Despite Accords, Major Parties Can Still Squabble

WASHINGTON —  It’s starting to look like a tale of two Capitols.

On Monday, Republicans and Democrats on a key House committee rubber-stamped a bill to shore up Medicare, burying the partisan hatchet on one of the most contentious issues of recent years.

Then on Tuesday, Democrats stopped all Senate business and staged an all-night protest of GOP tactics on a bill that President Clinton had just vetoed to provide emergency relief for California, the Dakotas and other disaster-stricken states.

It has seemed like a schizoid Capitol, where the Republican Congress and the Democratic president are shaking hands on the major issues of the 1990s one day and squabbling like schoolchildren the next over political arcana.

This may frustrate voters--particularly those in flood-damaged areas who wonder why federal relief funds seem to be held up by partisan bickering. Yet Washington’s two political faces may be related. Some analysts, including Clinton, argue that it is precisely because the two parties have agreed on so many of the big questions that they are reduced to maintaining their ideological identities by highlighting their differences on smaller issues.

“There were strong incentives to reach a balanced budget agreement,” said Gary L. Jacobsen, a political scientist at UC San Diego. “But now that they have done this, the Republicans in particular are anxious to differentiate themselves from the Democrats.”

Clinton expressed a similar view in a recent interview with columnists. While the two sides may continue to agree “on the big issues,” Clinton said, “along the way [the Republicans] will have a greater need--and our guys will have a greater need--for ideological fights to show the differences between them.”

That need to pick a fight now is being played out over the disaster aid bill, as well as on such diverse items as a proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag burning and competing bills to allow companies to give workers compensatory time in lieu of paying overtime.

Republican leaders plan to bring the flag-burning amendment to the floor of the House this week even though it clearly lacks the votes to pass. On overtime, Clinton and the Republicans have each offered proposals, but while compromise seems within reach, the two sides have found ways to keep disagreeing with each other.

Both parties seemed to have concluded that a message of the 1996 election was that voters wanted the parties to cooperate, end the bickering and get rid of the budget deficit. They agreed to do that in May, and Congress is now enacting the tax and spending legislation needed to carry out the balanced budget deal. Differences have emerged in the process of filling in the details, but there has been remarkable agreement over key elements, such as the Medicare bill approved overwhelmingly this week by the House Ways and Means Committee.

By contrast, nowhere has the partisan face of Congress produced more convoluted tactics than the beleaguered effort to provide $8.6 billion in disaster aid.

Clinton vetoed the bill Monday because Republicans included two amendments he opposed. One was designed to prevent a repeat of last year’s government shutdowns. Another would ban a proposed sampling technique for the 2000 census that Republicans fear would give Democrats a political advantage.

The disaster aid itself, which includes funds for levee repairs, cleanup of Yosemite National Park and similar items, is utterly noncontroversial. But the bill has suffered a torturous 80-day route through Congress because of the controversial riders and the energy expended by both parties to seize the public relations high ground.

Democrats have called countless news conferences and made as many speeches over the last three weeks, charging that Republicans are holding disaster aid hostage to their political agenda. They have gleefully pounced on an issue that they believe could be as politically damaging to the Republicans as the 1995-96 government shutdowns.

“Just stop the political games!” Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday. “This pattern of behavior by the Republican leadership is precisely what they did when they shut down the government.”

Republicans have responded with a public relations blitz of their own. When they finally cleared the disaster aid bill last week, House GOP leaders brought reporters in to watch them call the governor of North Dakota to tell him the bill was on its way--even though they knew it was destined for a veto. Over the weekend, they ran television ads in the Dakotas urging Clinton to sign the bill.

And after Democrats on Tuesday prevented Senate committee meetings and floor action, Republicans tried to use the government shutdown rhetoric themselves.

Democrats “have shut down the Senate,” proclaimed Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).

Majority Leader Trent Lott forced the Senate to adjourn early rather than allow Democrats to use the floor for their all-night talkathon. But Democrats planned to spend the night in their party leadership’s office, taking their case to radio and TV talk shows.

Republicans were defiant, but Lott said the GOP would entertain a proposal for a stripped-down bill to give aid to disaster victims and leave the rest for Congress and the White House to haggle over later.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that much was at stake in the anti-shutdown provision, which would increase Congress’ leverage in any future budget showdown with Clinton. The measure represented a backdoor attempt by Republicans to undo the budget agreement, she said.

“This fight had nothing to do with disaster relief. This fight was about the budget,” Boxer said outside the Capitol. Then she headed home to rest up for her 9 p.m. to midnight shift at the all-night vigil.