Both the Democrats and the Republicans are posturing for the next election, which means that neither party has any real incentive to cooperate. The Republicans may be obstructing the Democrat's agenda, but that is exactly what the Democrats did before the last election.
Partisanship serves parties' interests
The GOP sees more advantage in disrupting congressional business, and Democrats see no incentive to accommodate the minority.
By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the House of Representatives lurched through its last rancorous hours over the weekend, there was much talk of shame and disappointment about the bitter partisanship that seemed to consume Congress ahead of its summer break.
But there were few real tears in the Capitol for the current state of affairs.
Seven months into Democrats' control of the House and Senate, the angry sparring has largely served the political interests of both parties, whose leaders often believe they have more to gain by warring with their rivals than by working with them.
Newly empowered Democrats, confident that the public backs their agenda and eager to expand their House and Senate majorities next year, have little incentive to accommodate the GOP minority.
They left town touting their successful efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, revamp ethics and lobbying rules, and implement the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, though many other major goals, such as ending the war in Iraq, were unrealized.
For their part, Republicans, who still lag in public opinion polls after losing the majority last year, see more advantage in disrupting congressional business in their quest to cast the Democratic Congress as ineffective.
They went home complaining of a "do-nothing" Congress, even after they used one procedural tactic after another to stall legislative business.
"This is an era of partisan gridlock," said Julian E. Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University, who pointed to the polarizing influences of the Iraq war and the fast-approaching 2008 election season.
In one of the session's last debates, the two parties clashed bitterly over a Bush administration demand to modify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to expand the authority of U.S. spy agencies to monitor overseas phone calls and e-mails. The measure ultimately passed over the objections of many House and Senate Democrats, and President Bush signed it into law Sunday.
Few expected a flowering of comity when control of the Capitol shifted in January after 12 years of nearly total GOP rule.
The parties were coming off a fiercely contested election. Democrats, who won narrow majorities in both chambers, were smarting from years of iron-fisted tactics by the Republican majority. They were determined to challenge the White House and enact their priorities after years in the wilderness.
Republicans, stunned and bitter over losing their majorities, were in little mood to compromise. And Bush set a confrontational tone by announcing Jan. 10, six days after the Congress was sworn in, that he would boost troop levels in Iraq.
Partisan tensions intensified as Democrats pushed their legislative campaign to force the president to begin pulling troops out of Iraq. Senate Republicans repeatedly filibustered Democratic legislation, using parliamentary maneuvers to stop war-related measures that commanded the support of a majority of senators.
In the last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) struck back, calling an all-night session to debate the war and then pulling a defense spending bill to prevent GOP senators from voting on their alternatives.
In the House, Democrats used that chamber's rules to limit debate on major legislation and prevent Republicans from offering amendments, mirroring tactics that GOP leaders had employed when they were in control.
House Republicans retaliated with an insurgent campaign to stop debate altogether. Between Wednesday and Saturday, they forced six votes to adjourn.
Last week, shouts and hisses erupted amid disputes over votes, with Republicans storming from the House chamber at one point Thursday night.
The partisan battling has helped drive down public approval of Congress, which had risen after the Democratic wins last year. That has delighted GOP leaders, who are trumpeting the public's frustration with the slow pace of legislation under Democratic stewardship.
"The new direction Washington Democrats promised the American people has become a maze of their own making," Rep. Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said in the conference's weekly radio address.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found public disapproval with the Democratic leadership at 54%, its highest level this year. The survey also found that the percentage of people reporting they were happy that Democrats had taken control of Congress dropped 10 points since November, from 60% to 50%.
The partisanship has also complicated the Democrats' attempts to promote their accomplishments.
Besides their success on increasing the federal minimum wage, ethics and lobbying, and the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations, Democrats have moved forward with initiatives to expand health insurance for children through the State Children's Health Insurance Program and to shift U.S. energy policy away from reliance on fossil fuels.
And even though they have not succeeded in forcing a troop withdrawal from Iraq, they have helped focus the war debate on the question of when, not if, U.S. forces will begin pulling out.
It has been the recent partisan squabbling that has been grabbing headlines, however. Republicans "would rather you talk about that," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said dryly last week.
But Democrats often have seemed just as happy to cast their GOP rivals as obstacles to changing the U.S. policy in Iraq, battling global warming or passing other popular initiatives.
Rather than offer compromises on the war that could garner Republican support, congressional Democrats have worked with liberal grass-roots groups like MoveOn.org to hammer GOP lawmakers in their home states for backing the unpopular conflict.
By reinforcing the differences between the parties, Democrats are playing to a public that continues to favor them over the Republicans, a fact repeatedly cited by Democratic leaders.
In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, respondents deemed Republicans better equipped to deal with only one of 20 issues. Out of a list that included the war, the economy and domestic security, Republicans were seen as more capable of "promoting strong moral values."
"If you look at the environment and you look at where things are, I'd clearly rather be us than them," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a top Democratic strategist who led the effort to win the House majority last year.
But these confrontational tactics create risks for both parties. Another year of open warfare may deprive Democrats of the real legislative accomplishments they will want at election time. And it will do little to rebuild the trust that Republicans lost on the way to their drubbing last fall.
But few lawmakers see much chance that relations will be any more cordial when Congress reconvenes in September. Debates on federal spending and the war promise to bring the White House into the fight, as well.
"The confrontation is going to be historic," predicted Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading war critic who chairs the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee. "September is when it really counts."
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noam.levey@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Richard Simon and Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.
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