Republican lawmakers head home this weekend to campaign for re-election after overseeing a Congress that failed to enact their top legislative priorities and saw some of their most prominent leaders weakened or sidelined by scandals and disunity.
None of the goals President George W. Bush set out in his January 2005 State of the Union address -- overhaul of the Social Security system, restructuring the tax code, reshaping medical-malpractice law -- was achieved. Bush's proposed overhaul of immigration laws is in limbo because of divisions between House and Senate Republicans.
``This is a quite unproductive Congress,'' said David Mayhew, a political science professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The only major legislation lawmakers can point to is an overhaul of the U.S. private-pension system this year, he said.
Republicans also suffered from the departure of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, their most effective legislative leader in years, who stepped down in January after he was indicted in a campaign-finance case and his aides were tied to a Justice Department probe of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee stumbled over his handling of immigration and other disputes, damaging his standing as a 2008 presidential contender.
Republicans at Risk
The lack of achievements and scandals may put Republicans at risk in the Nov. 7 elections, said Richard Semiatin, a political scientist at American University in Washington. Voter surveys showing growing dissatisfaction with Congress's performance: A Sept. 16-19 Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found that 48 percent of respondents wanted Democrats to control Congress, while 39 percent wanted Republicans to maintain control.
Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to control the House and six seats for a Senate majority.
The mood as lawmakers prepare to leave Washington is in stark contrast to the optimism many Republicans expressed after the 2004 elections, when they strengthened their majorities with three new seats in the House and four in the Senate. ``I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,'' Bush said days after he was re-elected in November 2004.
Republicans such as House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio insist that the party has plenty of successes to campaign on and that obstruction by Democrats was to blame for their setbacks.
`Slow-Roll, Obstruct, Delay'
``I have never seen a Senate more paralyzed that the one I've seen over the past few months,'' former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said this week. ``There's no doubt in my mind a conscious decision was made by the Democratic leadership in January a year ago to slow-roll, obstruct, delay everything.''
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland dismissed criticism that his party is responsible. ``We have failed to do substantive work because of the deep divisions within the Republican Party and the demand by the Republican leadership in the Congress and the president of the United States that it is either done their way or not done at all,'' he said.
Hoyer said Republicans set a campaign schedule that had most members out of town campaigning on Mondays and Fridays, and showed little willingness to work with Democrats to forge compromises.
Less Than `Nothing'
The House has been in session only 93 days so far this year -- two weeks less than the 110 days in the second year of the 1946-1948 term that then-President Harry Truman famously dubbed the ``Do-Nothing Congress.''
Lawmakers will return for a ``lame-duck'' session after the elections to pass essential spending and other measures needed to keep the government operating.
Republicans scored some early victories last year, including legislation moving most class-action lawsuits to federal courts, a measure overhauling bankruptcy law, energy legislation, a six-year highway funding bill, a measure cutting federal entitlement spending by nearly $40 billion and a trade agreement with Central America.
That momentum dissipated in disputes over Bush's Social Security proposal and his proposal this year -- opposed by most Republicans -- to allow some undocumented immigrants to pursue U.S. citizenship.
Unfinished Business
Among the measures left by the wayside this year are reduction or repeal of the estate tax; extension of the research credit and other expiring tax breaks; energy proposals designed to help lower gasoline prices; Bush's proposal to create tax- preferred health savings accounts; and changes to lobbying rules in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. The House and Senate also failed to agree on a budget blueprint for the year, and showed little appetite for spending cuts.
Lawmakers did reauthorize the USA Patriot Act -- giving the government expanded powers to fight terrorism -- and extended the Voting Rights Act and the 15 percent tax rate on dividends and capital gains.
DeLay's indictment on money-laundering charges in Texas last fall, and his decision to step down amid a broadening lobbying scandal this year, caused an upheaval in the House leadership that consumed months, said Stephen Frantzich, a congressional scholar at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Not `Stellar'
In the Senate, Frist is ``not looked on as having been a stellar majority leader,'' said Bruce Oppenheimer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He wasn't able to heal party divisions on issues ranging from judicial nominations to anti-terror legislation; at the same time, Oppenheimer said, he went ``down the line with the administration'' on every issue except stem-cell research, which he opposed until he switched position this year.
``To the degree that the administration hasn't been successful, he doesn't look successful,'' Oppenheimer said.
Frist's competing roles as Senate Republican leader and possible 2008 presidential candidate led him to equivocate on immigration and other issues, slowing action, said David Keene, chairman of the Alexandria-Virginia based American Conservative Union. That and Bush's lower approval ratings let Arizona Senator John McCain and other dissident Republicans seize control of issues such as the legislation creating military tribunals to try terrorism suspects.
``With Bush's numbers in the tank, no one's standing up for what he wants,'' Keene said. ``They all have different priorities.''
In addition to passing spending measures, Republicans leaders in both chambers say they intend to use the lame-duck session to work on such measures as one to allow surveillance of suspected terrorists, and on free-trade agreements with Vietnam and Peru.
Such sessions typically aren't very productive, and that will especially be true this year if Democrats are able to regain control of one or both chambers on Election Day, said Charles O. Jones, a resident scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
``I would expect they'll do what it takes to keep the government going, and not do very much else,'' Jones said. |
