Pass the Sour Grapes, Not Sweet Potatoes [+ Congress In Review]

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — Congress broke for Thanksgiving with a final burst of partisan recriminations over the conduct of a session that produced Medicare changes, tax cuts and hard feelings certain to spill over into the 2004 campaign.

Republican leaders, who labeled Democrats obstructionists, celebrated the addition of prescription drug coverage to the Medicare insurance program as just the latest in a string of accomplishments that could improve their appeal with a range of voters.

Democrats asserted that Republicans, in their drive to prove they could deliver when controlling both the House and the Senate, badly bent Congressional rules and resorted to "brass knuckles" to force through flawed legislation that will backfire with the public.

Independent analysts said that adoption of the Medicare legislation, at least in the short term, could be enough to rate the year a Republican success even though the leadership failed to advance a broad energy proposal sought by President Bush and could not finish the annual spending work on time. Congress will return for a day or two next month to try to unsnarl the money mess.

But the session could ultimately be most notable for surly clashes between the parties, and tactics employed by Republicans that might have reached their lowest point with an almost three-hour predawn vote in the House on Saturday to pass the Medicare plan.

"If you were to judge this Congress by how it operated, the process by which it operated, and the quality of the legislative product, I would give it a D minus," said Thomas Mann, a longtime student of Congress at the Brookings Institution. "This session of Congress may be remembered more for the death of regular order than for anything else."

Republicans dismiss suggestions that they ran roughshod over the minority in a year in which they also enacted a $350 billion tax cut and state aid package, imposed a ban on an abortion procedure and provided money for the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said, "Our efforts have improved the security of America and the lives of all Americans in significant ways."

Republicans believe they helped themselves with conservatives by finally enacting the ban on the procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion. They sought to show their compassionate side with more money to fight AIDS overseas. They sold the tax cuts as a boon to the middle class despite criticism that the cuts were weighted toward the affluent. The Medicare plan was an effort to transform how the party is viewed by older voters.

"After seven years of working on this, we know that seniors, individual seniors, are going to have access to better health care after today than they did at the beginning of the year," the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, said after the Medicare initiative was adopted on Tuesday.

Democrats do not see it quite that way. The Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, lashed out at what he called "extraordinarily inept" handling of the spending bills by the Republicans. He said the Congressional leadership was running up the deficit and joining Mr. Bush in presiding over an economy that was shedding jobs. And Mr. Daschle made no apologies for Democrats' blocking six judicial nominees through filibuster and standing in the way of other legislation, like changes in the handling of class-action suits.

"We have worked well with them on some things, but there are things for which we will do all that we can to oppose this administration because we think they are wrong for the country," Mr. Daschle said. "We ought to use all the tools available to us."

Democrats are not willing to concede that the Medicare plan will cut into their traditional edge on the issue with older voters. In a memorandum circulated on Tuesday by Representative Robert T. Matsui of California, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Mr. Matsui told lawmakers that Democrats would be able to wield it as a political weapon in 2004.

"Not a single senior will have drug coverage through Medicare next year, and when the meager benefit does come, it won't be until 2006," Mr. Matsui wrote in the memorandum, which concluded: "Unfortunately for Republicans, they won't be able to undo the mistakes they've made on Medicare anytime soon."

Republican lawmakers were sent home with instructions as well. "We have to illustrate the Democrats' obstruction in very clear ways," Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said in a strategy paper. He listed judicial nominations, the drug plan and the class-action proposal as prime areas of Democratic resistance. He also urged his colleagues to point out accomplishments like the tax cuts and support for the war on terrorism.

The clash over the judges led to one of the memorable events of the year. Frustrated by the ability of Senate Democrats to hold together filibusters first against Miguel Estrada and then against a handful of other nominees, the Republican leadership set aside nearly 40 straight hours of floor time this month to try to prove that Democrats were misusing the constitutional power of "advice and consent."

Democrats countered that Republicans had stalled even more Democratic nominees during the Clinton years, and at the end of the marathon, their filibusters were intact.

Democrats in both chambers also complained that they had been shut out of important House-Senate negotiations on Medicare, energy and other issues, which they said contributed to the opposition to the Medicare plan and played a central role in stalling the energy bill.

