Posted on 04/12/2002 9:04:54 AM PDT by mombonn
Daschle Looks for Way to Get Senators to Show Up to Vote
By SHAILAGH MURRAY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Tom Daschle has a lot of headaches as Senate majority leader of a closely divided chamber: The White House is painting him as an obstructionist, legislation is tied up on everything from boosting energy to banning cloning, and his bare majority is in danger in November's election.
But often his biggest problem is getting everyone to show up. On Mondays and Fridays, the Senate floor is empty as usual; now there is growing pressure to keep committee hearing rooms dark, as well. Even midweek, senators try to bolt by dinner, eager to see their children or to hit the fund-raising circuit.
"All I have as leader right now is Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning to get the work done," Mr. Daschle complains. "You can't imagine the number of requests I have now for no votes on Monday, no votes on Tuesday morning, no votes on Thursday afternoon, and certainly no votes on Friday. So that leaves me 48 hours to do the bulk of the work of the Senate in any given week."
Absenteeism has long been an issue in the Senate, and most majority leaders have wielded the schedule as a partisan weapon. But with the Senate so evenly split, the stakes are raised higher: The vote of every single senator matters. And so does the outcome of every contest for a seat, come November.
What's more, in one of the ways that Congress reflects the changes in the broader society, Sen. Daschle is forced to worry more about maintaining a "family-friendly workplace." A 5 p.m. Thursday roll-call vote, for instance, means GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison can make an evening flight to Dallas to be with her two newly adopted children. A 6:30 p.m. vote means she can't depart until Friday, and she has told Sen. Daschle and Republican Leader Trent Lott as much. The erratic schedule, she says, "is the most frustrating thing about being in the Senate."
Evan Bayh of Indiana, who has twin 6-year-old sons, started pestering Mr. Daschle's office a month before Halloween to assure that there would be no late votes that night. Mr. Daschle complied, and Mr. Bayh took his sons trick-or-treating. And Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose children are five and 10, and other Democratic parents met with Mr. Daschle recently and asked him, among other things, to announce each Monday whether the Senate will vote on that Friday. "Then we could at least plan for it," she says. To balance work and family, she limits herself to two evening events per week and is building a house four blocks from the Capitol.
The problem for Sen. Daschle is that, with little work getting done, Republicans are trying to make sure the potential 2004 presidential candidate gets the blame. They have already launched a Web site called dumpdaschle.org., and Friday GOP leaders plan a press conference to criticize "the State of the Senate." Sen. Daschle's response: Republicans are using their 49 votes to slow the Senate's work.
The Senate has passed three major bills so far this year -- on campaign-finance rules, guidelines for Election Day voting and economic stimulus. But for more than a month, it has been tied up with an energy bill, and there are 250 amendments to go. Entering its longest vacation-free period of the year (through Memorial Day), the Senate agenda now includes trade-negotiating authority for the president, border security, terrorism insurance -- not to mention the annual spending bills.
To pick up the pace, Mr. Daschle says he will schedule more Monday afternoon and Friday morning votes. These are often "bed check" votes on nominations or other noncontroversial matters, intended mostly to keep senators at work. They are very unpopular in an election year; one-third of senators are busy campaigning to keep their seats.
As tempting as it is to skip a vote now and then, senators rarely take the risk. Everyone in the Senate knows about 1984 when Sen. Mitch McConnell, then a Kentucky judge, beat two-term incumbent Walter Dee Huddleston by poking fun at his spotty voting record. One McConnell ad depicted a bloodhound sniffing around the Capitol for the elusive Mr. Huddleston. Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, of Oregon, who is up for re-election has already gotten grief from Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, his opponent, for missing a Dec. 18 Enron hearing with Portland General Electric Co. employees.
Scheduling can be used for partisan advantage, particularly if Sen. Daschle -- as his predecessors did occasionally -- alerts his own party to voting plans sooner than the other side. A Friday morning roll call is particularly hard on Sen. Smith, who needs nine hours and at least one plane change to get home to Oregon. "Obviously [Sen. Daschle] would rather have me on an airplane than campaigning," Sen. Smith says. "It's not nice, but I knew that going in."
