In Majority, Democrats Run Hill Much as GOP Did

But even after passing their domestic agenda, Democratic leaders have continued to marginalize Republicans, preventing them from having a voice in legislation such as a bill to withhold federal pensions from lawmakers convicted of ethics felonies and a $463 billion bill to fund the federal government for the rest of this fiscal year.

"This is the legislative equivalent of 'the check is in the mail,' " said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, referring to repeated promises by the Democrats to open up the legislative process to Republicans. "The Democrats are paying lip service to principle, but it's the same old high-handedness, except with a friendly face."

After watching the Senate stall over competing war resolutions and tangled discussions over the terms of debate, Hoyer and Pelosi said they wanted to prevent similar "confusion" in their chamber.

Republicans hoped to introduce a bill similar to one written by Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican who flew combat missions in Korea and Vietnam and was a prisoner of war in Hanoi. It says Congress would not cut off money for soldiers in the field. But Democrats worried it would place some members of their party in a difficult position.

The only way to avoid that was to limit discussion to one narrowly worded resolution, Hoyer said.

He said it left no room for "Well, I don't like that 'whereas' " or "I don't like that 'therefore.' " "It's very simple," Hoyer said. "If you've seen the resolution, you can read it in about 60 seconds. We support the troops, we're going to protect the troops, we disagree with the president's proposal."

Last week's debate on the Iraq war, culminating in its passage Friday by a vote of 246 to 182, was conducted under a "closed rule," which means Republicans could not offer alternatives. "I understand what they did on their agenda," said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). "But to do a closed rule on something like this is a huge mistake. We're talking about war and peace. You don't play politics with war."

In the closely divided Senate, Republicans made similar accusations when Democrats announced plans to introduce an Iraq resolution without permitting Republican alternatives.

"If this is allowed, this is the second bill in a row where no amendments were offered to the 49-member Republican minority," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said, referring to the $463 billion bill to fund the federal government as well as the Iraq resolution. "I've been here a couple of decades and I have a hard time recalling anything like this. It's inappropriate in a body that thrives on deliberation. . . . That's simply not acceptable on this side of the aisle."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) suggested that McConnell had a short memory. "On a multitude of issues when we were in the minority, we had no opportunities to offer amendments or anything," Reid said.

And the Democrats are not completely running roughshod over Republicans, as the GOP did to the Democrats when they controlled Congress.

While they did not allow amendments on the Iraq debate, the Democrats gave every member of the chamber five minutes to speak on the resolution -- an unprecedented amount of debate on a nonbinding resolution, according to Thomas E. Mann, a scholar at Brookings Institution. He said that is more than the Republicans offered Democrats when the GOP passed a resolution last spring supporting the war in Iraq.

"So far the Democrats have had a rationale for each cluster of these votes," said Mann, who co-wrote a book about congressional dysfunction with Ornstein. "And they never said they were going to disarm. But they better pretty quickly find matters which they care about but allow reasonable deliberation in committee and amendments on the floor, or they're not going to be able to sustain this over time without damaging the institution."