Senate Prepares to Tilt Left
Democrats Have Stronger Majority, Key Allies but Must Plan on Discord
Paul Kane
Washington Post
December 7, 2008
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada introduces newly elected Democratic senators on Capitol Hill last month. From left are Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Reid, Mark Warner, Kay Hagan and Mark Udall.
Rebound ahead?
Here are some of the bills that stalled in the current Congress but may pass next year:
Health care: Democrats have pressed to give the Department of Health and Human Services authority to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription drug prices for seniors who participate in the Medicare Part D program. House Democrats approved legislation approving such authority, but the plan failed in the Senate in April 2007. Six Republicans who voted against the bill are retiring or were defeated Nov. 4, all replaced by Democrats likely to support the measure.
Stimulus: President-elect Barack Obama is proposing a stimulus package that could include $500 billion in new spending and $200 billion in middle-class tax cuts, but Democrats cannot be certain that they have the votes to pass such a major proposal. Should that package run into trouble, Democrats hold a 60-plus majority on a smaller proposal to spend tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure construction.
Civil rights: After the failure of sweeping immigration overhaul, Democrats scaled back their effort to focus on the DREAM Act. Barring a push for broader immigration restructuring by Obama, Senate aides said this smaller measure should have enough support to pass. In April, 50 Democrats and six Republicans supported legislation that would have amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act by allowing more time for workers to file discrimination complaints. Five Democrats will replace Republicans who opposed the legislation.
Foreign policy: Sen. James Webb, D-Va., may reintroduce his bill requiring that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan remain stateside for the same amount of time they had spent in battle. Five Democrats, each of whom opposed President Bush's handling of the Iraq war, are replacing Republican senators who opposed Webb's troop deployment bill.
WASHINGTON - As Senate Democrats prepare for next year's agenda, they are likely to have a working filibuster-proof majority on a variety of legislative issues that could provide early victories for President-elect Barack Obama.
Though they are two votes short of their quest for 60 votes - with one race still undecided - Democrats say regular support from a few Republican moderates will allow them to clear any GOP parliamentary roadblocks. These include health-care programs, immigration revisions and presidential nominations.
"The truth is ... we will be fine on most major issues. We will almost always have some moderate Republican support," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Voting rights in Congress for the District of Columbia is another example.
In September 2007, legislation to expand the House of Representatives from 435 to 437 seats - by giving Washington, D.C., and Utah an additional vote each - was three votes shy in the Senate of the 60 needed to end a filibuster. Eight Republicans voted with the Democratic majority, which is 51 to 49 and includes two independents.
Come January, seven Republicans who voted against the compromise plan to allow delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., to become a full-fledged member of the House will be replaced by Democrats.
Aides said they don't know when the legislation will be reconsidered, but some D.C. voting-rights activists are so confident of passage that they are advocating a push for two D.C. seats in the Senate. Norton, however, favors seeking just the House seats.
Democrats said much of their disappointment about falling short of 60 Senate seats dissipated when Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich was declared the winner of the Senate race in Alaska, giving Democrats 56 seats, plus independents Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders of Vermont, who caucus with them.
Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia won re-election in a runoff Tuesday, leaving the race between Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman in Minnesota the lone undecided contest.
Democrats are counting on moderate Republicans such as Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, who have tilted leftward on issues such as Medicare spending and the Iraq war, to provide the votes to block a filibuster.
"You're just one state away - you're just Maine away - in terms of who you need to work with," Klobuchar said.
Other potential swing votes are Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., whose socially liberal views make him a prospective Democratic recruit on spending matters and Obama's judicial nominations, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
McCain has supported some Democratic initiatives that are likely to see early legislative action next year, including federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
Senate Democrats, however, must watch their right flank as they craft more sweeping initiatives.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has supported the Bush White House on many tax and budget issues this decade, and a quartet of Democrats elected in 2006 and 2008 - Begich; Robert P. Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia - all ran as centrists.
Republicans also expect that Democratic gains in the House and the Senate will showcase divisions among the party's wings, which largely put aside their differences in the past year in their pursuit of the White House.
Many of the Democratic pick-ups in the last two years have come in Midwestern and Southern districts considered Republican-leaning territory, and the House's Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats - at 49 members and growing - may clash on major issues with a largely liberal leadership.
"There are going to be a lot of differences among Democrats in the House and the Senate: Those who kind of share my view that you ought to govern in the middle; and those who have a sense of frustration that they've been out of power so long and want to go down and check the box and satisfy every left-wing group," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters last week.
Likely internal divisions among Democrats make it difficult to handicap the outcome of the biggest issues next year, particularly comprehensive efforts to secure universal health insurance and energy independence legislation, aides say.
In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a moderate, is drawing up a health-care plan, while Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., is drafting his own proposal from his health committee.
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