Chill on the Hill

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 15, 1996 | by Stephen Goode

At the halfway point of the 104th Congress, Republicans and Democrats are making it clear that they don't like each other. With one year down and one to go, partisans offer sharply divergent views of their accomplishments, agendas and the likely effect of the Republican revolution on Election Day.

Nathan Olsen, a 26-year-old from Idaho Falls, was in Washington in November 1994 when Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress. He's now a legislative assistant to conservative Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth, who was sent to Washington in that election, and he thinks the changes Republicans have brought to the nation's capital during the past year are a "good thing, but sometimes very frustrating."

"The momentum now is toward smaller, limited government," Olsen says with satisfaction. "The direction is really turning." What's frustrating, he adds, "is that everyone doesn't see this as just common sense and that too much, goes on here as it always has."

Stu Nagurka, the 35-year-old press secretary to Democratic Rep. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, sees the past year in a very different light. "To suggest it's been a positive breakthrough is ridiculous," Nagurka says. What's characterized the 104th Congress, he claims, are threats: "to the environment, to seniors, to education, to federal workers." Not surprisingly, Nagurka labels the 104th "the revulsion Congress."

Chenoweth has emerged as one of the most visible freshman Republicans while Richardson is a veteran liberal Democrat, so the huge gulf that separates their staffs is not surprising. The split characterizes what happened on Capitol Hill during the past year as Republicans used their majorities to undo decades of federal expansion and Democrats resisted that change.

Almost everyone agrees that the gulf is likely to widen as the second session of the 104th begins meeting in the new year. A major complaint among the 18 House members and 13 senators who have announced they won't seek reelection is the lack of civility they've faced during their past year on the Hill. They speak of a Congress full of legislators eager to call one another names and question the motives of their colleagues more than ever before -- at least in recent memory.

"It's no longer such a fun place to work," says Mike Dayton, executive legislative assistant to Rep. Gary Condit, a conservative Democrat from California. There's endless bickering." Everyone expects some of this when people differ, he says, but what's really and maybe dangerously wrong is the inability to reach compromise -- which is what politics is all about. The result, argues Dayton, is that "everybody's credibility drops."

Still, the 104th Congress -- despite heated tempers and wounded pride, or perhaps because of them -- has achieved much that its Republican majority (aided by the conservative Blue Dog Democrats) set out to do. Capitol Hill is where things are happening in Washington and Newt Gingrich has emerged as one of the most visible House speakers ever -- a certain sign of the Hill's ascendancy in national affairs.

In the face of Republican successes, the Democrats are trying "to slow things down till the next election comes along," says Jim Hyland, a banking specialist on the staff of North Carolina Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth who began working on the Hill during the early Reagan years. A clear Clinton victory "would give the Democratic Party new life."

But the Democratic slowdown hasn't been effective, Hyland says. "Whether the Democrats like it or not, we're using the appropriations process effectively to downsize government." He points to the 25 percent cut Congress has made in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "HUD wasn't done away with, but it is running on significantly less money than before " Hyland maintains.

Democrits are relying on the American electorate to grow tired of alleged Republican grasping, what Democrats call "the meanness and hypocrisy of change just for the sake of change " according to Nagurka. He cites the abrupt firing of 10 employees who worked for the clerk of the House in December -- one month before the Congressional Accountability Act, which might have protected scheduled to go into effect.

But Keith Rupp, chief of staff in Chenoweth's office, says Republicans have a checklist and mean to hold Democrats to it -- to test them fully and make it impossible for them to hide their big-government ways. Rupp says the political fate of many congressmen in 1996 may hang on how they vote on tax legislation slated for consideration April 15: They'll have to vote "yes" or no" on a bill that would require a two-thirds majority to approve any tax increase. If a lawmaker votes against the bill and it is defeated, Rupp says, that "vote will provide an amazing campaign tool" given the current feeling against tax increases.

Olsen has high hopes for the upcoming session. "This year we're going to be smarter and wiser," he says, honing in on two or three big issues and "not trying to cover everything," something Republicans committed to the timetable of the "Contract With America" felt compelled to do in 1995. Olsen mentions "abolition of the Commerce Department" as one worthy goal. Its days may be numbered. Hyland predicts Commerce will get the ax in 1996.