Gregg: Extreme Partisanship Possible but Congress can work together

By Katherine Bonamici

WASHINGTON, D.C.--New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg says there's no knowing what will happen come January, when the 107th Congress begins with an evenly divided Senate.

"The easy answer to that is nobody knows," Gregg said Thursday, when asked how he thought the situation would pan out. "It can become extremely partisan. You could have a situation where one side or the other decides they weren't being treated fairly. They essentially take their ball and go home, and you have a partisan confrontation where you don't get anything done."

But there is hope. "That's possible," Gregg continued, but "I don't think that's going to happen. I think there will actually be an opportunity to get more done. This forces everybody into the lifeboats together and I think there'll be an attempt, for at least a while, to row in the same direction."

With 50 Senators on each side of the aisle, the tie-breaking 51st vote will be cast by Dick Cheney, if he is sworn in as Vice President in January. If Vice President Al Gore and his running mate Joe Lieberman end up being inaugurated, the Senate would still end up under Republican control. Lieberman would have to resign as Senator from Connecticut, relinquishing his seat to a Republican nominated by that states GOP Governor.

Either way, the Republicans have a majority of one, giving them control of committee chairmanship and the leadership. The possibility of sharing some chairmanships or having co-chairs has been discussed, but GOP leadership has rejected the idea. Gregg explained the problems with that plan.

"There won't be power-sharing," he said. "You should only have one chairman. You don't have two people driving the car. If there are two people in the front seat trying to turn the wheel of the car, you're going to have some problems. You've got to have somebody in charge, and the majority party is in charge. But that doesn't mean you cant be sensitive to the fact that you've got basically a balanced ratio here, so you can adjust the areas where you reflect that."

One way to be sensitive to the unique situation is to reflect the closeness of the ratio through the balance of Democrats and Republicans on each committee. New Hampshire's other senator, Bob Smith, said he thinks the committees should be balanced, with a tie-breaking vote going to the Republican chair, a reflection of the situation on the floor.

Gregg disagrees. He said some committees could be split evenly, but not all.

"I think were going to have to address committee ratios in a way that isn't strong-arming," he said. "Ratios are an issue--there may be some committees we can go 50-50 on, but there are some committees we shouldn't, because somebody has to govern. And you have to have appropriations bills, and to do that you have to have a majority. In the end you have to have a tax bill, and to do that you have a majority. So in the Finance Committee, the Appropriations Committee, which are the two power committees in the congress, I don't think you could ever go 50-50. But you just can't get out of a conference with a 50-50 ratio. You have to have that extra vote to get out of there."

But there will have to be cooperation between the parties to get anything done--nothing can pass the Senate without at least 51 votes, so even one or two people straying from the party line could make or break legislation not designed to appease both sides.

"If one side wants to be disruptive it's going to be very easy to do it," Gregg said. "If one Senator wants to be destructive, it's going to be very easy for that person to do it. There's one Senator at least already who's said he may do exactly that."

"Were going to have to, in many instances, allow the floor to be a fairly open place," he added, "where people get their matters to the floor, get them debated, and either win them or they lose them. Were simply going to have to give people a shot at issues. There are a lot of issues out there that we can, I think, find overlapping agreement on," including, he said, education, tax issues like the repealing the marriage penalty tax and estate taxes and developing prescription drug and patients bill of rights legislation.

Gregg doesn't think the session will necessarily be the gridlocked mess some analysts are predicting. "I do think the opportunity is there [to cooperate], and I think there's a certain momentum in the fact that we now know we have to talk to each other." He said he recently attended a bipartisan lunch meeting where at least 40 senators showed up to discuss the issues they feel are important.

Gregg, who was Governor George W. Bush's debate preparation partner and a steady supporter, thinks Bush is poised to help smooth the process.

"It's going to be a delicate time," he said, "but I think the potential for bipartisan action is there, and I think Governor Bush has made it extremely clear that he intends to govern using a bipartisan approach. That was one of the major themes of his campaign was that he would go across the aisle, and its a good time to do this."

That sentiment was echoed by the New Hampshire Representatives, as well. Charles Bass said that the key to whether the 107th Congress accomplishes anything lies in "how George W. Bush approaches his first term as president, knowing that the election was extremely close. If he believes and understands that half of America [thinks he's doing the right thing, and the other half thinks he's wrong], He will come out with a platform that will reflect a very centrist approach to what he wishes to accomplish in his first four years."

"I think the leadership of the president becomes extremely important, and his ability to reach out, in some cases across party lines," said John E. Sununu. "Governor Bush has shown an ability to do that in Texas; he's willing to work with anybody who will help him achieve the goals that he set out legislatively, so those personal relationships will be critical."

Sununu and Bass were not in accord on another current issue, the suggestion by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-S.C.) that Congress pass a ten month Continuing Resolution, which would fund the government at 2000 levels through the 2001 fiscal year, until next October, when the 2002 fiscal year begins.

"We should wrap all this up this year," said Gregg, and "allow the next president to start with a clean slate and not have to deal with leftover appropriations bills. We're gonna just start over again next year and try to do it with all the different parties together."

"I think 10 months is a pretty arbitrary amount of time," said Sununu, "but I've felt strongly that unless we can get a package that was reasonable, that was fiscally responsible, and that takes spending priorities in the right direction, then were probably not going to be able to pass anything before the end of this session."

Bass said the House will have to temper its actions in response to the tight Senate, but has hope that the 107th session will be a productive one. "Do we have an agenda design to be enacted into law?" he asked, "Or do we have an agenda designed to make a statement, knowing that the Senate will block anything that isn't pretty vanilla. I'm going to be urging my colleagues in the leadership to propose and advocate legislative priorities that will allow us to get things signed into law and actually achieve things. Its time now to see what we can get done."