Opposites Attract--and Team Up on a Flood of Legislation

WASHINGTON —  Sen. Orrin G. Hatch was not looking forward to his meeting with Trent Lott. He knew that the Senate Republican leader would not be happy to learn that he was collaborating with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, of all people, on a plan to raise taxes to pay for health insurance for millions of low-income children.

Sure enough, Lott began to chafe as Hatch spoke. “Why would you do that?” the baffled Mississippian finally demanded.

But the conservative Hatch knows how to plow ahead with what he believes in, even if he antagonizes fellow Republicans in the process. And the only thing that infuriates Hatch’s conservative allies even more than that is his friendship with Kennedy, among the last of Washington’s unabashed big-government liberals.

The Utah Republican and the Massachusetts Democrat have forged what experts now consider the most consistently productive legislative pairing in memory--even though the two disagree on far more issues than not and therefore “fight like brothers 98% of the time,” as Hatch put it.

Today he and Kennedy have embarked on their most ambitious effort yet, a crusade to raise the federal cigarette tax by 43 cents a pack. That is enough to finance $20 billion a year in grants to states for insuring children in low-income families with working parents, with $10 billion left over for deficit reduction.

In the process, this prolific odd couple offer a case study of how amity--along with legislative know-how and righteous determination--can overcome ideological rigidity and produce solutions to real problems, whether the issue is AIDS, child care, summer jobs or crime.

The Hatch-Kennedy collaboration also reveals how both men, contrary to their public images as doctrinaire ideologues, are great compromisers--as became apparent during their many knock-down, drag-out arguments over their “child health insurance and lower deficit act.”

“The thing that makes the legislative system go,” Hatch said, “is when people with very strong personalities are willing to set aside differences and sit down and try and work it out.”

Their partnership is all the more striking because Hatch was drawn to Congress in the first place--never having held public office before--by a burning desire to fight the likes of Kennedy.

“I was so sick of the leftward bent that our country was moving toward that I blamed Kennedy for most of that,” Hatch said, recalling his 1976 election to the Senate. “He was, to me, a symbol of everything that was wrong.”

In Washington, Hatch landed on two committees on which Kennedy also sat: the judiciary and labor and human resources panels. It didn’t take Hatch long to see the enormous influence that Kennedy wielded on both committees. Along the way, Hatch added, “I recognized a pretty good person.”

Hatch was mindful of both qualities in 1981, when the Republicans gained control of the Senate and he took over as chairman of the Labor Committee--from Kennedy. Immediately he went to Kennedy and asked for help--a rare tactic in an institution where committee chairmen typically behave like potentates.

“Ted, I can’t run this committee without you,” Hatch said he told Kennedy. “I know that. You know it. I’m asking for your help. I’ve got to have your help.”

“Well, there are some things I can’t help you with,” Kennedy replied.

Hatch was undeterred. “I understand that. But there are a lot of things we can do together.”

“I’ll help you,” Kennedy said.

In the years since, Hatch and Kennedy have worked together to pass bills that created a major summer jobs program, imposed penalties on drug manufacturers that defraud the Food and Drug Administration, expanded AIDS research and education and created safeguards for the disabled, among many other accomplishments.

“I don’t think anyone can find any others approaching this pair,” said Thomas Mann, a congressional analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Their latest joint effort was initiated by Kennedy. When approached, Hatch was blunt. Yes, he too wanted more children to have medical insurance, but “it ain’t going to be a Kennedy-Kerry bill,” Hatch said he told Kennedy, referring to a $50-billion proposal by Kennedy and his Democratic colleague from Massachusetts, John Kerry.

“That bill’s nothing but a big bureaucracy and creates a big entitlement program,” Hatch said.

Kennedy didn’t bat an eye. “We’ll work with you,” he told Hatch. Kerry graciously bowed out.

Thus began countless bargaining sessions between Kennedy and Hatch and their staffs, with Hatch often easing the tension by playing CDs from his large collection, which now contains one with 13 spiritual songs that the senator, a devout Mormon, wrote himself.

Although many Republicans, including Lott, are attacking the Hatch-Kennedy bill as a classic big-government approach to problems, the co-authors disagree. “It’s very specific--voluntary for the states, and no entitlement,” Kennedy said.

During their negotiations, Hatch insisted the $20 billion be offered to states as block grants, with the states free to set their own eligibility standards. But he acceded to Kennedy’s demand that states must follow certain federal guidelines.

“I wish we didn’t have to have strings--and just make everything absolute block grants,” Hatch said. “But that’s not real.”

To keep his own side interested, Hatch won a concession from Kennedy to set aside $10 billion for deficit reduction. “When was the last time you saw Ted Kennedy favoring a bill that had block grants, with states setting the standards, and had a deficit-reduction component?” Hatch asked.

Of the nation’s estimated 10 million uninsured children, the bill would reach the 7 million in working families. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said it “could be the major bill that Congress passes this year.”

Still, it faces hurdles, foremost among them a belief among governors that the states would not enjoy sufficient flexibility.

And Mike Leavitt, the Republican governor of Hatch’s own state, fears that a whopping tobacco tax increase would so reduce cigarette sales that federal funding for the block grants would diminish--thus saddling the states with the cost of providing insurance for the children.

Although Hatch has been much criticized by some conservatives for his collaborations with Kennedy, the Democrat has also made his share of compromises over the years. “Don’t forget, the guy who led the charge for airline and transportation deregulation was Ted Kennedy,” said Norman Ornstein, a congressional analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

As for Hatch, the arch-conservative National Review magazine recently wondered whether he had become a “Latter-Day Liberal.” But Hatch remains essentially the same rock-ribbed conservative who once called Democrats “the party of homosexuals,” and led the fight for a balanced-budget amendment.

That has not prevented Kennedy and Hatch from visiting the other’s home state to attend funerals. And it was Hatch a few years ago who, risking Kennedy’s wrath, told him that he had to quit drinking and stop “acting like a little teenage kid” and a “goodtime-Charlie playboy.”

For many of his colleagues, Hatch’s legislative collaborations and personal friendship with Kennedy are too much.

“Hatch is a flake,” snapped one GOP senator who asked not to be named. “His problem is, he likes to be liked--by Democrats. The truth is, he’s never been fully trusted or accepted by dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.”

Hatch dismisses such talk.

“I take the position that the most conservative position in the world is to help people,” he said. “And government has a role to help people who cannot help themselves. My attitude is, you can accomplish a great deal around here if you don’t worry about who gets the credit. That’s what good legislators do.”