Cracks in Republican Unity

Party Infighting Mars Recent Success,
And Could Erode Majority
By DAVID ROGERS
May 25, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Last week ought to have been a good one for Republicans in Congress: The House passed a budget, President Bush signed more tax cuts and immigration legislation advanced in the Senate with the blessing of the White House.

But within days of the budget passing, Republicans fell into an ugly spending fight, impugning one another's honesty and patriotism on the House floor. Public resentment of oil-company profits, meanwhile, opened the door to a rout by environmentalists on the first 2007 appropriations bill. Even an elaborately staged tax-cut publicity event unraveled at the foot of the Capitol steps.

Like an aging centurion in the last days of Rome, Rep. Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, watched with dismay as his once-disciplined troops broke ranks and joined in opposing Alaska timber interests and oil-company drilling on federal lands. "Republicans are voting green tonight," said the Texan, not hiding his relief at leaving Congress next month.

But for the Republicans left behind, the budget infighting, the muddled news conference and the floor debate over federal lands can't be ignored: Democrats lost power in 1994 when they kept fighting among themselves, oblivious to their House burning around them. Republicans have ruled since with a remarkable discipline, but are at risk now because of exhaustion, scandals and, critics would say, the rigidity of their ideology and failure to learn from policy failures in a changing world.

As the Memorial Day recess approaches, long-sought pension legislation remains unfinished; even an emergency spending bill to replenish funds for the Iraq war will be postponed. Rarely have leaders talked so early and openly of a post-election session to finish the year's work. But the party takes a big risk of heading empty-handed into the November election.

The greatest source of division is conservatives' concern about spending, aggravated by the mounting cost of the Iraq war. The personal sniping between younger members and those on the House Appropriations Committee continued this week and underscores the split over the government's growth under Republican control.

Despite scandals and promises of change, the Appropriations Committee persists in setting aside billions of dollars for home-state projects without disclosing the sponsors of such "earmarks." To get around budget caps, the committee even opted to designate $507 million for 20 military construction projects as war-related expenditures that could be financed from an emergency reserve outside the agreed-upon spending limits.

Friends say the committee is leading with its chin by not disclosing the earmark sponsors. "I personally don't agree with that," says House Speaker Dennis Hastert. And the House Rules Committee -- controlled by Mr. Hastert -- didn't protect the $507 million in military projects when that bill came to the floor Friday.

Conservatives pounced, and the ensuing brawl turned bitter after the money was struck down on a parliamentary motion. "The greatest threat to our country is the war on terror but we also have another threat, and that is out-of-control federal spending," said Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. "We had better quit wrapping the butter in the American flag in this sleight of hand."

"You picked the wrong bill to have your earmark fight," answered Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood, a Republican member of the Appropriations panel. "Please do not tell us you support the troops. Please do not tell us you support the war, when you came out here and X'd out all of these important projects that help our troops, that help us win the war."

Mr. Hastert, an Illinois Republican who flew back last Monday from Chicago with his friend Mr. LaHood, will try to broker some peace. But the news conference on the tax bill shows the speaker has some problems as well in making the tax reductions relevant to voters.


The event was designed to answer criticism that the tax cuts, especially the two-year extension of favorable capital gains and dividends rates, mostly benefit the wealthy. Before Mr. Bush signed the tax bill on May 17, the speaker and Senate leaders held their own outdoor ceremony with a Republican electrical contractor from Virginia to show a "real human success story" behind the numbers.

Once the bound parchment was signed by Mr. Hastert and Sen. Ted Stevens (R., Alaska), contractor John Biagas was to accompany House clerks to the White House with the bill. But from the start, things went awry. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) failed to attend and, as it turned out, the likable Mr. Biagas owes much of his business success to government spending, not tax cuts.

More than two-thirds of the top 30 projects listed on the Web site of his company, Bay Electric Co. in Newport News, Va., are with the military or federal agencies. Bay Electric also has benefited from small-business set-asides for minority-owned firms from depressed areas. When asked whether the tax cuts or government contracts were more important to his success, Mr. Biagas says, "It's a little bit of both." But the tax break he touted during the ceremony didn't deal with capital gains, but rather a provision allowing faster write offs of equipment purchases.

Sandwiched between the news conference and the budget fight was Thursday night's debate on a natural-resources bill -- an annual battleground for Western lands and energy issues. On a series of six amendments, environmentalists won easily as scores of Republicans broke ranks.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young (R., Alaska), who helped engineer last year's costly highway bill, couldn't save relatively modest sums for logging roads in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. And House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, who faces a primary challenge June 6 in California, first helped to strike a provision related to oil royalties on federal lands; he then backed the substitute seeking to accomplish the same goal.

California Rep. George Miller, a Democratic veteran of many environmental fights, smiled in recalling the palpable agitation in the air that evening. "You could start to see, they smelled meat cooking here. The atmosphere is changing."