Kings of The Hill Who needs Dukakis?

“The tide of history,” Ronald Reagan told a conference of conservatives in 1986, “is all but irreversibly turned our way.” Last week the historic 100th Congress was busy debating federal funding for child care, job leave for parents, increases in the minimum wage and final touches on a welfare-reform act. The President himself signed into law a congressionally initiated expansion of the food-stamp program, the most sweeping in a decade. The actions simply underscored what the Democratic Congress has been proving throughout the final two years of Ronald Reagan’s second term: tides that flow also ebb.

Ironically, the most conservative President since Herbert Hoover has found his veto power no more effective than a thumb in the dike in stanching a flood of progressive (the “L” word is no longer used in capital environs) legislation. By the time Congress adjourns in mid-October, it will have compiled a record in passing landmark activist legislation exceeded in recent years only by the Great Society 89th Congress of 1965 and 1966. Says House Speaker Jim Wright by way of explanation: “There were pent-up needs too long deferred.” Adds Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd: “We were too long in the desert. It seemed like 40 years.”

What Byrd alludes to is the six years — not 40 — from 1981 through 1986 < when Republicans controlled the Senate. Unable to dominate powerful Capitol Hill committees and staffs for the first time in 26 years, Democrats chafed as Reagan made Congress dance to his less-government tune by advancing deregulation and cutting back on funds for housing, education and college loans. But when Reagan’s 1986 plea for continued Republican rule of the Senate failed to persuade enough voters, the Democrats won a 55-45 majority. With a party “more unified than at any time in my 36 years in Congress,” says Byrd, they forged a two-year legislative agenda they have largely completed.

In an early display of congressional muscle, both houses quickly passed a five-year, $20 billion clean-water act that Reagan had vetoed the previous session. When the President sent the bill back again, Congress easily overrode his veto. The pattern for the final two years of the lame-duck President’s term was set: in almost contemptuous defiance of vetoes and threats, Congress enacted expensive measures to improve highways and mass transit, mandate 60- day notification of plant closings and layoffs, provide help to the homeless, bolster elementary and secondary education, and provide protection against catastrophic illness.

As they rush to adjournment, the two houses are “within a thin dime” of an agreement on controversial welfare-reform legislation, according to its chief Senate sponsor, New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. An increase in the minimum wage is also likely. After last December’s so-called summit with the White House on reducing the federal deficit by $76 billion, both houses have passed all 13 appropriations bills, although differences in six remain to be reconciled.

The Senate Republican whip, Wyoming’s conservative Alan Simpson, agrees that the 100th Congress has compiled a remarkable record: “We got some good stuff through that’s not conservative or liberal but for the country.” He cites the U.S.-Canada free-trade agreement approved this week and notes bipartisan support for ratification of the INF treaty, in which the Senate insisted on some modifications. But domestic legislation is almost always more controversial than treaties.

The Democratic victory has not been total. Federal assistance in providing day care for children of working parents is almost certainly dead for this session. A clean-air bill that environmentalists contend is desperately needed appears bogged down beyond rescue in interhouse bickering. A campaign- reform measure strongly favored by Byrd died after eight unsuccessful votes to break a G.O.P. filibuster.

“It’s been a good Congress, somewhat driven by presidential politics,” says Norman Ornstein, analyst for the American Enterprise Institute. “Had it not been an election year, I don’t think we would have had an omnibus trade bill at all, and we almost certainly would not have had a plant-closings bill.” On the latter, Congress “outfoxed” the Administration, says Ornstein, putting the President in a position in which he would have undercut George Bush by vetoing a politically popular bill. Reagan allowed the measure to become law without his signature.

In fact, the President has spent the past two years counterpunching the Democrats, rarely giving in until zero hour, if at all. Reagan “has been a reluctant, incorrigible President,” says Byrd. Come Nov. 8, the Democrats may not be able to put Michael Dukakis in the Oval Office. But if, as expected, they continue to control Congress, the experience of the past two years suggests that for getting their agenda across, they may not need him.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: THE ACTIVIST CONGRESS

DESCRIPTION: Bills passed by 100th Congress and bills still to be considered.