Senate Reaches Deal on Organization
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats backed down from a standoff that had paralyzed the Senate Tuesday, agreeing to terms that will allow the Senate to operate with a new Republican majority.
In the end, the sides compromised on the division of committee funds, office space and committee assignments.
The deal gives the GOP a one-seat majority on all committees except the Intelligence and Ethics committees, which traditionally have an even number of members from both parties.
It also gives the majority a roughly 60-40 advantage when it comes to staff, money and space, more than the two-thirds to one-third ratio that Republicans had wanted but less than the 51-49 percent split reflecting the majority-minority ratio. Democrats had threatened to filibuster anything less than that.
For new Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., the deal amounts to a small victory since Democrats insisted that they had set a precedent in the last Congress when they permitted a 51-49 percent split following independent Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords' defection from the GOP that gave the Democrats the majority.
It also allows the Senate to get down to the business of dealing with the president's agenda.
Both sides are preparing for battle over the president's $674 billion economic stimulus package and the 11 unfinished spending bills that should have been passed last year to fund the government this year.
Republicans want to wrap all 11 bills into one omnibus package worth $385 billion. But Democrats say that's not enough and have added calls for more spending to their attacks on the president's tax cuts.
"It's a tax cut of gargantuan proportion that has nothing to do with stimulus and everything to do with fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who a good part of the day criticizing the Bush administration on a host of issues.
Daschle said the GOP is slashing the nation's spending priorities to pay for the president's tax relief package.
"These are cuts made by a Republican Congress to accommodate a Republican administration, which at the same time is advocating a huge bailout that we would call the Leave No Millionaires Behind Act," he said, playing on the name of the president's education bill passed last year.
Democrats plan amendments that add up to about $20 billion more than what Republicans want to spend.
Among the extra cash, $5 billion would go to homeland security, $8 billion would pay for education and $6 billion would be given for disaster relief and agricultural aid.
The nation's passenger rail Amtrak would get another $438 million to keep running. Democrats also want an additional $300 million to pay for home heating for low-income Americans.
Daschle said if the GOP attempts to block consideration of the Democrats' spending increases they may shut the Senate down again.
"We would even consider, I think, not providing our Republican friends with the opportunity to move forward on anything else until we have had the chance to offer an alternative," he said.
White House aides chalked up the Democrats' demand for more spending and fewer tax cuts to the start of what may be lengthy negotiations.
"The president's going to fight for the bill that he proposed. He understands that Congress, of course, has a role to play and is just beginning the process of playing that role, but let the process begin, and the president will fight for the bill he sent to the Congress," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said that if Democrats had their way, it would definitely create a more egalitarian system.
"They might end up with what they consider fairness — everybody poverty stricken — and by definition of that fairness, but nobody would be better off," he said.
Fox News' Carl Cameron contributed to this report.