Economy: lots of angst, little action

WASHINGTON — Americans are pumping their paychecks into their gas tanks, and the economy is in a stall. Food scarcities threaten governments overseas and spark hoarding at home. Foreclosures are up, home sales are down. Progress in Iraq and Afghanistan is halting.

Despite this confluence of crises on the nation's doorstep, official Washington is beset by election-year inertia.

After a fleeting bipartisan moment in January produced the rebate checks that began going out this week, the House and Senate floors have been given over to partisan sniping and small-bore bills. The House will vote this week to designate National Watermelon Month and National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day. The Senate is often tied in procedural knots and goes days without senators voting at all.

Frustration is building as lawmakers see a major disconnect between the everyday anxieties of people back home and the Washington agenda.

"I was home in Alaska over the weekend, and everywhere that I went, the price of gasoline was the main topic," Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. "What people really care about, what they really want to know is, what are you doing, Congress?"

"It is incomprehensible that we are not grappling with the major challenges confronting the American people," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

President Bush on Tuesday sought to assure Americans that he was aware of the problems, but said there was "no magic wand" he could wave to bring down energy costs. The high gas prices have come amid a declining job market, rising grocery prices, a housing crisis and a credit crunch now being felt in the college student-loan market.

Trying to wait it out

Democrats, and some Republicans, are trying to wait out the Bush administration, hoping to find a more receptive audience in whoever the next president is. Both parties are pushing political initiatives, trying to avoid tough votes themselves while inflicting them on the other side. Republicans are happy to slow legislation out of ideological opposition and an urge to flummox Democrats, forcing votes on even the most routine matters in the Senate.

"This is a very difficult climate to achieve anything substantive," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "The rebate check was an exception; I don't know if we can have a repeat performance."

Bush grew combative Tuesday when, asked about gas prices, he suggested drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an initiative that could not even clear Congress when Republicans were in charge. He also called for building more refinery capacity and expanding the use of nuclear power.

The Democrats' proposals — a demand for investigations of the oil industry and a windfall profits tax — have been debated for years, also. Even if approved, both approaches would provide little immediate relief.

Democratic leaders viewed the president's ultimatum Tuesday on a war-spending bill as typical of his unwillingness to compromise. He pledged he would not budge from a $108 billion ceiling he had set for a bill that Democrats hope to use as a way to provide some domestic economic relief and new benefits for members of the military.

Bush said that "108 is 108."

Some Republicans are also bucking Bush's vow to stick to his request, with no additional funding for domestic priorities, such as an extension of unemployment insurance and additional education benefits for returning war veterans.

Democrats tied up a free-trade agreement with Colombia that Bush wants to notch as a final accomplishment. The idea was to trade a vote on the Colombia deal for the domestic spending.

Congress is not completely locked down, and some legislation is advancing. The House is preparing this week to send the White House a bill prohibiting discrimination by insurers and employers on the basis of genetic makeup, a measure that has been years in the making. A major farm bill is emerging, although Bush on Tuesday renewed his call to reduce subsidies for wealthy farmers, saying the "massive, bloated" bill would do little to stem rising food costs.

Yet the current frustration in and with Congress stems from the feeling that the House, the Senate and the White House are not approaching the most pressing problems with an appropriate sense of urgency. Help for troubled homeowners is still taking shape in the House banking committee, and the administration has been taking a tougher stance against it. Democrats want more money to boost the economy, but Bush and many Republicans say they want to see the impact of the new stimulus payments first.

No gas-price relief

The price of gas might be the most vexing problem. It is taking a serious bite out of family and business budgets across the country, but lawmakers are now essentially trying to fix blame for the rising costs. An immediate remedy is elusive.

"The truth is we are not going to legislate a substantial reduction in gas prices over the short term," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "That is not going to happen."

A number of Republicans have joined Democrats in pressing Bush to give ground on his refusal to suspend purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Bush has resisted halting the purchase of 67,000 to 68,000 barrels of oil a day for the emergency stockpile, contending it is needed to guard against an interruption of the flow of foreign oil to the United States. He also has argued that a halt would have no significant effect on prices because the daily purchase amounts to one-tenth of 1 percent of global oil demand.

A number of Republicans also are pushing to suspend or repeal the requirement that greater amounts of ethanol, especially from corn, be added to the nation's gasoline supply, contending the mandate has driven up food prices.

"While the renewable fuels mandate was intended to lessen the dependence on foreign oil, it has done little but add more strain to an already shaky economy," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.

Efforts to freeze the mandate face strong resistance from farm-state lawmakers who dispute that it has driven up food prices. Ethanol supporters argued Tuesday that without biofuels, pump prices would be higher. "Ethanol is having the impact that we hoped that it would by increasing supply," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said.

Bush avoided saying whether he favored a summer-long moratorium on the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon, an idea embraced by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose opponent Sen. Barack Obama opposes the idea.

Bush continued to resist fully embracing the term "recession" to describe the current financial picture, but came closer than he has before. He said the country is in "difficult" straits five times, that it's "tough" three times and even called the situation "sour." "Recession, slowdown — whatever you want to call it," he said.

"You know, the words on how to define the economy don't reflect the anxiety the American people feel. You know, the average person doesn't really care what we call it," Bush said.

But he hardly missed a chance in his 49-minute appearance to take a shot at Democrats.

"I believe that they're letting the American people down, is what I believe." Bush said.

Additional information from the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and The Associated Press