The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Rarely have lawmakers confronted an agenda as ambitious as the one Congress will face upon convening this week, with an incoming president pushing to stabilize an economy on the brink of long-term recession, to create universal health coverage and to overhaul federal energy policies.
There are already signs that the usual divisions that send so many ambitious bills down to defeat will confront President-elect Barack Obama in his first weeks on the job. Some Republicans are spoiling for an early policy fight that will test Obama’s mettle, while a number of Democrats are seeking gains in exchange for supporting his initiatives. Conservative House Democrats are demanding that statutory deficit-reduction language be included in a pending economic-stimulus package that could ultimately cost a trillion dollars. And Senate centrists have warned that the incoming administration’s ambitious global warming legislation might be a non-starter.
Over the past 15 years, during which a large majority of current lawmakers were first elected to Congress, partisan feuding has reduced Congress’s output to a bare minimum of must-pass measures. Party-line voting peaked during the Bush presidency, while productivity slumped. The Senate held the lowest number of votes in 2008 since any year going back to 1951, according to a recent Congressional Quarterly survey.
With Republicans holding just enough seats to put the brakes on sweeping initiatives in the Senate, the new president’s agenda may rest on his ability to deliver on another campaign pledge, to change the way Washington does business by adopting a more pragmatic and inclusive governing style. And as the nation’s economic woes deepen, there are early indications that lawmakers may be willing to put aside precedent, as the incoming Obama administration - at least so far - sends the welcome signals to key constituencies.
“I’m encouraged by their talk. But their talk has to be followed up with action,” said Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 47 fiscally conservative House Democrats.
Rahm Emanuel, who recently resigned his House seat and will serve as Obama’s chief of staff, said that a shift in sentiment is already palpable and that the new administration plans to take full advantage. Lawmakers sense that the need for action is urgent, Emanuel said, and they recognize that Congress’s dismal approval ratings would make them easy scapegoats if the gamesmanship continues. “You never allow a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said. “People sense that we’re at a different moment in time, and that you have to put aside preconceived notions and partisanship to solve problems.”
Committee leaders in both parties worked through the holidays on several major initiatives, including a mammoth overhaul of the health-care system that is moving on a faster track than Obama officials had anticipated, and the stimulus bill lawmakers hope to have ready for Obama to sign soon after his swearing-in.
Republicans will hold at least 41 Senate seats, enough to filibuster if they maintain discipline in their ranks. Soon after the election, Obama began to reach out to individual GOP members through phone calls and meetings led by Emanuel. Beginning with the stimulus debate in early January, Obama will push for Republicans to be included in major policy negotiations as they unfold, senior Democratic aides said. The goal is to set a precedent with the economic recovery package and store goodwill for subsequent battles.
“We are not going to be hampered by ideology in trying to get this country back on track,” Obama said at a post-election National Governors Association meeting in Philadelphia. “If you can show me something you are doing that’s working, or if you tell me that this program or this regulation is hampering us from doing smart things that will advance the interests of your state, then you’re going to have a ready ear.”
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, is one of many GOP members eager for Congress to act big, for a change. He has spoken by telephone with Obama, a “welcome conversation,” as the veteran lawmaker put it. But Grassley also is also a realist, saying his party would be wise to re-examine its tactics.
“There’s a reality for Republicans that with lesser numbers, we’re going to have to pick and choose where we draw the line,” Grassley said. “There won’t be as many lines drawn as in the past.”
As useful as Republican support could prove, Obama also is attempting to become the first Democratic president since the mid-1960s to forge an effective working relationship with a big congressional majority of the same party. The last two Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, saw their party leaders on Capitol Hill turn against them, leading to electoral disasters for the party in 1980 and in 1994. An energy crisis helped to do in Carter, while a failed health-care proposal contributed to a Republican congressional landslide two years into Clinton’s first term.
Obama is trying to address both those issues while managing the largest global financial crisis since the Great Depression, along with the beginning of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.
But the economic downturn will represent the first test of Obama’s relationship with congressional Democrats, potentially pitting him against the party’s formidable wing of fiscal conservatives.
Leaders from both chambers sat down to work out details in meetings at the Capitol beginning in mid-December. With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., staking an early position in favor of a $500 billion recovery plan, Obama’s advisers spread the word that their plan would probably approach $850 billion.
These numbers sent sticker shock through the Blue Dog caucus, which has crusaded for federal deficit reduction and which represents a large enough force to block just about anything, particularly if Republicans hang together in opposition.
