Congressional changes will be felt in fits and starts

By: JIM KUHNHENN - Associated Press | Thursday, January 4, 2007 7:16 PM PST ∞

WASHINGTON -- The shift in political power swept through Capitol Hill Thursday. If history and politics are any guide, change will follow more haltingly.

House Democrats, claiming a mandate from voters, pledged to push their top legislative priorities through in 100 hours of legislative activity with little Republican input.

In the Senate, where the Democrats hold a hair-thin majority, they tempered the exuberance of the day with a dose of reality.

"This is a deliberative body," said Ben Nelson, D-Neb. "There may be 100 hours of debate on just one issue here."

If the House is a whirlwind, the Senate can be barely a sigh. In 1994, when Republicans seized control of the House and Senate, Newt Gingrich and his band of GOP revolutionaries passed an aggressive conservative agenda in 100 days only to see much of it run aground in the Senate.

This time, House Democrats have vote-ready legislation to raise the minimum wage, increase competition for Medicare prescription drugs, implement homeland security provisions recommended by the 9/11 commission, expand stem cell research, cut interest rates on student loans and end subsidies for oil companies. All that is scheduled for the month of January.

In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans expect to spend at least two weeks just on a package of ethics rules and legislation.

The Senate has 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and two independents who will vote with the Democrats.

"Fifty-one to forty-nine in the Senate is a little shift, it's not an overwhelmingly changed universe," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn. "The reality in the Senate is that you have to work with both sides if you're going to get something done."

The political reversal in Congress is not simply about how lawmakers tackle a new Democratic legislative wish list. It is also about fundamentally altering the balance of power in Washington and re-establishing the legislative branch as a check on the executive.

"The most significant change, partly because of the war, is Democrats are going to reassert a Congress that is independent of the White House and that is the equal of the White House," said former Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla., now at the Aspen Institute. "That is something that has really eroded in the past few years."

New Democratic committee chairmen in both the House and Senate are already planning to conduct hearings scrutinizing Bush administration policies on the war in Iraq, secret surveillance, the environment, federal contracting and other issues.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, under new chairmen Joe Biden, D-Del., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., respectively, want to hold hearings the moment President Bush announces his new Iraq strategy. In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the new chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, plans to focus on areas of government waste, including the work of federal contractors.

Waxman said he intends to wait until House Democrats first act on their top legislative priorities this month.

Both Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid will face challenges leading their respective Democratic caucuses. For now, they have found agreement over an initial list of legislation. But as the months pass, such unity might be more of a challenge.

With Democrats in charge, many congressional committees will be run by old style liberals such as Charles Rangel of New York, John Conyers of Michigan and Barney Frank of Massachusetts in the House and Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in the Senate.

But the membership of both the House and Senate is more moderate, often conservative.

What's more, Reid will have to contend with the presidential aspirations of several Democrats. Among those with ambitions are Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Biden, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Those potential problems seemed distant on Thursday. Instead, Democrats promised a new era of bipartisanship and accomplishment.

"I accept this gavel in the spirit of partnership, not partisanship, and look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people," Pelosi said shortly after being elected speaker on a party line 233-202 vote.

In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans assembled in a private meeting Thursday morning and emerged pledging to work cooperatively.

Some took the rhetoric with a dose of skepticism,

Said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.: "What's going to be the test is when some of us get together on the tough issues and see if we can work something out."

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