Article...GOP Plays Hardball On Panel Resolution...
rollcall.com
Power Transfer Won't Result In Mass Firings
By Paul Kane
June 4, 2001
With Democrats taking over the Senate this week and pushing their own initiatives, Republican leaders are digging in their heels over negotiating a new committee structure and are threatening to hold the Democratic agenda hostage.
Once Democrats take charge Wednesday, a strange scenario will unfold that will leave Democrats chairing all 20 Senate committees; however, most of them will have Republican majorities until a new resolution is adopted that reassigns ratios and Members to the panels.
Seizing on this parliamentary rarity, Republicans believe they can use this to their advantage in negotiating a new committee deal by preventing Democrats from moving their favored legislation, such as managed care reform and a minimum wage increase, through committees until a deal is hatched.
As part of that effort to strike the best agreement, new Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) has begun a verbal campaign to discredit Democratic claims that they hold a majority, instead noting that their 50-49-1 edge only gives them a plurality in the 100-seat chamber.
"Any reorganization of the Senate [should reflect] the reality that the Democrats hold a plurality, not a majority in the Senate, and that their effective control of the Senate lacks the moral authority of a mandate from the voters," Lott wrote in a memo sent to GOP pundits in advance of the Sunday talk shows.
In his effort to deligitimize the Democratic majority, Lott declared a political "war" on what he considers a majority built on immoral back-room deals to lure Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) away from the Republican Party.
"We must begin to wage the war today for the election in 2002," Lott wrote. "We have a moral obligation to restore the integrity of our democracy, to restore by the democratic process what was changed in the shadows of back rooms in Washington. ... This is a great and worthy struggle. The fight is on."
The attacks on "back-room deals" would only increase if Sen.John McCain (R-Ariz.) left the GOPfold, an issue the Senator kept alive by opposing the $1.35 trillion tax cut and inviting incoming Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) to his Arizona home over the weekend.
The tactical and verbal jousting almost ensures that Daschle's first days on the job will be full of partisan bickering, a sharp contrast to the tone of Daschle's valedictory speech almost two weeks ago after Jeffords gave the Democrats the majority.
"What does not change with this new balance of power is the need for principled compromise,"Daschle said May 24. "This is still one of the most closely divided Senates in all of our history. We still face the same challenges. Bipartisan, or I guess I should now say tripartisanship, is still a requirement."
However, a team of five veteran GOP Senators - Phil Gramm (Texas), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Pete Domenici (N.M.) - has been charged with taking a hard line in negotiating the new deal over committees. The Senators were told to give special attention to ensuring that Bush administration nominees receive what GOP aides call "basic fairness" in the confirmation process.
Daschle is not expected to name his own negotiating team, and aides believe the GOP team will sit down with the new Majority Leader sometime this week.
Lott, whose one-on-one dealings with Daschle produced the 50-50 power-sharing deal last January, is not expected to be at the table.
Daschle will be automatically recognized as Majority Leader on Wednesday morning, and Democratic ranking members will become chairmen of their committees.
However, as the 50-50 agreement spelled out, the committee structures will revert back to their status at the end of the 106th Congress, leaving freshman Senators without any assignments and dissolving any new panel slots for veteran Senators.
That means Republicans will still be in the majority on most committees, and some others will be deadlocked. GOP aides say this will make it difficult to move legislation out of committees.
At the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, for example, new Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) will have to contend with a 9-8 Republican edge on a panel that will oversee two pieces of politically critical legislation to Democrats, the patients' bill of rights and the minimum-wage increase.
At Finance, incoming Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will face an 8-5 Republican majority, making it difficult for Democrats to move one of their favorite issues from the 2000 campaign, namely prescription drug coverage for seniors through Medicare.
Votes on the reorganizing resolution are debatable, and Republicans say they will block a purely Democratic deal with a filibuster. "This organizational resolution gives us the leverage," a senior GOP leadership aide said Friday.
Meanwhile, Democrats are making plans to go around the GOP blockade if the committee negotiations turn into a drawn-out process.
"We'd just bypass the committees and go straight to the floor," said Kennedy spokesman Jim Manley.
Aides expect the Senate to resume debate over education reform legislation Tuesday or Wednesday. With about 60 amendments left to debate, the bipartisan bill could move to final passage in the middle of next week. At that point, Manley said, Democrats plan to bring up the patients' rights legislation, with or without a committee's stamp of approval.
"We've debated this issue for five years. Everyone knows the issue or at least should know the issue," he said.
One senior GOP aide said it was "too early to tell" if Republicans would filibuster to death Democratic initiatives that are brought to the floor during the committee negotiation process.
Daschle made the first move in the talks last week when he sent Lott a proposal that would give Democrats a one-seat edge on all committees. Republicans were pleased with the ratio language, but were not happy that Daschle left open the possibility that the Democratic majority could be achieved by knocking a Republican off the committees.
"That's not going to happen," said a senior Republican leadership aide.
Daschle also declined to include any mechanism that would guarantee a clear process for Bush's nominees to federal agencies and the federal bench. This appears to be the critical issue facing negotiators. After what they saw as six years of GOP maneuvering to block Clinton White House nominees, Democrats have been itching to get the upper hand in the confirmation process, particularly in the politically charged Judiciary Committee.
Under the old 50-50 deal, Democrats were able to vote as a block against Solicitor General Ted Olson in committee, though Lott was able to bring the nomination to the floor and get it passed in one of his final acts as Majority Leader. With Daschle in the top job, however, Bush will no longer have a lifeboat for his nominees.
Hatch and the other GOP negotiators want a "basic fairness" resolution included in the committee deal that will allow nominees to be brought up for votes even if they're deadlocked in committee. Asked how this basic fairness would be determined, the senior GOP aide said that will be up to the five Senators to decide, setting up the possibility of a long negotiating process.
"It can be done in a couple of days or it could take a long, long time," the aide said. |