After discussions with Emanuel and other top Obama advisers, Hill said the caucus’s leaders decided to “set aside our strong feelings about deficit reduction” to support the plan, but with certain conditions. The group wants to insert statutory language in federal law instituting pay-as-you-go rules, which require spending cuts or tax increases to offset new federal programs.
When Democrats took power after the 2006 elections, Pelosi instituted internal House rules that required a “pay-go” principle to be considered. But it was routinely flouted the past two years as the Bush White House objected to its tight fiscal constrictions. In meetings after the November election, Obama advisers raised the idea of statutory pay-go, effectively making it a federal law, suggesting that Blue Dog demands will probably be met. But the critical issue will be working out the specific language because of the potential impact on other key items on the Obama agenda. For instance, would pay-go take effect immediately after the stimulus plan is approved, or later this year, after other pricey agenda items have been passed? Or would it wait until the economic crisis has eased?
With no answers yet on timing, Hill said he has been tasked by congressional leaders with crafting language defining emergency situations when pay-go rules could be ignored. But many Blue Dogs are pushing for an early imposition of pay-go rules, even if it creates problems for funding future initiatives such as health-care reform.
Overhauling the nation’s health-care system, to make it more efficient while extending coverage to more people, may represent Obama’s biggest policy challenge. But he may have advantages Democratic presidents lacked in the past.
Obama allies are pushing the idea that a federal health-care solution is not a threat to the nation’s fiscal stability, but part of the solution because of its potential to unlock business growth, create jobs and ultimately provide cheaper care for more Americans.
“I really am optimistic, although pragmatically optimistic,” said Chris Jennings, who represents various health-care clients and was a longtime adviser in the Clinton White House. “There’s a greater receptivity than there ever was, because people feel extraordinarily insecure right now.”
Senate health committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., started to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive bill last summer.
Two weeks after the election, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., convened a meeting of Senate Democratic and Republican committee leaders - and in a show of deference to his senior colleague, who is battling brain cancer, he held it in Kennedy’s Capitol office. Some preliminary health-care measures are likely to end up in the stimulus bill, including a down payment on converting all medical records to an electronic format. Other immediate priorities for the short term include an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and reauthorization of Medicare physician payment rates.
“I’m going to be working on health-care reform from the get-go,” Baucus said in an interview. “We can’t lose momentum here.”
By Obama’s own estimate, his proposal to move toward universal coverage would cost almost $65 billion a year, and his original plan was to finance it by increasing taxes on the top 5 percent of income earners. But in recent weeks, the president-elect has raised the possibility of waiting for the Bush tax cuts to expire, rather than repealing them, which would drain some funding for his health-care initiative.
That could sour some deficit hawks on the idea. “If that’s the case, there’s going to have to be a bit of a delay in doing some of the things he wanted to do in health care,” said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a leading centrist Democrat. “It’s going to be very problematic to me unless they can tell me how it’s going to be paid for.”
Energy and environmental issues represent areas where Democrats have large public approval but many competing ideas. In a mid-December Washington Post-ABC News poll, 84 percent of voters said Obama should push a federal program to rein in emissions from electricity companies while funding more renewable energy resources. After the economy, the issue rated as the highest in priority when voters were asked what they wanted Obama and Congress to tackle first.
As a candidate, Obama advocated a 10-year, $150 billion plan to fund private efforts at finding cleaner-burning renewable resources, in the hope of reducing reliance on foreign oil. While funding remains an issue, Obama and his allies hope to frame the debate in national security terms, stressing the dangers of continuing to import oil from nations with ties to terrorism.
Obama is almost certain to face strong resistance to the second prong of his energy legislation, a plan to reduce emissions, particularly from coal-burning power plants in the Rust Belt. He supports a “cap-and-trade” policy that sets emission standards for all companies but allows companies with larger emissions to purchase credits from companies that burn less.
But similar legislation has met with failure in the Senate, where it received 48 votes last June, a dozen shy of the 60 needed to clear a filibuster by lawmakers who say the policy would result in higher short-term energy costs for consumers. “It will not serve our purpose to push so hard for a clean environment that we hurt our economy,” Nelson warned. “People don’t want their energy bills to skyrocket.”
The good news for Obama is that other potential foes are taking a more cautious approach, reluctant to dismiss ideas outright, especially if the current conciliatory mood holds. Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, said he is encouraged by the burgeoning bipartisanship.
“The opportunity is there, but it’s going to take a real diplomatic effort and effective procedure and leadership to pull it off,” Gregg said. “You don’t have to get too far into the waters of these issues to start aggravating the sharks.”
Staff writer Ceci Connolly contributed to this report.
