WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress is attempting a sweeping agenda matched by only a few moments in the past hundred years.
Starting with the $787 billion stimulus — the biggest single government expenditure in history — through a dizzying array of efforts around the economy to complex legislative overhauls that include climate change, health care and immigration, scholars say there has been nothing like it since the massive legislative push of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
But if the big arch of the policy fight is being captured by C-SPAN’s cameras as they scan the chambers of the House and Senate, most of the story is happening elsewhere.
Staffs are fighting exhaustion, and tempers are flaring in late-night committee meetings. The catered Chinese food or pizza carted in for lawmakers as sessions stretch into the night are becoming the rule rather than the exception.
Members of the House Education and Labor Committee — laboring over health care reform last week — adjourned at 6 a.m. Friday after working through the night, returning three hours later for 13 roll-call votes and a vote on final passage.
The pace has created some comic moments for what is normally a staid institution.
Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat, without enough time to change and wearing the wrong attire to introduce a rules amendment at nearly 4 a.m. on a recent Thursday, was forced to slip a tie borrowed from a colleague over his turtleneck (a moment lost to posterity, because by that time the C-SPAN cameras had been turned off).
Strike while the iron is hot
Political strategists say there are tactical advantages to the pace on Capitol Hill so far this year — the momentum of a historic election at their backs, congressional leaders and their administration allies realize that the window of opportunity is small and chances of success highest now.
If a health care reform bill isn’t passed before the Congress starts its August recess, some Democratic leaders fear, the chance to do it at all may be gone, with the forces of opposition and nervousness of lawmakers growing almost by the day.
“President (Barack) Obama, like Lyndon Johnson, is very aware that even after a big dramatic election like we just had, your time is limited,” said Julian Zelizer, a Congress expert at Princeton University. “The perception is that presidents lose a significant amount of their capital quickly, within the year. As the mid-terms approach, you want to spend all the political capital you have.”
But the strategy also comes with risks.
Massive bills are being pushed along at an unrelenting pace.
The 1,040-page stimulus bill came back from conference in the middle of the night, and lawmakers had just a few hours to review it before they had to vote the next day. One little-noticed clause allowed AIG Insurance to pay massive bonuses to managers who had led the company to the brink of collapse, producing the Democratic coalition’s first major black eye.
“There is a downside,” said Rep. Ed Perl mutter, a Golden Democrat, conceding the bonus clause is one he wishes he’d caught. “As well-intentioned as you might be or believe a piece of legislation is, there might be a flaw that causes all sorts of problems that you never expected.”
And from the other side of the aisle, it all looks reckless.
Rep. Michael Coffman, an Aurora Republican, gets far less sleep than he wants these days. On a recent day, he was in the office until 2 a.m. and slept about four hours before a 7 a.m. meeting. His running routine — which he depends on to keep his stamina up — has virtually disappeared.
He concedes that the Democrats’ furious pace in Congress has made it almost impossible for the minority to get traction or keep up. And he fears the result.
“It’s been incredibly tough,” Coffman said. “As a Republican it feels like the goal is to keep me off balance by having so many major policies thrown at us at one time.”
Dual agendas for Obama
Republicans can point to historical examples that should give voters pause.
During the Johnson administration, a series of anti-poverty programs bypassed local governments and were run by community organizations, thought of at the time as a bold experiment.
“Books have been written about how badly it worked,” according to William Galston, a senior adviser in the Clinton administration and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
But the era also produced Medicaid and Medicare, programs that have become pillars of the country’s social safety net, built on the landslide election of 1964.
The view of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress is that they have a similar once-in-a-generation opportunity to solve problems that are the most politically knotty of our time.
“President Obama took office in January with not one but two agendas. There was his campaign agenda and then there was an agenda that economic events had forced upon him,” Galston said. “Mr. Obama said full speed ahead on both fronts and the assumption was there would be no collision between the two agendas, either practically or fiscally.”
“I think the jury is still out on that,” he said.
Successful or not, there is little question that it is pushing the legislative machinery near the breaking point — and cracks are starting to emerge.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., announced this month that her committee wouldn’t be able to produce a Senate version of the climate change bill by an August deadline set by leadership, because so many committee members were also on two key committees drafting health care legislation.
Emergency food, scotch
As routinely long days have stretched into routinely long nights, Lisa Cohen, Diana DeGette’s chief of staff, has begun bringing in platters of food for the staff (it’s her Jewish mother side, she said). DeGette’s staff has been especially hard hit because the congresswoman is vice chair of a committee handling both climate change legislation and health care reform.
Cohen said spends far less time with her two daughters than she wants, and for real emergencies, the staff has access to a bottle of scotch in the closet. (For use only in moderation, she emphasizes.)
“Even if you’re not here, it never stops. You’re on your BlackBerry or the phone. On a staff level, we’re just stretched to the breaking point,” said Cohen. “It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating, and it’s a bit overwhelming.”
It’s a trade-off DeGette said she is also willing to make.
As the exhausting week prior to the climate change vote reached its climax, DeGette — the Democrats’ chief deputy whip — found herself on the House floor late that Friday trying to corral enough last-minute votes to the put the bill over the top.
“We realized that the votes were just tight as a tick,” the Denver Democrat said. “When 218 went up on the board we all cheered. I threw up my arms in the air, almost involuntarily.”
“It was just an such an exciting moment,” she said.
