Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington
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March 04, 1999, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A05
LENGTH: 900 words
HEADLINE:
Eyeing 2000, Democrats Meld Agendas; Party to Make a Stand on Social Security,
Health Care and Education
BYLINE: Juliet Eilperin;
Helen Dewar, Washington Post Staff Writers
BODY:
Their appetites whetted by the prospect of taking over the House in
2000, congressional Democrats joined President Clinton in unveiling a
legislative agenda yesterday aimed at wooing moderate Republicans and shoring up
the party's image as protector of Medicare and Social Security.
Democratic leaders said they wanted to work with Republicans to pass
legislation, but indicated they would happily settle for taking their platform
on education, health care and Social Security to the voters during the next
campaign.
"We figure if something is accomplished we'll get our share of
the credit . . . because these are basically Democratic issues," said Senate
Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).
Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee chair Patrick J. Kennedy (R.I.) said that Republicans would
be "running in the face of what the American people want" if they blocked
Democratic proposals on Social Security, Medicare and education.
During
a one-hour rally with Clinton at the Library of Congress, Democrats embraced the
same priorities the president cited in his State of the Union speech in January.
Those plans include devoting 62 percent of the budget surplus to strengthening
the Social Security system, allocating 15 percent to Medicare, and spending the
rest of the surplus on targeted tax cuts, child care and long-term care and
other initiatives. Democrats also vowed to push again for their "Patients' Bill
of Rights," a managed-care reform bill that would allow patients to sue health
maintenance organizations when they believe they are being unfairly denied
treatment.
Democrats were ebullient during the session, cheering Daschle
when he called House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) "the next
speaker of the House."
"We want to make progress this session; we can't
afford to waste another year mired in partisan wrangling and gridlock," Gephardt
said. "We can work together. It's what the American people want."
But
Republicans are suspicious of the Democrats, with some predicting the minority
party will pursue a scorched-earth strategy aimed at legislative deadlock that
can be used to undermine the Republican majority in the next election. Rep. Mark
Foley (R-Fla.) warned that moderates like himself were focused on convincing
conservative Democrats to vote with the GOP, rather than defecting to support
Democratic measures.
"We have enough to offer as a Republican majority,
we don't have to be lured into their trap," Foley said of the Democrats. "Good
luck, Dick Gephardt. I don't think anyone's coming to your dance."
House
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called the Democratic agenda unbalanced. "It
favors Washington bureaucracy over local control, government budget expansion
over the family budget expansion, tax increases over tax relief," he said. Some
outside observers said the Democrats have crafted their agenda with the 2000
elections very much in mind.
"The House minority generally never can
expect to have a big impact on the legislative agenda of the chamber. What they
can do is set themselves up for the next campaign," said University of Minnesota
political science professor Steven Smith. "They want to position themselves with
a realistic agenda, one which has some popular appeal, so moderate Republicans
are not scared off of a cross-party coalition."
The Democrats'
legislative strategy went on display yesterday, when the Senate began debating a
bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
giving states more flexibility in use of federal school aid.
Democrats
are trying to use this relatively modest bill as a staging area for votes on
most of their education agenda, including a full authorization for Clinton's
plan to help local school districts hire 100,000 more teachers over the next six
years. While they will wait until later to push for Clinton's plan to help with
school construction and rehabilitation costs, they plan to try to put
Republicans on the spot by pushing for a vote on a nonbinding resolution
endorsing the plan.
Republicans viewed the "ed-flex" bill, along with an
earlier measure to increase military pay and pensions, as a way of demonstrating
they were doing the nation's business in a bipartisan way after the angst of
Clinton's impeachment trial.
But Democrats were also delighted, figuring
it gave them a chance to come out of the trial on the legislative high ground by
trumping the Republicans on an issue that people usually identify with
Democrats.
"We could not have a more exciting way to depart from the
experience of the last two months," Daschle said. "It's like we ate our
vegetables and now we're getting dessert."
Republicans accuse Democrats
of risking defeat of the ed-flex bill by trying to load it down with more
contentious education proposals, saying these initiatives should be deferred
until Congress takes up reauthorization of the broader Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) later this year.
But Democrats
have signaled that they will fight for what they can get short of jeopardizing
passage of the measure, and then simply lobby again for all the proposals in
connection with the ESEA reauthorization. Vice President Gore is applauded at
Democrats' rally. Also appearing are House leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.), left,
Senate leader Thomas Daschle (S.D.) and President Clinton.
GRAPHIC: PH,,BILL O'LEARY
LOAD-DATE: March 04, 1999 
