The Trail Less Traveled

There was a fleeting moment Monday night when a fiercely partisan Democrat and his conservative Republican counterpart used public debate to arrive at common ground.

In a George Washington University auditorium, a little more than two miles from the Capitol, teams of four Democratic and four Republican members of the House met for the first in a series of debates that sponsors hope will foster higher-quality discourse than the bombastic one-minute floor speeches that often pass for debate in the House.

It was there, during a discussion of the economy, that Rep. Paul D. Ryan , a five-term Republican from Wisconsin, told the audience that the nation’s long-term fiscal health relies upon reining in entitlement programs.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel — a third-term Democrat from Illinois who is a prominent member of his party’s House leadership — asked whether Ryan thought cutting subsidies provided for health care companies under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law was a good way to do that. Not if the savings were poured back into the system, Ryan countered.

But would he agree to that policy if the savings simply went to reducing the cost of Medicare, asked Emanuel, who currently is chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and previously headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the highly successful 2006 campaign that boosted his party into its current majority.

“I agree,” Ryan said, using words rarely uttered on the House floor by a Republican to a Democrat, or vice versa.

The two members of the influential House Ways and Means Committee — both regarded as among their parties’ pre-eminent rising stars — have no doubt had similar conversations in private. But their public exchange proved that it is possible, under the right circumstances, for a Democrat and a Republican, a liberal and a conservative, to come together even on policy areas — such as entitlement spending — in which their views are generally divergent.

Yet even in this format that proved to be an isolated moment. Most of the 90-minute exchange proved that partisanship does not stop at the Capitol barricades.

Emanuel, a cosponsor of the event, fired the first shots at a GOP team led by House Republican Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam of Florida, another cosponsor, who is in his fourth term.

After opening with a trio of economic policy proposals, Emanuel accused the Republicans of having an economic strategy “that has created more debt and made China our banker.”

Republicans countered by saying Democrats, who do not project extending all of the tax cuts pushed into law during President Bush’s first term, are planning the biggest tax increases in the nation’s history. They also cast their Democratic counterparts as favoring big government over individual economic freedom.

“The more money a worker has in their paycheck, the more freedom they have for themselves and their families,” Ryan contended.

“We ought not be looking at the government to solve problems,” said Eric Cantor , a four-term Virginia representative who is the chief deputy whip for House Republicans.

The debate format, which included opportunities for the lawmakers to ask, answer and rebut propositions and questions from the audience, lent itself to a more thorough vetting of each side’s arguments on the economy and its tangents, including health care, trade, education, housing and the Iraq war, than typical House floor debate.

Cantor praised President Bill Clinton for having pressed ahead with trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and warned against Democratic critics of free trade pacts, whom he described as “protecting the jobs of today at the expense of the jobs of tomorrow.”

Trade has been a hot-button issue in recent days in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama portraying rival New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as part and parcel of her husband’s decision to push for enactment of NAFTA, and Clinton — who has said NAFTA needs to be re-examined — accusing Obama of distorting her record on the issue. In light of this dispute, Democrats at Monday night’s event were asked whether any of them would attempt to “re-open” NAFTA.

Emanuel said he would not, as did three-term Alabama Rep. Artur Davis , four-term New York Rep. Steve Israel — who graduated from George Washington University — and Rep. Robert E. Andrews , who is in his ninth full term representing a New Jersey district.

“We’re not running for president,” Emanuel quipped.

Similarly, the Republican team, which also included two-term Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, declined to endorse the cap-and-trade plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that is espoused by their party’s presidential front-runner, Arizona Sen. John McCain .

Ryan and Davis pointed out that there were some bipartisan agreements in Congress on tax and economic policy, including last year’s framework for trade agreements, this year’s economic stimulus package and a desire by lawmakers in both parties to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent.

But it was Davis, a Harvard-trained lawyer, who used the sharpest language to draw distinctions between the parties.

Recalling Bush’s 2003 admonition to Congress to make tough choices rather than passing them on to future leaders, Davis said the president and his Republican friends in the House chose to cut taxes, provide subsidies to oil companies and go to war in Iraq.

He called those decisions “not just the wrong choices — the wrong values.”

Cantor, yet another George Washington alumnus, closed for the GOP, and he, too, took a few partisan parting shots. Playing off a favorite Obama catchphrase, he said that Democrats who favor government solutions are sending a message that is “more of a ‘no, we can’t’ than a ‘yes, we can.’ ”

Despite a bit of partisan posturing, lawmakers on both sides of the stage said it was productive to get away from the Capitol and have a more extensive debate.

“It’s ironic that we have to leave the U.S. Capitol to give you the kind of debate the American people deserve,” Putnam said.

Davis noted that just having an audience is an improvement.

“We’re accustomed to empty chairs and nobody listening,” he said.

In addition to the Democratic Caucus and the Republican Conference, the series, called Congress Debates, is sponsored by the Congressional Institute and the Democratic Leadership Council.