House Dems Accuse Senate Dems Of "Dithering"

House Dems: Senate is "Dithering"


House Democrats’ long-simmering frustration with the slow pace of the Senate has begun to boil over, with a broad swath of Democratic representatives accusing their Senate colleagues of failing both their party and their country.

The cross-chamber assessment is brutal:

• “There is a growing sense that we’re lifting more than our share,” says California Rep. Xavier Becerra, a member of the Democrats’ leadership team in the House. “Members are hoping the Senate will kick into gear because the public expects a lot more to get done.”

• “Sometimes I get the feeling that some of those guys [in the Senate] just like to see their names in the paper and see their faces on TV,” says Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern.

• “I talk a lot about the psychology of consensus,” says House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “Too often, it appears, that the psychology in the Senate is the psychology of one.”

• “When it comes to a jobs bill, the Senate seems more interested in dithering,” says first-year Rep. Tom Perriello, a Virginia Democrat whohas taken heat back home for tough votes on climate change and health care — two issues that remain bottled up in slow-moving Senate deliberations.

• “If you just take a look at the number of bills we’ve sent to the Senate and what they’ve done, I don’t know what they’re doing with their time honestly,” says Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.).

• “I think the majority leader sometimes has to have the leadership to resolve these things,” says Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat challenging Sen. Arlen Specter, in a direct attack on Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “I understand it’s politically challenging, but we have the votes — and we should be doing much better than we are. I think this place needs a change, quite frankly.”

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said he understands the House Democrats’ frustrations but argues that their anger is directed at the wrong set of senators.

“We appreciate their concerns, but give me a break: The real concern is Senate Republicans,” Manley said.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said the Senate is just a different place.

“You see, we have different rules here,” he explained. “It’s called the ‘filibuster.’ Maybe they haven’t followed the number of Republican filibusters here, which is an all-time record.”

Senate Republicans, in turn, say Senate Democrats are to blame: With 60 votes in their caucus — a number that includes independents Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders — Democrats have the votes they need to overcome Republican filibusters if they can just agree among themselves.

But they can’t — or at least they haven’t — and that makes House Democrats nervous that they’ve been left exposed heading into the 2010 midterm elections. They’ve taken the heat for tough vote after tough vote. And with the Senate having failed to act, they have little to show for their efforts.

House Democrats kicked off 2009 by passing a huge economic stimulus package — only to watch it whittled down to win over three recalcitrant Republican senators.

In June, they made a tough vote on climate change in the hope of setting the stage for a deal in Copenhagen — only to watch the bill slide to the back of the line in the Senate.

In November, they worked overtime to approve a health care reform bill — only to watch the Senate slow roll it through long committee deliberations and then an agonizingly slow ballet with Sen. Joe Lieberman and other moderates.



Last week, they passed sweeping reforms for the rules that govern the nation’s financial institutions — knowing full well that the bill won’t look much like the one they passed when — or if — the Senate gets to it.

And this week they’ll try to pass legislation to help address the nation’s unemployment crisis — even though they know there’s no chance the Senate will do its part until after the holiday break.

The Senate started 2009 at a faster clip. At the beginning of the session, it passed legislation to expand children’s health insurance, control tobacco and respond to a Supreme Court decision on gender pay discrimination. But things have slowed down drastically since; the Senate took four weeks to pass a widely supported extension of unemployment benefits when the House passed it in a matter of hours.

For House Democrats, the Senate health care debate has been particularly painful.

The fate of the Senate bill remains in doubt even after Reid made a series of concessions this week to appease Lieberman, who declared that he would join the Republicans in filibustering any bill that contained either a public option or a proposed expansion of Medicare.

Lieberman’s one-man act prompted Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro to call for his recall and another Connecticut Democrat, Rep. John Larson, to ask: “What gives a senator that right?”

The answer: The Senate rules, which give just about any member the power to stall legislation — especially when that member is the would-be 60th vote to invoke cloture.

On the House side, the speaker has the Rules Committee to help limit debate on the floor and keep the minority party - or her own upstarts - in check. In the Senate, an objection from a single senator creates the need for a procedural vote and a time-consuming process that can paralyze the chamber for days.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — a former House member himself — said there’s built-in tension between the two bodies, and that the tension leads to frustration among members of both.

“I understand that. I meet with them all the time — they are not happy with the pace of our deliberations,” he said. “But unfortunately, it reflects more on the institution than any given member ... [T]he rules here are designed to block. That’s what the founding fathers had in mind.”

Some House Democrats aren’t buying it.

“I know their rules are different over there,” McGovern said. “But like-minded people should be able to come together on this stuff. So it is frustrating. ... They’re definitely slowing things up.”

Of course, not all House Democrats are unhappy with the Senate’s slow pace.

South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin said she’s glad the Senate takes more time to consider “legislation [that] is overreaching in some cases.” Still, even she says the Senate has “broken down” as an institution with the use of the filibuster.

Should Reid get a health care bill passed before Christmas, party leaders will still need to decide how to pay for it — through either a tax on high-end plans or a surtax on the wealthy — and then figure out how to wrap up differences on abortion, immigration and cost containment.

But House Democrats aren’t in the mood to trust their colleagues in the Senate, and that will make the process more difficult — even as Democrats acknowledge that they need to start getting some of these bills wrapped up if they want to reap the rewards next November.

Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday that it’s been “a very productive Congress, or House term, but it won’t be productive unless we can get those bills through the Senate.”


Sources: Politico