Main Key Vote Story
Key Votes of 1996:
GOP's New Willingness To Compromise Brings Party Modest Success
By Andrew Taylorand the Congressional Quarterly staff
As 1996 opened, major portions of the government were shut down, President Clinton was rising in public opinion polls and Republicans could point to a list of legislative accomplishments that they considered Decidedly short.
| Telecommunications | ||
| Farm Subsidies | ||
| Cuba Sanctions | ||
| Product Liability | ||
| Line-Item Veto | ||
| Health Insurance | ||
| Budget Resolution | ||
| Balanced-Budget Amendment | ||
| Campaign Finance | ||
| Minimum Wage | ||
| Nuclear Waste Dump | ||
| Welfare Overhaul | ||
| Gay Rights | ||
| Abortion Curbs | ||
| Defense Authorization | ||
| Government Shutdown | ||
| Telecommunications | ||
| Farm Subsidies | ||
| Anti-Terrorism Bill | ||
| Death-Row Appeals | ||
| Immigration | ||
| Abortion | ||
| Debt Limit | ||
| Product Liability | ||
| Minimum Wage | ||
| Defense Appropriations | ||
| Pesticides | ||
| Welfare Overhaul | ||
| Appropriations | ||
Despite an impressive display of party discipline and a series of victories over Clinton in the House, much of the GOP revolution had foundered in the Senate or been blocked by the president. Republicans had spent much of 1995 ignoring Clinton's veto, if not daring him to use it.
Now, chastened Republican leaders realized that the GOP-controlled 104th Congress was going to avoid the "do-nothing" label, they would have to compromise with the president. So they changed tack. In 1996, as they sought to win re-election of a GOP-controlled Congress for the first time since 1928, Republicans displayed considerably more respect for the institution of the presidency and the veto, even if their relationship with Clinton remained rocky.
The result was an election year session that produced some significant legislation -- but little that was revolutionary.
On a few occasions, Republicans basically gave in to Clinton, as they did in passing a bill that raised the minimum wage and during end-stage negotiations over a catchall spending bill.
In other instances, veto threats forced Republicans to drop key provisions that had been passed by the House. Conferees on an immigration bill removed a provision that would have permitted states to deny public education to the children of illegal immigrants. A plan to set up tax-deductible medical savings accounts was scaled back to a demonstration project during negotiations on a health insurance bill. In such cases, Republicans opted to make law, despite the desire of some conservatives to carry the issue to the voters.
In other cases, such as a major bills to overhaul welfare, rewrite the Depression-era framework for farm subsidies, and an anti-terrorism bill that carried unprecedented restriction on death-row appeals, Republicans maneuvered Clinton into signing legislation with key elements he disliked.
Sometimes, it required a bit of sugar-coating to make unpleasant votes more palatable, as when House GOP leaders confronted a bill to increase the debt limit and avoid a first-ever government default. They attached a popular measure to increase the amount Social Security beneficiaries could earn without losing benefits and (temporarily) a budgetary line-item veto bill popular with conservatives. The minimum wage increase carried a popular package of tax cuts for small businesses.
At the same time, Republican leaders made sure that their members would have to cast as few votes as possible that might have hurt them at the ballot box. Virtually gone were up-or-down votes to cut Medicare or scale-back environmental regulations. House leaders generally banned controversial legislative provisions on spending bills. Instead came the passage of bipartisan bills to protect drinking water, update pesticide regulations and overhaul telecommunications law.
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Since 1945, Congressional Quarterly has selected a series of key votes on major issues of the year. An issue is judged by the extent to which it represents: For each group of related votes on an issue, one key vote usually is chosen -- one that, in the opinion of CQ's editors, was most important in determining the outcome. |
Sometimes, events were sufficient to break legislation loose. When a Cuban MiG fighter shot down a pair of U.S.-registered private planes carrying anti-Castro advocates, that removed the sticking points from a bill imposing economic sanctions. But Congress responded more slowly to the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City and, on a key vote that paired an unusual alliance of liberals and conservatives, stripped out much of the heart of the bill.
Social issues were highlighted by wrenching votes to override Clinton's veto of a bill to ban a late-term abortion procedure. But supporters of civil rights for homosexuals took some solace from the narrow defeat in the Senate of a bill to prohibit job discrimination against gays, even though another bill aimed at prohibiting same-sex marriages was swept into law.