The High Price of Gridlock

Out in Montana, where politicians often dress like lumberjacks, Republican Senator Conrad Burns derides his Democratic challenger as “Bill Clinton in a plaid shirt.” In a North Carolina congressional race, the Republican candidate is airing videotape of his Democratic rival jogging with the unpopular President, as a voice-over intones, “Look who Martin Lancaster is running around with in Washington!” Other TV ads for Republicans across the country are using special effects to morph their Democratic opponents’ faces into the visage of President Clinton — who must wonder why, if he has all these clones on Capitol Hill, he can’t pass his legislation.

As the 103rd Congress slouches toward its scheduled adjournment this Friday, Clinton and his Democrats look unable to win passage for any of their remaining legislative priorities. Most urgent among the stalled bills: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, which would create thousands of new U.S. jobs and enjoys majority support. But it is held hostage by a single Democrat: Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, who is battling to shelter his state’s powerful textile interests from the global competition that other U.S. industries and workers are facing — and winning. Senate leaders vowed to press for a vote this week or during a special session in late November. But optimism was hard to sustain in the twilight of a session where the obstructionists sounded so gleeful and the serious legislators, of both parties, looked resigned to failure.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Democrats who rule both houses of Congress had blamed Washington’s stasis on George Bush and Ronald Reagan and promised to “end the gridlock” if only voters would send a Democrat to the White House. And, to be sure, President Clinton and Congress have reduced the budget deficit, expanded trade with Mexico and Canada and passed a big anticrime bill. But as his approval ratings have dived into the low 40s, the President and his party’s leaders have failed to win sufficient support among Democrats in Congress to pass such major legislation as health reform and GATT.

The mood among voters, while spiteful toward incumbents of all stripes, sounds especially hostile toward the party running the Washington circus. Polls in recent weeks show a distinct shift in preference toward Republican candidates over Democrats, especially among those likeliest (read: angriest) to turn out and vote on Nov. 8. Democratic stalwarts like Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee and House Speaker Tom Foley are running behind or just even in their races. Their challengers appeal to voters like Kevin Davis, an electrical technician from Okmulgee, Oklahoma. “I hate career politicians,” he says. “I think they ought to serve a term or two and get out.”

A party that has just reclaimed the White House usually loses about 12 House seats in its first midterm election. But something quite different is happening this year. Republicans, who only weeks ago would have been pleased to add three seats to the 44 they hold in the Senate and 20 to the 178 they command in the House, now relish the prospect that they might win effective control — and perhaps an outright majority — in one or both chambers.

This excitement was palpable last Tuesday afternoon on the sun-drenched steps of the Capitol’s west front, where House minority whip Newt Gingrich assembled more than 300 Republican candidates for Congress and predicted they would soon be running the place. Posing for scores of TV cameras from stations around the country, each candidate signed a Gingrich-inspired and pollster- tested “Contract with America,” intended to mark Republicans as “outsiders” itching to clean up Washington. (On the advice of pollster Frank Luntz, the word “Republican” appeared nowhere in the background of the TV shot. “The party name should not be so prominent,” Luntz wrote in a Sept. 2 memo to Republican leaders, “that it destroys the message.”) The contract calls for big tax cuts, new spending on Star Wars missile defense and a balanced-budget amendment. It would cut federal spending on programs, including school lunches, for legal and illegal immigrants and the poor. It would impose term limits for members of Congress (though not, of course, for Gingrich and others already ensconced in the Capitol).

White House officials decried the contract’s fiscal prescriptions as “Voodoo II” — the same witches’ brew that during the 1980s swelled the budget deficit and drove up interest rates. Gingrich and his followers disagreed, but at the same time admitted that theirs was less a governing agenda than a battle plan. They showed the Democrats what they will be up against — in numbers and intensity — in the fall campaign and afterward. Few of the hopefuls sweating on the Capitol steps last Tuesday resembled Bob Michel, the decent, gentle, gee-whillikers Congressman from Illinois who retires this year as House minority leader. Like Gingrich, the G.O.P. hopefuls see themselves as mujahedin and Clinton as the Great Satan. As a smiling Gingrich told Clinton during a recent White House meeting, “We will do everything we can to beat you.” And the G.O.P. probably will get help from rebellious Democrats and the Clinton team’s frequent fumbling and procrastination, as they did in blocking the half a dozen major bills that lay stalled last week. Among them:

FREE TRADE: Last April, in a private chat with U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, Hollings offered “some friendly advice.” Don’t wait until the end of the congressional session to submit the GATT treaty, Hollings warned. “It’s going to take time. I’ve got problems with it.” But the Administration got tied down negotiating concessions for lawmakers on other committees and failed to officially submit the treaty until last week. Hollings declared that he would invoke his right, as Commerce chairman, to delay consideration in the Senate for 45 days. Senate majority leader George Mitchell responded by scheduling a special lame-duck session for Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. Leaders of both parties say they have the votes for GATT to pass today, but that could change over the next two months.

