress of the Clinton years into a deferential and supine body, one extremely reluctant to demand information, scrub presidential proposals or oversee the executive," Mann and Ornstein wrote in a recent book on the institution called The Broken Branch. "The uncompromising assertion of executive authority by President Bush and Vice President Cheney was met with a whimper, not a principled fight, by the Republican Congress."

The earlier arrogance of the long-dominant Democratic leadership in the House contributed to the congressional decline, Mann and Ornstein agree, as has a drop in many members' respect for and interest in the business of the institution - Democrats as well as Republicans.

For many members, Congress is a perpetual campaign in which they raise money for the next race, promote pork-barrel projects for their districts, dodge controversies and express passionate support for issues that are of intense interest to their party's ideological base while ignoring problems of broader public concern.

Mann and Ornstein note that that President Harry S Truman first stuck the "do-nothing" tag on Congress in 1948. That year Congress was in session 110 days. This year Congress completes only 94 days of work before recessing for the elections.

Lawmakers typically stay in Washington only from Tuesdays through Thursdays.

The new Democratic leadership has pledged to change all that. They are promising to work five days a week, to demand that the Bush administration respond to their requests for information or subpoenas, to rebuild a budgeting process that has virtually collapsed in recent years and to work to find consensus on an array of neglected issues like Social Security and Medicare funding, global warming, energy independence, immigration, terrorism, treatments for new diseases and even repairing the nation's older roads and bridges.

They are promising to seek answers to the seemingly insurmountable challenge of the Iraqi conflict and stronger regulatory oversight of federal agencies responsible for protecting the health, safety and welfare of Americans.

But with a paper-thin majority in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to end debate and bring any legislation to a vote, the Democrats are unlikely to pass legislation that fails to draw significant Republican support. And finding Republican moderates willing to make such a move will be a serious challenge in a Congress that remains fiercely divided politically.

Already, House Republicans are complaining about the Democratic legislative timetable. They said that the effort to force through legislation on national security, the minimum wage, student loan costs and energy without a full slate of hearings - and with limits on the ability of Republicans to offer alternatives - undercut the pledges of Democrats to run things in a more transparent, collegial way than the Republicans had when they were in power.

But Democrats brushed the complaints aside. "We view the first 100 hours as essentially a mandate from the American people," said Maryland Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the majority leader, explaining the decision to protect those measures from Republican attack.

And Senate Democrats said they were undaunted by the challenges ahead.

"There is nothing political about finding a policy to end the war in Iraq, raising the minimum wage, achieving energy independence or helping kids afford college," said Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader. "In fact, politics has prevented progress on these issues for too many years."

Despite the early verbal volleys, there still may be some possibility for successful legislative compromises. Bush may hope to build some record of achievement apart from Iraq in his last two years of office.

And, with the public declaring itself disgusted with congressional squabbling and a presidential election year just around the corner, leaders in both parties may be able to find common ground on issues like Social Security solvency, immigration and energy independence.

Both Republicans and Democrats say they want to sharply curtail spending on pork-barrel projects and to stop deficit spending altogether. But cost of the Iraq conflict is likely to continue to grow exponentially, making it difficult to deliver on important domestic programs without adding to the deficit.

And members from both parties continue to be tempted by the pork. Citizens Against Government Waste has identified 9,963 pork projects in the federal budget this year worth a total of $29 billion. In 1996 the group found 958 projects worth less than $13 billion.

Democratic leaders say they plan extended hearings into the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq, attention the administration is likely to challenge and attempt to deflect.

Other possible hearing topics include telephone companies and domestic spying, energy prices, and the performance of federal regulatory agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and prescription drug companies.

larry.williams@baltsun.com

The first 100 hours

Within the first 100 hours of legislative business, beginning Tuesday, House Democrats say they will vote to:

Raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour.

Curb lobbyists' influence by banning meals and gifts to lawmakers and requiring more disclosure and oversight.

Repeal subsidies for the oil industry.

Cut college-loan interest rates in half.

Reduce prescription-drug prices for seniors by requiring Medicare to negotiate rates with pharmaceutical firms.

Pass another bill that allows expanded federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

Enact unfulfilled recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission and beef up port security.

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