End-of-session bottleneck looms on Capitol Hill

If history is any guide, the first session of the 109th Congress might be headed for one of the wildest -- and longest -- finishes in recent memory. Not since 1993 have lawmakers tried to tackle entitlement spending cuts and Supreme Court nominations in the same year. As an added bonus, lawmakers this year are also dealing with one of those every-few-decades issues -- Social Security overhaul.

While the mid-1990s government shutdown was in a class by itself for partisan acrimony, some veteran lawmakers are hard pressed to remember a more complicated set of circumstances as those looming this year.

"There are usually one or two things that are heading for a train wreck. In this session of Congress it looks like there are about 10 trains crashing at the same time," said former House Budget Chairman Leon Panetta, D-Calif., who served as OMB director and White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration.

This fall, President Bush and Republican leaders might be faced with not one but multiple Supreme Court battles, making for a potentially drawn-out September and October devoted to little else. Some Democrats are already preparing for war, and there is talk of a rehashed battle over the so-called "nuclear option" -- or "constitutional option," depending on one's political stripes -- on filibuster rules that would create even more uncertainty.

Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who prized the art of compromise with Republicans, said the "Gang of 14" deal that averted the filibuster fight is the kind of bipartisan negotiation that has to occur for lawmakers to maintain voters' confidence.

"Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? I think the answer has to be yes," Breaux said. "I think people still remember the shutdown and how they got really badly burned because of it. Even if you're having to hold your nose and compromise, no one is going to let that happen again, because then everyone's a loser."

Even without a Supreme Court fight and other battles, it is not uncommon for the first session of a new Congress in a non-election year to last well into December, said former Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., who also served as Budget chairman. "These are unusual circumstances," Nickles said, to the point where favored initiatives such as Social Security legislation might be squeezed due to time constraints.

Eric Ueland, who served as Nickles' chief of staff and now serves in the same capacity for Senate Majority Leader Frist, did not rule out an extended session this year.

"That's certainly not unusual for the Senate anymore," he said, noting that "every Congress for the last five or six years has had significant workloads."

Ueland added that since most of the initial Supreme Court activity would be focused in the Judiciary Committee once nominations are sent up, that leaves floor time this month and in September to focus on unfinished appropriations, asbestos, terrorism insurance, gun liability and other "conservative, common-sense legislation" produced by Senate panels.

Nickles said important initiatives such as estate tax repeal, an energy bill and extensions of capital gains and dividend tax cuts should not suffer as a result of lengthy high court battles. "Now everybody likes to make a sport of it, go to great lengths to politicize" high court nominations, he said. "Hopefully we'll see a return to normalcy, and people will let nominations go through the Senate in due course."

For example, in 1993 the Senate approved the nomination of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a mere six weeks, while in a hard-fought battle lawmakers approved a $433 billion omnibus deficit-reduction package -- all before departing for the August recess.

A spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said "our hope is that Senate Democrats will not filibuster President Bush's nominees and obstruct progress" on important legislation.

But on the budget front this year, authorizing panels will not even report their reconciliation directives to the Budget Committees until late September, which means complicated conferences on $34.7 billion in entitlement spending cuts and $70 billion in tax breaks might not be hashed out until well into October at the earliest.

Despite its relatively small price tag, the spending-cut bill will require difficult choices, pitting agricultural programs against each other, while governors are girding for battle over Medicaid savings and business and labor groups have unleashed a heavy lobbying campaign over proposed changes to pension contributions.

Republicans are still divided over what tax cuts to include in reconciliation, alternative minimum tax relief and the parameters of an estate tax deal, while a presidential commission on which Breaux serves as co-chair is expected to report back on tax recommendations by Sept. 30.

Add to the mix such must-do legislation as reauthorization of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act -- particularly relevant in light of last week's London terrorist bombings -- parts of which expire Dec. 31, as well as renewal of the 2002 terrorism risk insurance law, also expiring at the end of the year.

Action is required later this summer or early fall to increase the statutory debt limit, currently capped at $8.2 trillion. Lawmakers also must wrap up work on fiscal 2006 spending bills, although the determined push by new House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Callif., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., has resulted in a surprisingly swift pace so far.

Staying in session during the August recess to catch up on a legislative backlog is never an appetizing option. "I watched [former Senate Majority Leader] George Mitchell [D-Maine] try that with HillaryCare in '94 and it blew up in his face," said former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., in a recent interview. That was the year of a major push by President Clinton and now-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. for universal health coverage, which many attribute to the Democrats' 1994 electoral disaster.

In the Republicans' first year in power, they admittedly overreached with the government shutdown fight. This year they control both legislative and executive branches and voters are watching, Panetta said.

"You've got trench warfare going on on Capitol Hill, even without the Supreme Court vacancies. What you've added now is a lot of artillery coming down on all positions," Panetta said. If legislative action grinds to a halt, "it won't be long before the American people start opting for checks and balances again. If what ultimately happens here is all-out war, the American people will start to question the majority's ability to govern."