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Date Posted: 03:33:04 07/20/02 Sat
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July 20, 2002
G.O.P. Lawmakers Bolt Bush's Herd
By ALISON MITCHELL
ASHINGTON, July 19 — Less than four months before the midterm elections, nervous rank-and-file Republicans are going their own way on issue after issue in Congress, fearful about the economy and no longer counting on President Bush's wartime approval ratings to carry them back into office.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are lurching and improvising. At times, they are defying the White House, at other times staking out far different ground from the president — and even from each other. All this tumult has spurred Republican leaders to work overtime to try to keep their members in line.
"There's a belief of members of Congress, particularly those in tough races, that they have to win these races on their own," said Representative John Thune of South Dakota, who was recruited by President Bush to challenge Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat, in one of the most competitive races in the country.
Representative James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania, one of the first Republicans to recognize that his party had to respond fast to the Enron collapse early this year, said: "We're three and a half months away from election. We know some of these issues are very volatile. The president isn't on the ballot. His popularity, which is sky high, isn't going to carry us anywhere."
As a result, new Republican divisions become evident every day. Individual lawmakers are feeling their own way on potent election-year matters like corporate accountability, access to low-cost drugs, the shape of a Homeland Security Department and spending on regional concerns like fighting forest fires.
"We don't feel we're in our game at the moment," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut.
Only months ago, many Republicans believed that Mr. Bush's extraordinary ratings and the war on terror would help them expand their majority in the House and regain control of the Senate. Now, some say, not only do they not expect Mr. Bush to have coattails, they also worry that some Democratic candidates for governor might.
In what has been a turbulent two weeks, the Republican-run House approved legislation to arm commercial airline pilots, which was opposed by the White House. Senate Republicans sailed far out ahead of the White House in supporting tough penalties for corporate crimes.
House Republican committee chairmen overturned large parts of the president's domestic security legislation, leaving it to a special committee, dominated by Republican and Democratic leaders, to put it back together. The White House also came out against legislation to expand access to low-cost generic drugs this week, after five Republicans voted for the legislation in committee, helping Democrats bring it before the Senate for debate.
Many dynamics are in play. Some lawmakers are fighting to please their constituents by funneling projects back home in an election year and running headlong into the White House's insistence on controlling spending. More senior Republican committee chairmen are resisting giving up Congressional oversight and spending powers in the creation of a vast new domestic security agency.
For many Republicans, too, the overriding concern has been the president's inability to shore up confidence in the stock market — and their fear of what could happen on Election Day if the economy's problems deepen.
"I worry about it all the time," Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, said of the economy, as he circulated a letter urging Speaker J. Dennis Hastert to accept the Senate version of a corporate accountability bill instead of trying to negotiate differences between the two chambers. "I think people vote with their pocketbooks, and they are not very confident right now."
Republicans worked closely with the president, Mr. Foley said, but "you've got Republicans who want to be part of the agenda not just the president's emissaries on Capitol Hill."
"We do have a view of our own," he said.
Still, it is not unusual for members of the president's party to seek their own way in midterm elections. Moreover, the ferment is far from the kind of rebellion against President Bill Clinton in 1994 when Democrats could not even deliver on their president's signature health care overhaul and barely salvaged an anticrime initiative.
Even as Congressional Republicans chart their own courses, they speak warmly of Mr. Bush. In addition, White House officials and party leaders insist that their members will fall in line on big issues of importance to the president. They predict that next week, the full House will approve a creating a Department of Homeland Security substantially similar to Mr. Bush's proposal.
"The president has proposed the most substantial reordering of the federal government since the 1940's," said Representative Rob Portman of Ohio, a member of the special homeland security committee. "To have us basically accept his framework is remarkable."
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, played down any tensions, saying, "There are always going to be occasional issues on which the big tent of the Republican Party goes in different directions."
But citing issues like tax cuts and Republicans' ability to prevail by one vote on trade authority for the president, Mr. Fleischer said, "On the president's top priorities, the Republicans on their worst day are more united than Democrats on their best."
Indeed, many Republicans say Mr. Bush's style of focusing on only a few big issues is part of the reason for some of the disarray on Capitol Hill: there sometimes is no set White House position to rally behind.
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said: "The White House seems to save pressure and legislative SWAT teams for issues that mean a lot to them. They are not out to impose discipline just to show they are boss."
Yet some Republicans bristle at the administration's operating style. Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he remembered with envy how closely the budget director in the Clinton administration coordinated with Congressional Democrats.
"When they came to me and my counterpart, they came to me as a united front," Mr. Young said.
"That kind of a relationship does not exist between me as chairman and the O.M.B. director of this administration," he added.
The White House dismisses the complaint as an expected tension caused by their desire to hold down spending.
Despite the rank-and-file fears, party leaders insist that their incumbents will do well on Election Day, as long as they tend to local concerns and can point to legislative accomplishments on security.
"Right now, we're headed toward ground war, grass-roots races," said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds, a New York Republican in line to take over his party's House re-election committee next year.
Many Republicans are watching the economy closely. "The economy is really the wild card in every election," Mr. Thune said. "Everybody is very cautious."
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And so it Begins. :) G.O.P. Lawmakers Bolt Bush's Herd