Majority Dems Get a Taste of Their Minority Medicine

Jan. 18, 2007 — -- Two weeks into their newfound majority, Democrats in the House of Representatives clamped down on Republican opposition and rammed through their six priorities. On the Senate side, however, things reached a standstill for a while this week.

Senate Republicans, who complained for years about Democratic minority obstruction, used the same tactics Democrats employed last year when the tables were turned -- and the Democrats don't like it one bit.

On Thursday, for instance, New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer lamented that Republicans were stalling the ethics reform bill in the Senate. The bill eventually passed by an overwhelming margin of 96-2, but not before some partisan finger-pointing, a few angry speeches on the Senate floor, and a pair of dueling press conferences.

"The good ethics reform train was moving swiftly until the Republicans made it grind to a halt," Schumer said at the Democratic press conference.

Schumer was referring, of course, to the most sweeping lobby and ethics reform measure since Watergate. Only four senators either opposed or failed to vote in favor of the measure.

Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kan., was in his home state, preparing to announce a run for the White House in 2008 and Senator Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, remains in a Washington hospital recovering from a brain aneurism suffered last December. Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., were the only two who actually voted against the ethics and lobbying package.

So why does a bill that is co-sponsored by both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, that just a week earlier had been touted as the top priority of both Republicans and Democrats, and which finally passes in a nearly unanimous vote get stalled on the floor for two days? This is Washington and, majorities come and go, but the legislative process stays the same. There is a reason they call any day on Capitol Hill "Groundhog Day."

The story goes like this: The ethics train, like Schumer said, was chugging along until Wednesday night when Republicans, led by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., insisted the Senate vote on an amendment not at all related to ethics reform -- a "line item" veto provision that does have some Democratic support. Every president since Reagan has asked for the Congress to pass it. And Congress usually ignores him (the one time they did not, in 1998, the Supreme Court declared the line item veto unconstitutuional).

While Democrats eventually agreed on Thursday to give Republicans a vote on the line item veto next week, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who vehemently opposes the line item veto measure, refused to let them move the amendment in the ethics proposal. So, depending on your perspective and party lines, someone was being stubborn: Byrd, Reid or McConnell (or perhaps all three).

Republicans say they just wanted a vote on line item veto. Democrats hollered that Republicans just want to kill the ethics bill. And Byrd hollered on the Senate floor "(The line item veto is) an assault on the single most important protection the people have on a president, any president, who wants to run roughshod over the liberties of the people described in the Constituion," the 90 year-old declared in a fiery floor speech.

The resolution to the morass came late Thursday night when Democrats and Republicans, and a frustrated Robert Byrd, finally agreed to move a vote on the line item veto to next week, when the Senate debates a bill that would raise the minimum wage, another bill with which the line item veto has nothing to do.

But before there are any tears cast for poor Schumer or the Democrats falling victim to Republican obstruction and their independent-minded senior Senator, don't forget: Rewind one year and it was Schumer obstructing the exact same bill with the exact same tactic. Literally.

Back in March 2006 -- the last time the Senate voted on ethics reform (the bill eventually passed 90 to 8 under the Republican-controlled Senate last year only to die in conference in the House) -- Schumer offered his own completely nongermane amendment, scrawled on a scrap of paper and snuck in behind Republicans' backs. Schumer's move almost killed lobby reform then, just like Gregg's line item veto almost killed it this week.

Schumer's amendment would have blocked the sale of major U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, a foreign company. Dubai Ports World eventually capitulated to an angry American public and pulled the sale, and Schumer pulled his amendment.It's ironic, but not surprising, that Republicans are now slowing legislation. That, after all, is the way the Senate works.

Reid had warned that when Democrats took control, he would be unable to ram legislation through like Nancy Pelosi has done in the House with her 100 legislative hours.

"The Senate was set up by the founding fathers not to be very efficient but to be deliberative," said Reid. "Deliberative to some people means slow. We're working long hours and we are going to get this done."

If they had been unable to finally reach an agreement with Republicans about how to proceed on lobbying reform, the now-majority Democrats said they would move on to the next items on their agenda: raising the minimum wage and debating a nonbinding resolution condemning President Bush's strategy for a surge of American troops to Iraq.

Republicans, who last year decried Democratic obstruction, played it cool. McConnell, smug at his own press conference Thursday, said, "If I had a nickel for every time [Majority Whip Dick] Durbin said the Senate is not the House, I'd be a richer man than I am." McConnell was the one who aped last session when Democrats often said, "The minority is not irrelevant in the Senate," and "It takes 60 votes to get anything done."

Durbin is not now talking about how the Senate is different than the House -- he is pointing the finger at Republicans. "In the history of the Senate, there are few occasions when we can step forward on a bipartisan basis for real reform. To kill this ethics bill over an unrelated bill is transparent," he said.

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