HEALTH CARE: Senate Finance Committee chairman Pat Moynihan last week launched a final bid to pass an incremental health-reform bill. But most lawmakers pitied the New York Democrat for trying CPR on a corpse. Even so temperate a Republican as Richard Lugar of Indiana observed that among his constituents, “people have become so afraid of what health-care reform might do to them that they’re relieved nothing is getting through this year.”

CAMPAIGN-FINANCE REFORM: For months the main disagreements on this issue were between House and Senate Democrats. Finally last Wednesday, Democrats in both houses reached agreement on a bill that would have curbed the influence of big campaign contributors while diminishing the advantages of incumbents over challengers. If Democrats had agreed on this bill two months ago, lawmakers say, it probably would have passed. But by last week there was no time left to wear down the opposition. The Senate last Friday failed to shut off debate on the issue, with five Democrats joining 41 Republicans in opposition. Senate majority leader Bob Dole, in a fit of candor, explained that spending limits would hurt Republican candidates more than Democrats, adding, “We don’t see why we should help them do us harm.”

Having failed to pass serious campaign-finance reform, the Congress was steaming toward almost certain approval of new rules against taking free meals, golf trips and other goodies from lobbyists. Bob Michel wryly observed that soon a lobbyist’s PAC won’t be able to buy him a Big Mac — but can give him a $5,000 campaign contribution.

MINING REFORM: Congress on Thursday abandoned attempts to reconcile bills passed by the House and Senate to reform the 1872 Mining Act, which has allowed mining companies to take title to land for as little as $2.50 an acre and mine billions of dollars’ worth of gold, silver and other minerals without paying royalties. Environmentalists and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt vowed to amend the mining law to ensure pollution control and a decent royalty for taxpayers. But that effort failed under pressure from the mining industry and its allies among Western lawmakers.

CALIFORNIA DESERT PROTECTION ACT: This bill would restrict commercial development on 8 million acres of scenic desert while accommodating users ranging from hikers to hunters and motorcyclists. Pushed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, similar bills passed by 2-to-1 votes in both the House and Senate. But now that Republican Representative Michael Huffington is pulling closer in his challenge to Feinstein, G.O.P. lawmakers are using procedural tricks to block the House and Senate measures from being reconciled in conference. “Why give Feinstein a big bill-signing ceremony?” asked an adviser to Dole. “That might be worth a point or two on Election Day.”

George Mitchell splutters that “in the 210 years of the U.S. Senate, there has never been a series of filibusters blocking movement of bills to conference. This has been total obstruction.” He neglects to note, however, that Democrats joined in much of the obstruction. And the response of voters is mixed. They tell pollsters they don’t like gridlock, yet they said they favor divided government 47% to 37% in a recent TIME poll. When nothing happens, frustrated voters lay most of the blame on the Democrats, who are in charge. Says Hastings Wyman, who has published the Southern Political Report for 16 years: “Anti-incumbency is part of this, but it’s not that generic. It’s geared mostly against the Democrats. The Republicans aren’t facing the same stresses.”

The “Contract with America” signed by Republicans last week gives them a clutch of red-meat issues with which to energize voters angry at the Democrats and encourages those voters to turn out — a particular concern in midterm elections, when only about 35% to 40% of those eligible cast ballots. Already, Democratic candidates have been spooked by high Republican turnout in the primaries — and low turnout among Democrats. “The Republican base vote is more motivated than ours this year,” said Donald Sweitzer, political director of the Democratic National Committee. “We don’t have a lot of sexy, hot- button issues.”

At the same time, Democratic incumbents have yet to take their turn at bat; most will improve their standing — and drive up the negatives of their opponents — once they get out of Washington to campaign at the end of this week. Those with seniority can remind constituents of the pork-barrel spending, the tax loopholes and other goodies they have delivered for big employers in the district. Democratic strategists predict that the threat of a Republican takeover of Congress — and of cuts in programs popular not only with the poor but also with the middle classes — will help mobilize their force. “Do the Republicans want to take on seniors? Labor? Veterans? Farmers? Social Security recipients and all the rest?” asks a White House official.

More centrist Clinton advisers hope that a more Republican Congress will allow the President to shift toward the political center, recapturing the New Democrat themes that helped elect him in 1992 and will serve him well in 1996. But these sources sound more wishful than confident. And there are complications, including the risk of angering Democrats on the left and inspiring someone like Jesse Jackson to run as an independent and divert votes from Clinton. “Many people are alienated and are finding the parties indistinguishable on matters that are vital,” Jackson warned in an interview with TIME. “That’s why you’re seeing such a large column of people in the independent area.”

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 400 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Sept. 22 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 5%.