Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

(COMTEX) B: GOP legislative troubles not over ( United Press International )

WASHINGTON, Dec 29, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Congressional leaders had a great deal of trouble completing their legislative work in 2004, pushing the annual appropriations process and intelligence reform legislation into a lame-duck session that ended earlier this month.

While the GOP has clearly been emboldened by its election victories and the political capital President Bush gained from his win, the high-profile policy priorities established by Bush for his second term spell continued trouble for the legislative process when the 109th Congress begins in January.

The problems that led to legislation like the popular intelligence overhaul barely being approved and the need for a $388 billion omnibus appropriations bill for 2005 spending to gain approval by lawmakers are not going to go away despite strengthened Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told United Press International that the last-minute push Bush was forced to make to gain passage of the intelligence reorganization shows that Republicans are going to have a more complicated time than they originally imagined getting their policy agenda through Capitol Hill.

"They are going to have a rough time of it this year," said Ornstein.

There is actually the potential for things to get even tougher than they have been this year.

With mid-term congressional elections in 2006, Hill Republicans and Bush have only the next year to pursue a policy agenda as unencumbered by political constraint as possible in Washington.

Party leaders concerned with their futures are unlikely to pursue truly controversial or groundbreaking legislation in an election year, and after 2006 Bush will be a lame-duck president with diminishing political power going into the 2008 presidential race.

The GOP came out of the Nov. 2 elections bragging about their party discipline, shared ideals and strength heading into the next year.

Buzz grew about the potential for policy initiatives like Social Security and radical tax reform, market-driven healthcare reform, and even returning to the failed administration policies like allowing oil and gas drilling on federal parkland in Alaska.

In addition, some GOP leaders were not very subtle in their intent to further sideline Democrats from the legislative process. After the election, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., pledged to work with "Democrats who want to work with me to get good things done for the American people," which is the political equivalent of telling Democrats to follow the GOP path or take the highway.

But while House Republicans' increased votes next year will only serve to further solidify their tight hold on the body, Senate Republicans acknowledge that they remain five votes short of the numbers needed to ensure they can block Democratic filibusters, a tool the minority party in the Senate has proven they are willing to use.

"This conference is not suffering from hubris," Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in mid-November. "We have increased our numbers, but we know 55 is not 60."

The partisan bickering that has dominated Senate proceeding this year is likely to only intensify in the coming months as Democrats find themselves four votes shy of where they stood in 2004, particularly in light of the divisive issues that are expected to come before the body and GOP leadership efforts to assert control.

Among the unavoidable volatile issues expected to come before Congress are -- probably -- at least one nominee for the Supreme Court as well as more funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq, possibly from week one of the next Congress.

The White House's push for adding private investment accounts to Social Security for younger workers and expected push for replacing the income-tax code with a flat tax, consumption tax, or even less radical tax reform initiative will likely result in a need for a number of votes from across the aisle for approval.

The Bush administration has signaled it will not seek to pay for the Social Security plan -- which is estimated to cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion over 10 years -- and instead opt to add that cost to the national debt, which is sure to garner opposition for any such proposal from conservative and moderate Republican deficit hawks.

"You are not going to see welfare reform, you are not going to see reforming the Social Security system, you are not going to see reforming the tax code if it is only going to be done with one party," moderate GOP Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut said earlier this month.

The GOP's political machismo and talk of a conservative mandate from voters hit political reality in late November, when it became clear that Bush would have to rely on his self-proclaimed political capital to get an intelligence restructuring bill through Congress over the will of members of his own party.

The bill faced enough opposition from within the House GOP caucus to guarantee passage in the House only with Democratic support.

Because of this, Hastert refused to allow a vote on a compromise House-Senate version of the bill amidst vows of legislating with a "majority of the majority," further demonstrating the House GOP leadership's unwillingness to play nice with Democrats.

While the intelligence bill was ultimately approved, the fact that the Bush White House had to go to bat on a measure that had enough support to gain passage leaves lingering questions about the president's ability to gain approval for the other GOP policy priorities like Social Security and tax reform.

