[Mb-civic] The Congress, Trouble and Strife Economist

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The White House and Congress

Trouble and strife
Jan 6th 2005 | WASHINGTON, DC
>From The Economist print edition

The new Congress could be one of the most interesting on record. That's
³interesting² as in the Chinese curse

THE 109th Congress began work this week with a bang. The Senate was due to
hold the first confirmation hearings of the new administration, grilling
Alberto Gonzales, George Bush's nominee for attorney-general, about his
views about the quaintness of the Geneva conventions and the infamous
torture memo he was sent. Both houses agreed to finance Mr Bush's promised
$350m for tsunami victims‹and maybe add more.

Congressional Republicans chose not to loosen in-house ethics rules that
would have protected their majority leader, Tom DeLay from having to resign
if he were to be indicted. This act of discretion briefly dampened worries
about the dangers of hubris in a second term. But the Republicans undid the
good work by voting to limit ways in which House ethics investigations can
be launched. Meanwhile, the administration was beavering away on its
proposed 2006 budget, the state-of-the-union address, a big speech on Social
Security and the president's fence-mending trip to Europe‹all of which are
due to take place in the next two months.

In Mr Bush's first term, relations between Congress and the White House were
unusually good. This was not just because Republicans were in charge at both
ends of Pennsylvania Avenue (you need only think of the first two years of
Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter to realise that one-party government is no
recipe for concord). Rather, it was because there was an implicit political
bargain: Republicans backed Mr Bush's agenda to the hilt, reckoning his
electoral coat-tails would help them get re-elected too. If Mr Bush
sometimes rode roughshod over Congress, well, the bargain was still a good
one.

The composition of Congress has barely altered: the Republicans increased
their majority in the House by three seats and by four in the Senate. The
Republican leadership remains the same (though the Democrats lost their
Senate leader, Tom Daschle, in November). But for one or two more budget
hawks and more social conservatives, there is little in the make-up of the
new Congress that should make it harder to control than the previous one.

But the discipline imposed by Mr Bush's re-election drive has gone, to be
replaced by worries of losses in the 2006 mid-term elections. Congressmen
fret that a president with one eye on his legacy will sacrifice his
colleagues' short-term interests for his long-term aims. The first stirrings
of discontent are already being heard from Republican congressmen. In Mr
Bush's second term they are determined to grab a bigger role in shaping
legislation than they played during the rubber-stamping first term.

So the glue that held the two halves of Republican government together has
somewhat weakened. On top of that, Mr Bush has set out one of the most
ambitious second-term agendas of any president for decades‹perhaps since
Franklin Roosevelt. By laying out grandiose, nation-changing policies, he
hopes to rally what might otherwise be a fractious Congress and avoid the
passivity that has led many second-term presidents into danger. But in
trying to avoid one threat, Mr Bush is risking its opposite: overreach,
especially because his most important proposals could unify the Democrats
and strain parts of his Republican alliance.

Of these, the most ambitious is his proposal to reform Social Security,
America's state pension system. On the campaign trail, Mr Bush said he
wanted to permit younger workers to divert part of their payroll taxes,
which now go to the state-run Social Security trust fund, into private
accounts. The details of the proposal have yet to be released (or perhaps
even worked out). But three things seem certain:

€ It will be hugely expensive. Depending on how much is diverted, the
transition costs are likely to be 1-1.5% of GDP a year for five years. That
comes at a time when the budget deficit is already almost 4% of GDP and the
dollar is falling as a result.

€ Mr Bush will have to deal both with opposition and competing proposals
from his own party. Congressman Tom Davis from Virginia says that around two
dozen Republicans do not want Mr Bush to tackle the ³third rail² of politics
at all. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina does want to grab it, but
would help pay for reform by increasing the amount of income subject to
payroll tax‹a tax rise Mr Bush has rejected.

€ Any proposal will cause a partisan battle in Congress and a wider fight in
the country. In the past, some centrist Democrats have been receptive to
reforming Social Security. But their most vocal proponent, John Breaux,
retired from the Senate last year and now the party seems to have dug in its
heels in opposition. Perhaps more important, so has the AARP, previously the
American Association of Retired Persons. Since the AARP's support was vital
to the passage of the Medicare reform last year, its decision is potentially
a serious setback for the White House.

Hold your horses

As with Social Security, tax reform is an impenetrable thicket both
technically and politically. The aim is laudable: to simplify the code and
shift the burden of tax away from investment income towards consumption. But
unlike with the first-term tax cuts, which left current voters with a tidy
sum and future generations to pay for it, tax reform (assuming it is revenue
neutral, as Mr Bush has promised) is a zero-sum game. If somebody's taxes go
down in the name of reform, someone else's must go up. Persuading the
Republican majority to accept any sort of tax rise could be hard. So the
White House is not rushing into this either. The president is to appoint a
special task force soon, which is supposed to come up with recommendations
later in the year, setting the stage for congressional action next
year‹possibly after the mid-term elections, possibly not even then.

While Social Security and tax reform smoulder away in the background, the
issue that is likely to explode immediately is the appointment of judges.
The conflict is not over who should be appointed to the bench, but how far
Republicans should go in order to get their way.

The Senate must confirm judges nominated to the federal bench. During 2004,
Democrats used filibusters to block votes on ten of Mr Bush's more
conservative nominees‹that is, used a parliamentary technique that requires
a super-majority of 60 to win a vote. The Republicans did not gain enough in
the Senate to reach that level, so their party's leader there, Bill Frist,
has threatened to hold a vote declaring filibusters unconstitutional, which
(oddly) would require only a simple majority. That would then enable Mr Bush
to ram his choices through the Senate (he blithely renominated the judges
whom Democrats had filibustered).

But this is not called ³the nuclear option² for nothing. The Senate has
ponderous and peculiar rules specifically to rein in hasty
majoritarianism‹and several Republican as well as Democratic senators are
reluctant to see these rules scrapped. New Hampshire's John Sununu has come
out against the idea, and senators may yet face the stark choice between Mr
Bush's nominees and their own traditions.

None of this means Mr Bush cannot get anything done. The increase in his
party's majority will probably allow him, for example, to get his energy
bill through the Senate (complete with drilling in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge). But the real significance of the disputes lies in the
nature of the likely conflict between the White House and Congress.

Many second-term presidents have clashed with Congress, usually over
scandals (the Lewinsky affair, Iran-contra, Watergate). By tackling such
fundamental issues as the structure of America's biggest entitlement
programme, Mr Bush has raised the stakes in his second term, and the
disputes with Congress could be more than usually consequential.