"That really poisoned the well," said Senator Max Baucus of Montana, one of two Democrats allowed into the Medicare talks, about the decision to exclude others.

The frequent flashes of rancor in the Senate paled in comparison with the relations in the House, where Democrats complained that the Republican majority exercised iron-fisted control and prevented the minority from representing the interests of their constituents.

"This is government of the few, by the few, for the few," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, who rated the session a dismal failure.

Throughout the year, House Democrats chafed at being prevented from offering their versions of legislation on the floor. A clash between Democrats and Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee ended with the Capitol police being summoned. Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California and chairman of the panel, later made a tearful apology on the House floor.

But the troubled relations ruptured anew with the extended roll-call vote on Medicare, held open as Republicans struggled desperately to find a few votes to save the Medicare plan and prevent a humiliating loss for themselves and President Bush. Democrats called it a travesty.

John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, said that considering the speaker's longtime advocacy of a drug plan, Mr. Hastert did not think three more hours was too long to wait. Mr. Hastert himself, in a speech this month on the role of the speaker, said he was willing to take the steps necessary to score legislative victories.

"The hallmark of an effective leadership is one that can deliver the votes," he said. "And we have been an effective leadership."

Congress in Review

Before heading home for Thanksgiving break, Congress wrapped up most of its business for the year. Here is a look at some of the major items it completed and some of those that were left undone.

FINISHED

ALERT SYSTEM Expanded a national system to help find missing children.

ABORTION Approved legislation that would prohibit doctors from performing the procedure that opponents have named partial-birth abortion.

MEDICARE Approved legislation that would add prescription drug benefits to Medicare and overhaul the government-run health program. The bill would offer a new drug benefit to the 40 million elderly and disabled Americans covered by Medicare, beginning in 2006.

WAR COSTS Approved $87.5 billion for defense and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, including nearly $65 billion for troops and operations in both countries and an additional $18.6 billion for reconstruction in Iraq.

TAX CUTS Passed a $350 billion package of tax cuts and state assistance intended to energize the economy — $320 billion in tax cuts over 10 years and $20 billion over the next two years to state and local governments.

FORESTS Cleared legislation that would allow the burning of underbrush and the thinning of trees on as much as 20 million acres of federal land as an effort to reduce catastrophic forest fires.

UNFINISHED

E-MAIL A plan to authorize the Federal Trade Commission to come up with a way to regulate commercial e-mail, including the possibility of creating a national “do not e-mail” registry, awaits final House action. The list would allow people to prohibit marketers from sending them unsolicited e-mail.

ENERGY The House passed the first major energy legislation in a decade. The bill includes $23 billion in tax breaks over 10 years and seeks to encourage greater domestic oil and gas production, energy efficiency, construction of new coal and nuclear power plants and greater stability and investment in the nation’s power grid. The bill does not permit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The bill was blocked in the Senate.

WELFARE The House voted to renew the 1996 welfare law. The renewal provides $16.5 billion a year for states to run their welfare programs, imposes stricter work requirements on poor people who receive cash assistance from the federal government, provides up to $300 million a year for programs to promote stable marriages, and includes a modest increase in child care spending. The Senate did not act.

CLASS-ACTION SUITS The House approved a bill that would limit most big class-action lawsuits to federal court. Suits with at least 100 plaintiffs and at least $5 million at stake would be moved from state courts and sent to federal courts if fewer than two-thirds of the class members were from the same state. Democrats blocked the bill in the Senate, but lawmakers say they are near agreement and hope to consider the measure next year.

BANKRUPTCY The House voted again to overhaul the nation’s bankruptcy system and make it harder for people to escape debts by filing for bankruptcy. There was no action in the Senate.

CHILD TAX CREDIT The House and Senate passed bills that would give increased child tax credits to millions of low-income families who did not receive them in the new tax cut law. Negotiations on a compromise are stalled.

NOMINATIONS Senate Democrats blocked votes on six of President Bush’s nominees for the federal appeals courts.

APPROPRIATIONS Congressional negotiators reached agreement on Tuesday on an $820 billion catch-all spending proposal that incorporates 7 of 13 spending bills that were not approved. The House and Senate are scheduled to return in early December to consider the plan. If it does not pass, much of the federal government will remain under a stopgap measure that extends through January.

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