GOP upheaval mars legislating

Difficult year

WASHINGTON, Dec 20, (AP): For Congress, 2015 was a year of ideological clashes, showdown votes and harsh words. And that was just among Republicans.

It was the first year of Barack Obama’s two presidential terms in which Republicans ran both the House and Senate. That meant a blend of compromise and confrontation. Each side won some priorities and blocked the others’, a hallmark of divided government.

Republican infighting overshadowed everything for most of the year. Even interventions from on high — a first-ever papal address to Congress by Pope Francis and a Florida man’s unauthorized landing of a gyrocopter near the Capitol — barely distracted from the Republican upheaval.

“There were a number of procedural snafus and dysfunctional moments that made this year much more difficult,” said moderate Republican Rep Charlie Dent.

Congress enacted bipartisan deals recasting federal education policy, restricting government access to bulk phone records, extending highway programs, easing approval of future trade agreements and resolving a vexing problem of how Medicare, which provides health care coverage for seniors, reimburses doctors.

Before adjourning for the year, Congress sent Obama legislation Friday boosting defense and domestic spending in 2016, lifting a 1970sera ban on US oil exports and extending dozens of expiring tax cuts.

McConnell

Repeal

“The Republican Senate majority is proving that you can still get a lot done with a president from a different party,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday in his party’s weekly address.

But Republicans failed to repeal Obama’s health care law, eliminate federal money for women’s health care provider Planned Parenthood or block the international agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program. They fell short on closing the door to Syrian refugees, forcing the president to allow construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and blocking regulations on clean water, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama, in his weekly address, said the 11th-hour spending and tax bills he signed were “a pair of Christmas miracles in Washington.”

Some of the year’s turmoil flowed from the Republican presidential campaign, in which businessman Donald Trump and others have profited by targeting the political establishment. It was bad enough when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one White House candidate, took to the Senate floor to accuse McConnell, his own party’s chief, of telling him “a flat-out lie” about scheduling a controversial vote.

Plenty of Republican senators defended McConnell, but things got worse.

After years of being hounded by tea party conservatives, House Speaker John Boehner abruptly announced his resignation in September. It took a tumultuous month and public begging by party elders to persuade Rep. Paul Ryan, the youthful 2012 vice presidential nominee, to take the post.

At the eye of the Republican maelstrom was the House Freedom Caucus, numbering about 40 hardright lawmakers. They made Boehner’s life miserable because they felt he didn’t challenge Obama enough.

Symbolic

In an early sign of trouble, 25 conservative Republicans cast symbolic votes last January against making Boehner speaker, a job he had held since 2011.

The following month, 52 of them abandoned Republican leaders and joined Democrats to oppose a bill financing the Homeland Security Department. They were angry that the measure did not curb Obama’s immigration policies. In a symbolic warning, conservative Rep. Mark Meadows proposed ousting Boehner in July with a nonbinding motion accusing Boehner of “diminishing the voice of the American people.”

Relations between the two camps never healed.

So deep were the Republican divisions that Republican perspectives on 2015 depended on who was asked.

Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of Republican leaders, said the year saw “the most productive Congress in five years.” But conservative Rep. Tim Huelskamp called the year-end spending bill “an early Christmas gift for Donald Trump” that would feed anti-establishment frustration among Republicans.