A number of Republicans in tight races can't get direct flights to their home states. But Sen. Daschle's ability to use the schedule to disrupt their plans is limited: A few Democrats have the same problem, including Sen. Daschle's embattled South Dakota colleague, Tim Johnson.
Political manipulation of the schedule doesn't always produce the desired result. When Sen. Lott, the Mississippi Republican, ran the Senate in 2000, he would shift roll-call votes to accommodate Michigan Sen. Spencer Abraham, who was touting his perfect voting record. He lost anyhow. Mr. Lott also tried to give Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington state a heads-up about the last vote of the week so he could plan ahead. Sen. Gorton lost, too. "The moral of that story is, it doesn't work," Mr. Lott says today.
When majority leaders miscalculate, there can be real consequences. "What happens is you lose votes you shouldn't lose," Mr. Daschle says. He came three votes shy of victory on an unusual 6:30 p.m. Friday vote on a transportation-spending bill; 16 senators were AWOL. To avoid that, Mr. Daschle delayed a recent vote on campaign-finance reform until Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin returned from celebrating his win in an Illinois primary.
Recently, Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat who often manages the Senate floor between Tuesday and Thursday, annoyed Republicans by announcing Monday and Friday hearings on a highway bill. Five Republicans wrote to Mr. Reid to object to the hearing schedule, but Mr. Reid says he won't back down.
All of this is forcing Sen. Daschle to be creative. With the energy bill on the floor for the foreseeable future, he is hoping Republicans will allow him to bring up other legislation during lulls in that debate. And he says he reminds fellow Democrats "that we all work hard and spend a lot of money to get elected -- to be legislators."
sheesh
Amen.
Agreed, but they need to take a drastic pay cut! I resent paying their salaries and perks.
Often the bias is so subtle. The "journalist" claims the White House is painting him as an obstructionist, implying that's just what the WH thinks which one could dismiss as partisan politics. Yet in the next sentence the "journalist" concedes Daschle IS an obstructionist with legislation on everything from boosting energy to banning cloning tied up.
I disagree, I think we should repeal the 17th Amendment and let the Senate represent the States. *Real* campaign reform
Apparently not because Daschle won't even call for a vote unless it has 60 votes or more locked-in.
Smarmy midget. Hopefully he (or Lott) won't be Senate majority leader in November.
There has to be a way to keep them out for these two days.
The general public work far more hours for far less money and perks that these whining,lying bunch of crybabies.
They get raises, even if the don't have the ba**s to vote for it themselves. This is something that they established for themselves.
They have medical plans that the public can only dream of.
They have a retirement plan, that they established for themselves, that could provide them more money than they made while working(sic). This to is paid by the voters of this great nation.
They have an office, more staff than they need, a generous office allowance and people who read the bills that are to be voted on and give them the highlights.
They can accept money from various groups for their reelection,to which they are always campaining.
And they when they can find time in their busy schedule, the walk over to the floor and see if they have a minute or two to complain about everthing instead of doing the job they were elected to do.
Then on top of all this crap, you have the leader of the Dumb-O-Crats,tiny tommy dashole, whining about his problems.
This moron has not done anything in support of the president. He has done everything in his power to delay items that are critial.
I really believe that he has no concern for this country if it's not going to feed his ego.
Oh sh**, I can't go on any longer or I'll have a stroke.
If the next day, all the Senators were to suddenly be kidnapped by space aliens, aside from the military trying to find out who did the kidnapping, the country would operate just as it did the day before.
Food will still be produced and consumed. Cars, trucks, trains, planes, etc will still run on time. Birthday parties will still be celebrated. So, everything will just be business as usual. Except for one thing...
After the day is over, everyone in the country will be celebrating that these policritters are gone, and when the space aliens will come back for the rest. ;)
The bottom line is this:
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