An Urban's Rural View

What has gotten into Congress? Have our lawmakers finally learned the fine art of compromise?

In December they reached a budget agreement. Time was when they reached one every year, but we'd gone so long with everyone dug in and unwilling to give that this one was real news.

In January they passed an appropriations bill. Second verse, same as the first.

And now, after more than two years of wrangling, we have a farm bill. They said it couldn't be done.

To be sure, three examples do not a trend make. The willingness to do deals could easily end when Congress takes up immigration reform or trade-promotion assistance or any number of other thorny looming issues.

The three examples are a start, though. It took real compromise on both sides, but particularly the Republican side, to swallow a farm bill that slashed $8 billion from food stamps over 10 years. The House bill had called for $40 billion in cuts, the Senate bill for only $4 billion.

The four tenacious House and Senate leaders who negotiated the farm-bill deal even managed to deliver a dairy compromise acceptable to both John Boehner and Collin Peterson. Talk about mission impossible.

The next big test of whether Congress can get things done is the debt ceiling. The government will reach the limit of its borrowing authority February 7 and will exhaust the "extraordinary measures" that keep the government running by late February.

On two previous occasions in recent years Republicans have demanded spending concessions as the price of approving an increase in the debt ceiling -- then backed down. Odds are they'll back down again. If they don't and Congress reaches an impasse on the issue, we'll know the spirit of compromise has died.

In a Congressional election year neither party wants to be blamed for a deadlock that causes major public inconvenience, like a default on the debt or, in the case of failure to pass a farm bill, a doubling of the retail price of milk.

The real test of whether Congress has changed its spots will come when we get to legislation like immigration reform and trade-promotion assistance. Both are important but failure to pass them wouldn't cause much inconvenience. Most voters wouldn't even notice if either or both went down in flames.

Down deep, do our legislators still see compromise as a spineless sacrifice of principle? Or have they come to agree with the Irish political theorist Edmund Burke that "all government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter?"

Watch the coming legislative battles for the answer.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

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