The Moderates Go to Extremes

The lights were up. Spectators filled the galleries. Legislative clerks stood at the ready. Binders with the day's legislation -- a $54 billion spending cut -- were on the leaders' tables.

There was only one thing missing from the House chamber yesterday: lawmakers.

On either end of the Capitol, insurgents brought the legislative process to a halt, forcing GOP leaders in the House and Senate to shelve prized tax and spending cuts. The explosions went off almost simultaneously, as if they had been synchronized -- and authorities blamed both attacks on Republican moderates.

After five years of relative quiescence, centrist Republicans in both chambers chose yesterday to make a stand. At the Senate Finance Committee, Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) forced Republican leaders to cancel a committee vote on a $60 billion tax cut. In the House, a rebellion by a few GOP moderates shut down the chamber for nearly six hours and led leaders to abandon a vote on budget cuts.

The Senate panel's hearing was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., but at 11 lobbyists and reporters were milling around in the hall outside the nearly empty hearing room. In another room, GOP panel members, with Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), struggled to salvage the legislation.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a conservative, emerged from the closed-door meeting to have his photo taken, smiling, with constituents. "We'll know in a few minutes," he said. More than a few minutes later, he emerged again, no longer smiling. "We're still working," he announced.

Finally, at 11:35, an aide emerged, telling lobbyists and reporters to go home. "The markup is being postponed until a call of the chair," he said in parliamentary lingo, "and that's not likely to be today."

The cause of the trouble, Snowe, emerged moments later, chased by a pack of reporters. She cut an unlikely figure for an insurgent: The slight and soft-spoken senator explained that a tax cut of this sort is not "what we should be doing now." Stepping onto an elevator to escape the pack, she pointed out that "we've had three back-to-back hurricanes."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Tex.), part of the GOP leadership, walked past the committee room and heard what had happened. "I'm very concerned," she allowed.

Over on the south side of the Capitol, the House television network, which broadcasts the chamber's proceedings, instead displayed a photograph of the Capitol grounds in summertime and a message: "The House is in recess subject to the call of the chair."

There were signs of trouble the night before, when House leaders sent out the day's schedule with a notice saying, "Last votes expected: unknown."

While the chamber was immobilized and GOP leaders pleaded for votes, the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership gathered at the Capitol City Club to claim responsibility for the chaos. The group, often ignored, was not quite ready for the crush of reporters: There were problems with the microphone, and the group's banner was draped clumsily over a bookcase.