In Majority, Democrats Run Hill Much as GOP Did

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 18, 2007

Democrats pledged to bring courtesy to the Capitol when they assumed control of Congress last month. But from the start, the new majority used its muscle to force through its agenda in the House and sideline Republicans.

And after an initial burst of lawmaking, the Democratic juggernaut has kept on rolling.

Of nine major bills passed by the House since the 110th Congress began, Republicans have been allowed to make amendments to just one, a measure directing federal research into additives to biofuels. In the arcane world of Capitol Hill, where the majority dictates which legislation comes before the House and which dies on a shelf, the ability to offer amendments from the floor is one of the minority's few tools.

Last week, the strong-arming continued during the most important debate the Congress has faced yet -- the discussion about the Iraq war. Democrats initially said they would allow Republicans to propose one alternative to the resolution denouncing a troop buildup but, days later, they thought better of it.

"It sounds like we're not doing what we said we would do -- I understand that," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday. "Here, however, we believe we are very justified in one of the most important issues confronting the country, which clearly was a huge issue in the election and which got bottled up in the Senate."

Republican leaders have been complaining daily about being pushed to the margins. "It's hypocritical because they campaigned on openness and bipartisanship," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), adding that shutting out the minority hurts Congress. "It stifles debate and ideas and also manipulates the outcome."

And yet, significant numbers of House Republicans have voted along with Democrats on the legislation passed so far -- a fact that somewhat mutes criticism about iron-fisted tactics.

Some say Democrats risk being accused of the same abuse of power that Republicans were charged with when they were running Capitol Hill. Republicans became notorious for tactics such as prolonging a roll call vote for three hours in order to round up enough Republicans to pass a bill or failing to notify Democratic members of committee meetings or negotiating sessions.

"They're on thin ice now," Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said of the new Democratic leaders. "I'm getting uneasy about this lack of amendments. . . . They're getting to the point where you're past the initial period where you've got an excuse to operate with a firm hand. It's going to be increasingly difficult to rationalize."

In May, months before her party won control of Congress and she became speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said "bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the minority the right to offer its alternatives, including a substitute." After the election, Pelosi told the Associated Press: "The principle of civility and respect for minority participation in this House is something we promised the American people. It's the right thing to do."

In the first weeks of the new Congress, however, Democrats bypassed the usual legislative committees, refused to allow any amendments and took their agenda straight to the floor for passage. They said they needed a clear path to pass a handful of popular measures that were the basis of their successful November campaign, including expanded money for stem cell research, an increase in the federal minimum wage and implementation of recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission.

Democrats said they would impose "regular order," the rules that permit the minority to participate more widely, in short order.

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."