Beyond this, the lingering partisan tensions in the House and Senate are likely to only get worse given the GOP's continued efforts to further sideline Democrats.

In the House, GOP leaders' decade of control has led to Democrats being essentially shut out of the legislative process through careful manipulations of House rules by Republicans, a fact that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her colleagues often complain about, but that they have so far not been able to transfer into pro-Democratic voter sentiment.

"There is a very high level of arrogance of power with this group of people (the GOP leadership)," said Ornstein. "That usually ends up biting back against you."

In the Senate, where partisan rancor killed off several pieces of legislation this year -- including on a massive energy bill and bipartisan efforts at asbestos litigation reform -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and newly elected Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., are already fighting over how to divide power in committees for the next two years.

Republican leaders are pushing for control over two-thirds of the financial resources provided to each committee, which would represent a loss of dozens of Democratic staff jobs.

Resources are currently divided 51 percent to 49 percent to reflect party makeup in the body.

While Democrats are pushing for continues 50-50 division of resources, or at least one reflecting the actually divide, GOP leaders counter that between the mid-1970s and 2001, when the GOP took control of the body, the Democrats controlled two-thirds of committee resources.

Such actions are only likely to further enrage partisan sentiments heightened after the election.

Reid has already shown his teeth as head of his caucus, taking a shot across the GOP bow in the coming fight over the Supreme Court in Bush's second term by attacking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- a potential replacement as chief justice for the ailing William Rehnquist -- for his "poorly written opinions" and sub-par performance.

This spells trouble for Republican hopes to squelch any further attempts to filibuster Bush's judicial nominees, 20 of which had already been blocked the White House indicated it would renominate in January.

Even though Bush has had the vast majority of his nominees to the federal bench approved by the Senate -- the most since President Reagan -- Senate Democrats have blocked many to the chagrin of Hill Republicans, particularly conservatives.

One response under discussion is a GOP effort to reduce the number of votes needed to override the filibuster of judicial nominees from 60 to 51.

This so-called nuclear option is considered a last resort by many in the caucus because it is sure to fuel partisan rancor and likely to derail the legislative process.

Democrats would be sure to retaliate and they have the ability to shut down the Senate, where nothing happens without unanimous consent.

Ornstein says that the challenge for Hastert and Frist in dealing with Democratic opposition is figuring out how best to start negotiating with the minority party to ensure that the GOP policy agenda can move forward.

"I don't see any sign of that at the moment," said Ornstein. "When you have more of a hold you have a hard time explaining to them (the party base) why now you have to work out a deal, which means pissing off your own base, rather than doing it by yourself."

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(Please send comments to [e-mail].)

By CHRISTIAN BOURGE, UPI Congressional and Policy Correspondent

Copyright 2004 by United Press International.

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*** end of story *** (emphasis added)

[F6 comment -- a very good, very informative article from the Moonies -- and I can only hope that Ornstein's outlook, which from my point of view is remarkably positive and optimistic, proves accurate]

[F6 note -- re Clarence Thomas, see also:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4580165 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4578006 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4571813 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4565483 (and preceding and following),
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4505386 and preceding and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4464240 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4420593 and preceding and following,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4379475 and posts linked there and preceding and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4373609 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4323591 and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4283284 and preceding and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4248197 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4165942 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4129545 (item 3),
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4090436 (under 'Conflicts of Interest Violated the Law' about 70% of the way down) and following,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4013705 (item 7) and following (and preceding),
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3901321 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3897105 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3599791 and preceding and following,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3565215 and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3487862 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3450226 (. . .),
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3446154 and following,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3440996 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3421196 and preceding and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3416911,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3394248 and (the many) preceding and following,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3361335 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3343786 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3328605 and preceding,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3318667 (and preceding),
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3303302 and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3273280 ,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2901554 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2769237 and preceding and following,
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2615788 ,
in particular http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2571933 (in fact, in case the item linked there should ever disappear from the web, I'll post it in my next post, a reply to this one),
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2565056 (item IV),
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2240605 (my own comments), and
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2236506 (here too, in case the item linked there should ever disappear, I'll post it in my second following post as a reply to my next post)]