Congress stymied as politicians bicker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush portrays the U.S. Congress as being asleep at the switch since Democrats took over in January. The problem, Democrats retort, is that Bush and his fellow Republicans have tried to derail their work at nearly every turn.

"He (Bush) is impossible and has been for seven years to deal with," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat told reporters on Tuesday.

Throughout this year, Republicans have tried to tag Democrats with having led a "do-nothing Congress." "Nothing has been accomplished all year," Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, insists.

But as they excoriate their political opponents, Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress have successfully stopped most major Democratic initiatives this year.

They have staged an unprecedented number of "filibusters" in the Senate, where Democrats do not have a big enough majority to end debate and force a substantive vote.

The few times that wasn't the case, Bush used his veto to kill Democrats' top priorities, like ending the Iraq war, expanding health care to children from low-income families and expanding stem cell research.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky argued Republicans just want to have input. "We can't seem to get the kind of bipartisan agreement that allows the minority to have some say," according to McConnell.

With only a week or two remaining in the first half of 110th Congress that convened in January, there's a deflated feeling on Capitol Hill.

Democrats and Republicans complain not enough has been accomplished. The public seems to agree, with just one in five Americans approving of the job Congress is doing, even worse than the unpopular Bush's ratings.

The legislative deadlock might get even worse next year, as election campaigns for Congress and the presidency get into full swing.

As evidence of the partisanship, Congress this week will have to pass a temporary funding bill to keep most of the government running, the third in as many months, because of disagreements over spending priorities.

Ethan Siegal of the Washington Exchange, a private group that tracks Congress, said of Republicans' opposition tactics: "The template for trying to get into power is to make sure the party in charge doesn't have many legislative successes."

But even many Republicans think accusations of a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress won't be enough for their party to win back their majority status in the November 2008 elections.

PROMISES KEPT?

Democrats quickly fulfilled many of their 2006 campaign promises, raising the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, implementing stalled recommendations of the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks and trying to stop ethics abuses that plagued Congress during years of Republican leadership.

Republicans blocked many other measures.

A top domestic priority -- reforming U.S. immigration law -- was buried by conservative Republicans in the House. On foreign affairs, Republicans killed repeated moves to bring combat in Iraq to an end, despite Americans' disenchantment with a war now in its fifth year. Anti-war feeling had been a driving factor behind the Democrats' success in last year's elections.

Popular legislation to expand stem cell research to help cure diseases such as Parkinson's was vetoed by Bush, as was a bill to deliver health care to more children from low-income families.

Bush has veto threats on the bills to fund the government through next September. He recently told Arkansas business leaders: "You're fixing to see what they call a fiscal showdown in Washington."

But despite the bluster, Bush and congressional Democrats are at odds over a relatively tiny slice, about $11 billion, of the nearly $3 trillion budget.

Negotiations between the two finally have begun, but a compromise -- some war funding coupled with some of the additional domestic spending Democrats want -- was showing signs of souring this week, again amid accusations of Republican sabotage. There's plenty of incentive for a deal though as neither side wants government shutdowns to begin if agencies run out of money this month.

(Editing by David Storey)