Pundits and politicians are fond of complaining about partisan politics
causing gridlock in government.
But you won't hear corporate America grumbling very often. For them,
generally, the less Congress does, the better.
"By and large, big business likes predictability, and gridlock provides a
great deal of predictability," says Gerald Cassidy, the veteran lobbyist who
runs Cassidy and Associates.
Indeed, the fact that most of the issues at the top of the 106th's agenda
failed to pass was exactly the result sought by the legions of corporate
lobbyists working the Hill.
Recent examples of this include a patients bill of rights, which would have
increased regulation of HMOs and opened them up to lawsuits; Medicare drug
coverage for seniors, which pharmaceutical companies feared would cut into
profits; and efforts to regulate the tobacco and gun industries.
In nearly all of these cases, industry lobbyists developed their own
legislation, the passage of which would have deflected the threat of more
rigorous regulation. Failing the passage of industry-supported bills, simple
inaction comes in a close second place. Every year that passes increases the
chance that public interest-and congressional resolve-will fade.
"A lot of entrenched interests gain from no action," says Theodore Lowi, a
professor of government at Cornell University and the former chair of the
American Political Science Association. "Entrenched and highly privileged
interests tend, with some exceptions, to gain from an inability to act."
In general, the measures that have the most visibility, and thus are the most
subject to gridlock, are ones that aim to regulate business.
"You would not want to stake your business strategy on passing a piece of
legislation, but there are lots of pieces of legislation that can disrupt your
business plan considerably," says Joel Jankowsky, head of the public policy
practice at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.
Of course, not all lobbyists are hired to kill legislation.
Some companies have been fighting for passage of bills they feel would help
their businesses. A prime example is the financial services industry, which
succeeded last fall in pushing legislation that tore down the walls separating
banking, securities, and insurance.
In general, deregulation efforts like the financial services bill tend to
have an easier time getting through because the fight is between different
business sectors, rather than partisans.
It is partisanship that has kept the financial services sector from attaining
its other major goal-tightening bankruptcy regulations. As of last week, the
bill had passed Congress but was being held up by the Clinton administration,
which will likely veto it. Such a bill is hard to pass because it falls along
partisan lines, with Republicans and conservative Democrats aligning themselves
with credit card companies and banks, and liberal and centrist Democrats siding
with trial lawyers and consumer groups.