Congress Gets More Liberal--With Itself

WASHINGTON — Don’t look now, but hair shirts and self-loathing may be going out of style on Capitol Hill. The Republican-controlled Congress, which came to power in 1995 railing against career politicians and their perks, is suddenly moving to make its own cocoon a little cozier.

In a step that would have been unthinkable not long ago, House and Senate leaders are jockeying to get lawmakers a pay raise. The House has made it harder to lodge ethics charges against its members. Congress just voted to increase the money it spends on its own operations. And there’s even some quiet talk among House members about watering down a ban on gifts they can accept from lobbyists.

They may not be able to pull all of this off. Pay-raise opponents, despite losing a crucial test of strength Wednesday, may yet derail the salary hike, a 2.3% cost-of-living boost that would bring members’ pay to $136,673 a year.

But even if these goodies ultimately go down in flames, the very fact that so many lawmakers are reaching for them shows a remarkable shift.

Not long ago the public radiated an intense throw-the-bums-out attitude, and members of Congress had to grovel and repent.

Congressional leaders now seem emboldened by signs that public fury against Congress has waned. Their success in passing a balanced budget has contributed to their sense of security.

“A Congress that has reformed Medicare, balanced the budget and cut taxes receives a different level of respect,” House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said after the pay-raise debate.

“I can’t think of a better environment, economically or politically,” to accept a pay hike, said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento). “In general the public is satisfied--or as satisfied as they will ever be.”

The latest Los Angeles Times Poll found that 46% of those surveyed approved of the way Congress was handling its job. That is a far cry from the public mood in 1992, when a Gallup poll put Congress’ approval rating at an all-time low of 18%.

Congress-bashing is a venerable American tradition--Mark Twain wrote: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress”--that reached a fever pitch in the early 1990s and gave ammunition to Ross Perot and other populists.

In that climate, members of Congress became increasingly skittish about accepting pay raises, expense-paid travel and other perquisites. The last time Congress accepted a cost-of-living increase was in October 1992. Members’ current salary is $133,600 a year.

Republicans, using a campaign heavily laced with anti-Washington rhetoric, capitalized on public animosity in their successful bid to win control of Congress in 1994. Once in power, among the first things they did was to chip away at the House’s edifice of perks and protections.

They passed a measure requiring members of Congress to live by the same labor laws it imposed on others. They cut the number of House committees. They imposed strict new limits on the gifts lawmakers can accept from lobbyists.

This year Congress seems to be lightening up, to the dismay of die-hard reformers. Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-Ind.) protested that many of the new House Republicans were elected by running against “a Congress that was arrogant, that didn’t listen to people and did midnight pay raises.”

The House early this year authorized a 5% increase in funding for its committees. The hike would have been even bigger if not for a rebellion by a handful of junior members. Last week, both the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to increase spending for House operations by 3.6% and for the Senate by 4.5%.

When the House recently approved changes in its ethics procedures, a bipartisan majority voted to make it harder for outside groups to file complaints against members of Congress. Proponents said the measure would limit politically inspired complaints. But Ann McBride of Common Cause called it “blatant incumbent protection.”

Republicans also are considering watering down some of the institutional reforms they enacted with great fanfare in the last Congress. Some lawmakers are talking about bringing the House’s strict gift ban in line with the more lenient Senate rules, which allow lobbyists to give senators gifts worth $50 or less.

The difference between the chambers was vividly illustrated recently when congressional ethics committees ruled that senators could accept free tickets from lobbyists for basketball and hockey games at a splashy new arena in downtown Washington but that House members could not.

House Republicans may also monkey with their 1995 rule limiting the number of terms members may serve as committee chairmen. Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.) is drafting a proposal to stagger the terms of chairmen, saying that he is worried about the disruption if all chairmen leave at once. But purists see that as the beginning of the end of term limits for chairmen. “They are rushing headlong to make Congress a haven for career politicians,” said Paul Jacob, executive director of U.S. Term Limits.

Lawmakers are still sensitive to charges that they are always cutting special deals for themselves. The House last week rejected an amendment that would have reimbursed members of Congress and their staffs for legal fees if they are the subjects of unsuccessful prosecutions by the Justice Department. Instead, the House passed a provision extending that reimbursement proposal to all citizens.

But congressional leaders show no sign of backing down from the effort to enact the cost-of-living increase for lawmakers’ pay.

Members of Congress are supposed to get annual inflation adjustments automatically, along with federal civil servants and judges. But Congress has blocked the increase for its own members--and federal judges, to whom their pay is linked--every year since 1993.

The amendment has traditionally been attached to the annual appropriations bill for the Treasury Department. But when GOP leaders brought that bill to the House floor earlier this month, they imposed procedures that made it impossible to offer the anti-pay-raise amendment.

The entire bill was passed, 231 to 192, over critics’ complaints that the leadership had sneaked the bill through without an honest debate and open vote on the pay hike.

In response to those complaints, the House revisited the issue last week in a remarkably emotional debate that found both parties divided on the raise. Proponents argued that accepting the raise was a matter of institutional pride.

“I believe we are a productive, good body, and I believe this [raise] is warranted,” thundered House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert L. Livingston (R-La.).

Others begged to differ. But opposition focused more on the way the leadership initially handled the issue than on the raise itself.

“All we are asking for is an up-or-down vote,” said Rep. Mark W. Neumann (R-Wis.). “Give us a vote so the American people do not think we are breaking their trust.”

In the end, pay-raise opponents lost on a 229-199 vote. Although House speakers by tradition rarely vote, Gingrich cast a ballot on the side of pay-raise proponents.

Former Rep. Tony Coelho argued that Gingrich’s efforts to usher through a pay raise will serve him well as he tries to rebuild his standing among members in the wake of last summer’s failed attempt to oust him as speaker.

“He is taking care of the needs of his members,” said Coelho, a California Democrat who is a veteran of many congressional pay battles. “That’s what leadership is supposed to do.”

The issue is far from settled. Although the Senate version of the Treasury bill blocks the congressional pay raise, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has said that he expects the provision to be dropped in House-Senate negotiations on the bill.

If public opposition to the raise mounts, critics may yet find another way to block it. But for now, opponents conceded that the fix seems to be in.

“We think it’s over,” said Rep. Linda Smith (R-Wash.), who has led the charge to kill the cost-of-living increase. “We’re trying to see if the horse is dead. If a horse is dead . . . then you don’t ride it.”