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Senate Republicans are limping toward the August recess after ethical dilemmas and internal battles over legislation have dogged their caucus, but are eagerly awaiting a fall battle over federal spending and taxes they say will help heal the woes within the party.
Debate over spending legislation likely will dominate much of the autumn, since no fiscal 2008 bill has yet become law and the Senate has approved just one of the 12 annual funding measures. With the end of the fiscal year looming on Sept. 30, Congress will need to enact a stopgap measure to keep the government operating, and that may be followed by a
massive bill funding the entire federal government through fiscal 2008.
An omnibus spending bill will open the door for a fight over increased federal spending and whether to extend tax cuts the Republican-controlled Congress approved several years ago, a debate the GOP hopes will prompt unity on the right and energize the conservative base. Republicans are frustrated that they have not been able to take credit for signs of a strong economy, and want the fiscal spending debate to change that.
“These are difficult times,” the general chairman of the Republican Party, Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), said of the recent troubles facing the GOP conference. “But I think in the fall we’ll be working on spending issues, and as we focus on those, I think it’s much easier for us to be unified.”
Senate Democrats, though, are ready for the fight, pointing to their pay-as-you-go budgetary rules and efforts to pay for domestic programs they contend were under-funded when Republicans controlled Congress as evidence of a move toward fiscal responsibility in the 110th Congress. Democrats also note the slew of appropriations bills the 109th Congress punted to the 110th to complete.
But Republicans want to ride the theme of fiscal responsibility and couple it with a characterization of the Democratic-controlled Congress failing to produce legislative results. Republicans point to nine bills Congress approved before the 2005 August recess in comparing their reign with that of the Democrats, who have cleared two top priorities in the first seven months — an increase to the minimum wage and approval of a bill to implement recommendations by a bipartisan panel studying the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Democrats also are on the verge of clearing the most sweeping overhaul of ethics and lobbying rules since the Watergate era.
This Congress has been in session more days and has held more votes than the 109th Congress over a comparable period. Through the first seven months of the 110th Congress, the Senate has held 286 votes and has been in session 117 days. At the same point in the first year of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress, there had been 220 votes over 100 legislative days.
Standing Senate panels have held far more hearings during the Democratic-controlled Congress, a departure from what Democrats on those panels say was lax oversight of the Bush administration when Republicans controlled the chamber.
Senate committees have held 578 hearings, and panels have met to mark up legislation on 149 occasions. In the 109th Congress, there had been 167 markups and 504 hearings at a similar point.
“We’ve had more committee hearings, we’ve had more bills passed, more consequential legislation,” the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), said. “I look forward to that debate — it’s a chance to expose [Republicans’] hypocrisy and it’s why they lost the Senate.”
Republicans argue the drop in the number of markups and the increase in hearings show Democrats are more concerned with conducting overreaching investigations and less with producing legislation.
“They spend all their time investigating, and we spend months and months and months having Iraq debates that go nowhere,” a Senate GOP leadership aide said.
Senate Republicans have been successful in stalling parts of their adversaries’ agenda, such as a bill aimed at lowering prescription drug prices and repeated Democratic-led efforts to end the war in Iraq. But the caucus has been divided sharply over a range of high-profile issues, including immigration, energy, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the ethics and lobbying overhaul bill.
Moreover, success in stalling parts of the agenda has been in large part overshadowed by ethical questions surrounding Republican senators, most recently the FBI corruption investigation of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the dean of the GOP conference. That follows the revelation that conservative Louisiana Republican David Vitter’s phone number surfaced in the records of an alleged prostitution ring, which follows questions surrounding New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici’s contacts with U.S. attorneys.
More than anything, Democrats say, the Republican tenure in the minority has been characterized by “obstruction,” using any and all dilatory tactics to derail legislation.
“With the minority pushing for 60 votes [to pass legislation], yet accomplishments still occurring, I think you can say these [seven] months have been more productive than some people might imagine,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said.
Republicans say they are trying to avoid that “obstructionist” label and are focusing on a positive agenda for the fall, most notably their call for continued tax cuts. About 40 Republicans attended a Wednesday strategy meeting convened by Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (Ariz.), which touched on issues such as the economy, federal spending, energy, healthcare and Iraq, participants said. Kyl said he hopes to meet again in September to fine-tune the GOP message for what the party hopes are better days in the fall.
“Everybody has their ups and downs, and the great thing about politics is things can turn on a dime,” said the vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Jenny Gross contributed to this story.
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