Congress’ ‘Problem Solvers’ say it’s time to commit to compromise

From James Rosen, McClatchy Newspapers:

For the past three years, some Republican and Democratic lawmakers have sat next to each other during President Barack Obama’s annual State of the Union speech to Congress in a largely meaningless one-night show of bipartisanship.

Next week when Obama addresses the House of Representatives and the Senate in a joint session, 40 lawmakers from the two parties hope to add some beef: Under their official congressional lapel pins, they’ll wear orange buttons identifying themselves as Problem Solvers and displaying their pledge, “Committed to fix not fight.”

With congressional approval ratings at historic lows, the 23 Democrats and 17 Republicans say they want to move beyond mere symbolism as they tell their peers that they’ve pledged to try to end hyper-partisanship and work across the aisle to solve the country’s most pressing problems.

“We’re meeting on a regular basis, Democrats and Republicans just talking about areas where we think we can work together in a bipartisan way,” said Rep. Ami Bera, a California Democrat who defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Dan Lungren in November.

“The idea is we’ve got to move past being only Democrat or Republican,” Bera said in an interview. “It’s very evident in my freshman class. All of us got elected knowing there was an expectation that we would work together.”

Bera and his fellow Problem Solvers scored a major victory last week when Congress passed and Obama signed the No Budget No Pay Act. It raises the federal debt ceiling through May 18 while blocking lawmakers’ salaries if they fail to pass a budget for fiscal 2014, which starts Oct. 1.

Bera made the bill a central plank of his campaign against Lungren last year. While Bera preferred a tougher measure than the one that eventually passed – it holds lawmakers’ pay in escrow instead of eliminating it – the new Sacramento-area lawmaker voted for it in the spirit of compromise that he thinks is so important.

“Passing a budget is our core job,” Bera said. “It lets the public know what our priorities are and how we’re going to spend our resources.”

With the House under Republican control and the Senate holding a Democratic majority, Congress has operated without a budget for several years while passing stopgap spending bills that fund the government for shorter periods instead of moving annual appropriations measures…

The Problem Solvers caucus is a key initiative of No Labels, an advocacy organization launched in December 2010 by a group of high-powered politicians and political consultants who were fed up with Washington gridlock.

One of the No Labels founders is Mark McKinnon, an Austin, Texas, Republican political consultant who was a key adviser to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and John McCain in 2008.

“There really wasn’t a voice reflecting what the American people want,” McKinnon said in an interview. “They want to see Washington start dealing with our problems. They don’t care if it’s a Republican solution or a Democratic solution, they just want to see some progress.”

Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state treasurer and onetime head of the Kentucky Democratic Party, is another co-founder from his home base as a lawyer in Lexington.

“Most Kentuckians and other people I run into are fed up with politics and the way the parties are always fighting and nothing is ever accomplished,” Miller said. “We want to bring Democrats, Republicans and independents together to change the dynamics.”…

Miller graduated from Henry Clay High School in Lexington, named after a legendary lawmaker who crafted several measures that helped hold off the Civil War for a decade.

“His nickname was the Great Compromiser, but now ‘compromise’ is seen as a dirty word,” Miller said.

The Problem Solvers insist that theirs is not a centrist group, but rather one that includes lawmakers with viewpoints from across the political spectrum, from liberal to conservative.

Hoping to grow to 75 members by year’s end, they view themselves as a bipartisan and potentially more powerful version of two caucuses whose ranks have shrunk with the rise in partisanship: the Blue Dog Democrats and the Main Street Republicans, each of which bring together moderate pragmatists willing to compromise.

“Our potential is more meaningful because we have members of both parties,” said McKinnon, who is advising the Problem Solvers. “In Congress, if you can bring together 40 or 50 – or hopefully 70 or 75 – votes of Democrats and Republicans, that’s a substantial number of votes that can swing a big issue.”

In another sign of the group’s increasing influence, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s “Make Life Work” address Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, billed as a major piece of the Republicans’ ongoing rebranding effort, was a strong echo of the No Labels slogan “Make America Work.”

The No Labels office in downtown Washington features two towering posters of Republican President Ronald Reagan and former Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who are models for the group because of their ability to work together and reach compromises despite their political differences…

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