22 November 1999
William Gillespie & Sigfried Gold

Tensions Kept Congress Divided to the End

WASHINGTON -- The Congress that began with the traumatic Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton ended its first session on Friday night with both political parties fine-tuning campaign slogans for next year's high-stakes election and blaming each other for having lost the art of legislating.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican seeking his party's presidential nomination, said recently, "We have a poisoned atmosphere in Washington that can only be cured by a new administration."

Early expectations that prosperity would allow this Congress to seize the moment and restructure the Medicare and Social Security programs to prepare for the coming retirement of the baby boom generation evaporated quickly. President Clinton's proposal for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit languished. The horrific shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado could not propel gun control legislation through Congress.

The Republican majority built little public support for its 10-year, $792 billion tax cut and did not try to override Clinton's veto of the measure. And the Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ended any last pretense of bipartisanship on foreign policy.

The pre-eminent accomplishment of the year was legislation repealing Depression-era laws that had limited the ability of banks, securities firms and insurance companies from entering into one another's businesses. The bill passed because of enormous and unified lobbying from some of the most powerful business interests in America and because most of the issues were not partisan.

The partisanship that roils the Congress on other issues has several causes. Tensions from impeachment still flare. The coming election has also put both parties on a war footing.

On Friday, for example, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, insisted that the Senate had come through the trial of the president "without a lot of residual scars." But he soon called Clinton "the most partisan president I've ever seen" and compared him unfavorably with Richard M. Nixon, the Republican who resigned in 1974 rather than face an impeachment vote by the full House.

"You know even at the worst moments Nixon wasn't partisan," Lott said.

"In fact, many Republicans thought he wasn't partisan enough."

And when the Senate killed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty this fall, Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, startled the chamber by reciting an imaginary conversation between Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Clinton about the treaty. It ended with Blair saying, "Give my regards to Monica." The reference to Monica S. Lewinsky was later struck from the Congressional Record.

-Alison Mitchell