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Washington • Earlier this year, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was spending so much time with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in drafting comprehensive criminal-justice reform legislation that it started to irk Lee's wife, Sharon.
"I was calling Pat Leahy so much, she said, 'You talk to Senator Leahy more than you talk to me,' " Lee recalled Thursday.
While Washington remains mired in partisan gridlock, Lee has teamed up with Leahy to sponsor several bills that both say bridge the gap between conservative and liberal. Their recipe, the two say, is finding common ground and working to forge relationships, not just repudiate their opponents.
"The American people expect us to work together; they expect us to find common ground," Lee said Thursday during a forum sponsored by Politico and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. "I don't intend to stop finding common ground."
That may sound odd coming from Lee, who rode a tea-party wave into office and who joined with Sen. Ted Cruz in 2013 on a strategy to try to kill Obamacare funding that led to the 16-day government shutdown. Lee is considered one of the most conservative senators.
But he says there are many issues that don't come down on party lines, such as privacy, prison reform and patents – three of the issues that Lee and Leahy are sponsoring bills to address.
"I recognized early on, he and I shared a lot of things in common," Lee said of Leahy, noting both were former federal prosecutors who believe some mandatory minimum sentences create injustice and that privacy is something Americans treasure.
Leahy, the longest-serving senator in office, says the example of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which has support on both sides of the aisle, is the way to bridge the gap between the parties.
"It takes Republicans and Democrats to work together," Leahy said. "That is the only way these days you're going to get something passed."
The American people are over the partisan rhetoric, he said, and want action.
Toward the end of Thursday's forum, Lee noted how the budget process has broken down in Congress, which just recently passed a stopgap bill into 2017. The legislative body at one time passed a dozen appropriations bills, each brought up through committee and amended over time. Lee said Congress needs to return to that.
"I would agree on that," Leahy chimed in. "More and more we wish we could just go and do each one of the bills. ... The American people would like that."