WASHINGTON — If you want to measure the growing sophistication of the Republican leaders of Congress, you have only to compare the end-of-the-session agendas of 1995, their first year in power, with those of the last two years.
That 1995 session of Congress ended with the shutdown of government — a budgetary impasse which President Clinton was able to blame on the recalcitrance of Newt Gingrich, the freshman speaker of the House. At a conference on Capitol Hill recently, Gingrich was still defensive about the action, asking rhetorically, "What did we lose?"
His point was that the public dislike of the shutdown was not serious enough to prevent the Republicans from keeping control of the House in 1996 — and ever since. What he failed to acknowledge was the way Clinton’s exploitation of the shutdown helped position the politically weakened president for re-election — and embarrass Bob Dole, the 1996 nominee who, as Senate Republican leader, had privately opposed the tactic.
In the last two years, it has become clear that George Bush’s White House, in conjunction with the Republican leadership of the House and Senate, has fully grasped the political importance of the final stages of the congressional session.
The public is only occasionally attentive to the work on Capitol Hill. Bills that are passed or defeated during the winter, the spring or the dog days of summer either remain invisible or quickly fade from memory. But the news media — and, to some extent, the public — wake up for the last act.
In 2002, the Republicans arranged for the final item on the agenda before Congress broke for the midterm election to be the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal started with the Democrats and was initially opposed by the White House. But Bush reversed himself, made it a priority and reveled in the fact that Senate Democrats delayed passing it because the Republicans would not agree to extend traditional civil service protections to employees of the new bureaucracy.
In the shorthand of the campaign, that turned into the charge that Democrats were playing politics with the nation’s security. It played well in states such as Georgia and helped the Republicans regain control of the Senate.
Now fast forward to the current year. Some time back in the spring, Congress heeded a call from Bush for another tax cut. But judging from the voter interviews I did last month, few people remember or are much impressed by the money they saved as a result.
But now, with trumpets blaring, the Republicans have brought forward two genuinely big bills for the session’s end — each of them more than 1,000 pages and loaded with goodies for constituencies large and small.
The energy bill has sweeteners for almost every part of the country, with generous allocations for Midwest corn growers, for the cleanup of Gulf Coast wetlands and for literally dozens of industry groups and their workers.
But it is a piker compared to the $400 billion Medicare reform and prescription drug bill, offering the millions of Medicare beneficiaries and those who expect to be on the program the prospect, for the first time, of getting help from Uncle Sam for their medications.
The Democrats will tell you that the energy bill does nothing substantial to reduce America’s dangerous dependence on imported oil. They argue that the promised Medicare drug benefit is inadequate and that the long-term changes the bill makes in Medicare will hurt — not help — its beneficiaries.
But for the millions who know not much more than the headlines blaring that energy and Medicare have been addressed by Congress, this is a ten-strike — a sign, if you will, that Republicans are getting things done.
As this is written, Democrats are debating among themselves whether to go along with the Medicare bill; they already have conceded defeat on the energy legislation. If they allow Bush his Medicare victory, they will once again look feckless. If they try to stop Medicare with a filibuster, they will be labeled as obstructionists.
It is not a comfortable place for them to be. And it is certainly no accident that the Republicans — smart devils that they are — have put them there.
David Broder is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him by writing to
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