New year may ring in discord for bickering, partisan Congress

WASHINGTON – Holiday cheer was in short supply in Washington last week as lawmakers ended a topsy-turvy year with a series of bitter partisan battles on everything from a belt-tightening budget to drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge.

It was a tense and cranky finish to a year marked by surprising political reversals for Republicans, who started 2005 with a legislative bang but ended in near-gridlock.

Indeed, senators barely made it home for Christmas after a last-minute legislative crunch, and the House was even forced to punt one final vote – on the contentious budget measure – into 2006.

The new year may ring in even more discord.

On the political horizon is the likely trial of ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on campaign finance charges, plus continued fallout from the investigation into disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and a potential leadership shake-up if rank-and-file Republicans call for new elections.

The Senate will start the year with a divisive battle over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito and a contentious investigation into President George W. Bush’s secret domestic spy program after Sept. 11.

Then there’s the war in Iraq, which will likely loom over the political landscape next year.

“It’s a recipe for a stalemate,” said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University. “It’s going to be hard for Congress to do very much, given that it’s election year and there are so many scandals and controversies on the agenda.”

The year will begin with what lawmakers left undone last week: a measure to trim nearly $40 billion from the federal budget over the next five years.

Republicans hailed the budget deal, saying it would bring much-needed fiscal discipline to the spiraling federal deficit by trimming growth in entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare, for the first time in nearly a decade. House conservatives pushed for the cuts in the wake of multibillion-dollar outlays to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“The response to Hurricane Katrina was the New Deal on steroids,” said Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo. The budget means “we will be somewhat responsible in terms of our level of spending.”

But liberal opponents cried “Scrooge,” saying the bill would cut programs for the poor to pave the way for tax cuts for the rich next year.

The measure narrowly passed the Senate after Vice President Dick Cheney cut short an overseas trip to cast the tie-breaking vote. Even though Democrats failed to stop the bill, they forced several small changes – enough to trigger a second House vote, which lawmakers delayed until January.

The budget debate was tame compared with the tangle over other measures taken up in the closing days of 2005.

In two stinging defeats, Senate Republicans failed to overcome Democratic-led filibusters blocking renewal of the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping counterterrorism law first passed after Sept. 11; and a proposal to open an Arctic wildlife refuge to oil drilling.

In both cases, a handful of Republicans bucked their party and gave Democrats two year-end victories.

Lawmakers passed a short-term extension of the Patriot Act. They will have to jump-start negotiations on that measure early next year, amid a charged investigation into Bush’s decision after Sept. 11 to allow the National Security Agency to wiretap some phone calls without court orders.

As for the drilling measure – a key priority for Bush and congressional Republicans – its fate appears dim if not dead, along with other major Bush initiatives such as Social Security private accounts.

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., and others predicted that 2006 would be a politically turbulent year and it would be difficult to achieve any sweeping legislation, particularly on such hot-button issues as immigration reform.

For one thing, the president’s popularity is sagging and his political capital has been sapped by an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

“The national debate on the war has finally started,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., an early critic of the president’s handling of Iraq.

“It reached a tipping point” with the 2,000th U.S. casualty, Durbin said, and lawmakers from both parties expect a significant change in the course of the war in 2006.

That means, he said, “American soldiers start coming home.”

Others agreed that the war would dominate the congressional agenda, particularly since it’s costing billions of dollars per month.

“That has become the centerpiece of Bush’s second term,” said West, the Brown professor. “It’s really the 800-pound gorilla that affects everything else in the budget.”

Asked if Bush could regain the political momentum, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., said flatly: “The answer is, I don’t know.”

He noted that House Republicans have a more immediate concern: whether to hold new leadership elections to permanently replace DeLay, who was forced to step down as majority leader after his indictment by a Texas grand jury. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has been serving as acting majority leader.

“That then sets the tone for whatever else we do,” said Shimkus.

Given the potential for turmoil and the already-poisonous political climate, said Bond: “Unless there’s divine intervention, I don’t see us getting back to working on a bipartisan basis, where we have disagreements, vote them up or down, and pass out the best bills possible.”

But Durbin took a more optimistic view. He noted that the president’s sinking popularity has made Republicans more willing to buck their party on issues like the Patriot Act, so that could mean more bipartisan cooperation.

“2006 is going to be a year in transition in Washington,” he said. “People are going to look for balance and moderation.”