The First 100 Hours
As promised, House Democrats put some big issues in play, but they're a long way from becoming law
House Democrats are marching through their legislative agenda just as planned and crowing about all the progress they're making: passing new ethics rules, implementing many of the 9/11 commission recommendations, raising the minimum wage, increasing funds for embryonic stem cell research, and letting the government negotiate the price of Medicare prescription drugs.
It's a pretty impressive list, considering they've been running things on Capitol Hill for just a few days. But Iraq is dominating the headlines, and Democrats have a tough balancing act in asserting their voice on the war while sticking to their original plan of passing a series of politically popular bills. Even with their success thus far, the Democrats' agenda is a long way from actually being signed into law. A series of debates awaits in the Senate before anything reaches the White House, and already President Bush has threatened multiple vetoes. Any ultimate claim of victory on the Democrats' campaign pledges will be many windy and uncertain weeks or months away, if ever.
The Democratic-controlled House will probably polish off the rest of its much-ballyhooed 100-hours agenda-cutting interest rates on student loans and repealing tax benefits for oil companies-this week before the president's State of the Union address, on January 23. Democrat strategists say that although Iraq was the No. 1 issue in the fall elections, voters are still concerned about domestic issues and are taking notice. "If you look at the overall Democratic message, it has been very, very successful," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Gerry Sikorski, a former Democratic congressman from Minnesota, says the Democrats are being "smart and flexible" on Iraq, calling for nonbinding resolutions in the House and Senate on the president's plan.
Over there. But in the Senate, what happens next to the larger Democratic agenda will be contentious. As soon as Democrats took control of the House, they passed sweeping ethics reforms that ban gifts, travel, and meals from lobbyists and the use of corporate jets, while requiring full disclosure of earmarks. The Senate started debating a similar-but weaker-lobbying bill last week. Some Democratic senators, including Barack Obama of Illinois and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, are trying to strengthen it by pushing to establish an independent nonpartisan ethics commission that would conduct investigations. But debate on this proposal, and a flurry of other amendments, means the legislation won't be finished until perhaps the end of this week. Maybe that's why the Senate is known as the "world's greatest deliberative body." What took the House two days to pass could wind up taking two weeks for the Senate, if it can move quickly.
The thorniest of Democrats' early intentions, the prescription-drug bill, has perhaps an even more complex route ahead. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the committee's outgoing Republican chairman, has already threatened a filibuster if the Senate considers the same language that the House passed. "I'd like to hope that I could avoid this by the art of persuasion," Grassley tells U.S. News. That's where his replacement, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, comes in. "I'm trying to find some kind of a compromise in the best sense of the term," he says; the bill won't be the same as the House's. "It'll be modified." Baucus is at the heart of another of the Democrats' key goals: increasing the minimum wage. Liberal lions like Sen. Ted Kennedy rail against the likelihood that Senate minimum wage legislation will be burdened with tax credits for small businesses, but Baucus and other Democrats in the Senate, who have just a 50-to-49 control of the chamber (South Dakota's Tim Johnson is still recuperating from a brain hemorrhage), know they'll need to nip and tuck to get the bill passed and signed by the president. "This is a team effort," he says. "We need 10 Republicans."
Even if the Senate reaches those critical compromises, the White House has already indicated it won't agree to everything. Bush said he'll veto the stem cell bill again as he did in 2005 and will veto a prescription-drug bill if it is identical to the House's version. So the Democrats may have harvested a bumper crop of legislation through the House, and they may beat that 100-hour clock. But keeping the focus on their agenda amid a rancorous debate on Iraq policy and securing legislative victories in the Senate are going to require more than a timepiece.
With Danielle Knight
This story appears in the January 22, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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