No break from gridlock

Continued impasses mark Congress’ 3 months

Congress went into its spring break with little to demonstrate that much has changed from its previous gridlock — despite Republicans’ control of Capitol Hill and the White House.

There were vows at the start of the year of a rapid-fire offense, but Republican leaders ended the first three months of 2017 with one major accomplishment: the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Even that came with the price of changing the Senate rules in such a way as to permanently decrease the influence of the minority.

Every key GOP initiative has hit a dead end or remains stuck at the starting line: Plans to rapidly repeal the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were stalled by House Republican infighting. Senate Republicans largely have rejected the centerpiece of an emerging overhaul of the tax code that is backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. And an infrastructure package, often touted by President Donald Trump, has been relegated to the back of the line. Some Republicans are wondering whether they should move that up to try for a much-needed bipartisan win.

Ambitions for big changes with Trump in the White House and a GOP majority on Capitol Hill have quickly slammed into political reality: Republicans are struggling to get along, especially in the House. And Trump is a political neophyte who is unfamiliar with the legislative wrangling and compromises needed to score a big win in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recently said the bulk of the legislative agenda for the rest of this year would require Democratic support, given the tight margins in the Senate and GOP infighting in the House. Now out of session until late April, McConnell says he hopes cooler heads soon will prevail.

“I’m hoping that, after this two-week break, people are going to be in a more friendly mood,” he said in an interview Friday, noting that Democrats used fewer delay tactics on Gorsuch than some Cabinet selections early this year. “Most of the things that we’ll be doing the rest of the year, they’ll have to play a major role.”

Some Democrats are willing to cross the aisle, particularly several up for re-election who hail from states that Trump won by wide margins.

“We’d like to find a pathway forward,” Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., said after Friday’s Gorsuch confirmation vote. Yet Manchin found McConnell’s move to end 60-vote filibusters on Supreme Court nominees to be “un-American” and said he’s still waiting for real outreach on more legislation to create a bipartisan coalition.

“Well, we had the opportunity this time,” he said of the Supreme Court fight, “and it didn’t work too well.”

That effort didn’t get any easier late Thursday when Trump ordered a Tomahawk missile strike on a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical-weapons attack against Syrian rebels — a move that won bipartisan support but also renewed calls from both parties for Congress to debate and approve a new war resolution.

Earlier this decade, Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Boehner, R-Ohio, made a basic calculation: A Congress that struggled to pay its debts and to keep the government lights on was never going to craft a bipartisan deal governing the prosecution of America’s wars.

So the Democratic Senate majority leader and the Republican House speaker, both of whom are now retired, stymied attempts at drawing up a new measure to guide the military in carrying out its expanding operations fighting terrorists.

McConnell adopted that same attitude after the strike in Syria, suggesting Trump had the constitutional latitude to act and that Republicans and Democrats were too far apart to agree on a new authorization for the use of military force.

“I can’t envision us agreeing on what an AUMF ought to be,” he said, referring to the authorization measure.

And lawmakers face more immediate problems. Within 72 hours of lawmakers’ return later this month is the April 28 deadline for funding federal agencies to avert a government shutdown. McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., recently met about that funding plan, and not once did they discuss the Gorsuch confirmation fight, signaling a willingness to find common ground to push through a bill.