Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Plurality Leader Daschle

Wednesday, May 30, 2001

I know you think I make this stuff up - which I almost usually never do. The other day I wrote about the notion of Tom Daschle (whom one Mullings reader dubbed the new "Plurality Leader") not being known as the Jefferson Smith of the Senate.

In a weekend story in the Washington Post, reporters John F. Harris and Dan Balz, wrote about a phone call from the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in which Baucus said he had cut a deal with the Republicans on the tax bill.

"The conversation that followed, according to people familiar with the call from both ends, left both men briefly thinking their relationship would be permanently marred. Not prone to shouting, Daschle icily told Baucus he had abandoned his colleagues and assured him that people would remember his breach for a long time."

While a good deal of the chatter around Washington last week revolved around how much the operation of the Bush Administration would have to change to deal with the Democratic majority in the Senate, a growing number of the cognoscenti are now wondering whether Tom Daschle has the skills to adapt to the new realities of having to cajole, coax, and charm enough votes to get anything adopted in the Senate.

There are two Tom Daschles: His public face as a scholarly, thoughtful guy; and his backroom face - detailed by Harris and Balz - as a strict, severe partisan.

The numbers are as follows: Democrats (including Jeffords) 51; Republicans 49. If any Democrat defects on any vote (assuming the GOP stays in line) the numbers shift back to 50-50 with Vice President Cheney having the tie breaker.

Mr. Daschle doesn't have a one vote advantage. He really only has a half-vote advantage.

Another inside-the-beltway guessing game is how the Democrats in the House will deal with the new majority in the Senate. The most liberal Senator - generally conceded to be Paul Wellstone of Minnesota - is not nearly as far to the left as a whole host of Liberals in the House starting with self-described Socialist Bernie Sanders of the Independent State of Vermont.

The House Libs might well undergo a difficult period of unrealized expectations as the Senate Democrats act more like Senators and less like Democrats.

It will be interesting and instructive for our friends in the National Press Corps to check in regularly with the House Democrats to see how they're getting on with their pals on the other side of the Rotunda.

Here's the principal difference between the House and the Senate: In the House if your side has one more vote than the other guys you run everything. The leadership of the majority party, through the House Rules Committee, controls what bills come to the floor, when they come to the floor and under what circumstances.

The Rules Committee provides for the amount of time the bill will be considered, and the number of amendments allowed, if any. It is not for nothing that the Rules Committee is called "The Speaker's Committee."

In the House the majority is always on offense and there is almost no provision for defense.

In the Senate, everything derives from the tradition of no time limits on debate. That means any Senator can threaten to stall anything at any point by getting recognized and holding onto the floor.

That is why so much of what goes on in the Senate is either secret ("holds" on bills, "blue slips" on nominees) or requires unanimous consent. There is always an implied threat to stop the Senate in its tracks.

In the Senate the defense rules and the offense is potentially powerless unless they can get to the magic 60 votes - the number necessary to cut off debate.

Senator Daschle is the Majority Leader, but the claims of the Democrats that they are now equal partners with the Bush Administration are, at a minimum, overstated.

Bill Clinton had minorities in the Senate and the House for six of his eight years as President. There was almost no major initiative President Clinton wanted that he didn't maneuver the Republican-controlled House and Senate into giving him.

On the very weekend that the Jeffords story broke like a tidal wave over the Capitol Building, the House and the Senate give President Bush almost all of the tax cut bill he had been asking for. Twelve Senate Democrats voted for the bill.

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