 |
|
May
23, 2002 3:40 p.m.
The
Jeffords Majority
One
year later.
|
|
year ago this week, Vermont senator James Jeffords decided both to leave
the Republican party and to give Democrats an operational majority in
the Senate — although, for reasons best known to himself, he didn't
make an honest man of himself by actually joining the Democratic party.
(He is now an "independent" who votes with, caucuses with, and
fundraises for Democrats.) Since then, Tom Daschle has been majority leader.
|
|
What do the Democrats
have to show for it? They have managed to block or modify quite a few
administration priorities. If they didn't have a majority on Senate committees
and the majority-leader position, for example, they would not have been
able to block a floor vote on the circuit-court nomination of Judge Charles
Pickering, who would have been confirmed. But that's about the extent
of the Democrats' legislative triumph. True, liberal bills on campaign
finance and agriculture have passed; but they would have passed, and in
roughly the same form, if Trent Lott were majority leader. The bills that
the Democrats have killed, meanwhile, would also have been killed if they
were in the minority (by filibuster threats).
Marshall Wittmann,
a political analyst at the Hudson Institute, says, "Nothing uniquely
Democratic has passed, which is a reflection of the balance of power."
(Republican strategist Ed Gillespie makes the same point more sourly:
"If you judge effectiveness in terms of doing nothing, [Daschle's]
been very effective.")
Wittmann argues that
it's not worth having the Senate by one vote, especially since the Bush
administration has been able to use Daschle effectively as a foil. But
taking control of the Senate was psychologically important for the Democrats.
The first four months of the Bush administration were the first time in
forty years that the Democrats had been shut out from power in the White
House and both chambers of the legislature. And if that wasn't demoralizing
enough, Bush's tax cut had passed — with support from renegade Democrats
— right before Daschle took control.
Daschle has become
the leader of the Democrats at a time when they needed one badly. Because
Democrats are divided, he has had to centralize power within the Senate.
He took the stimulus bill away from the Finance Committee and the energy
bill from the Energy Committee, and he rewrote the agriculture bill on
the floor rather than defer to the Agriculture Committee. But because
the Democrats need unity, his caucus has not protested at these moves.
Daschle remains popular in his party.
The outcomes of Jeffords's
switch have been mixed for him, too. He got the dairy compact extended
— Americans will get to pay higher prices for milk as a testament
to his cherished independence — but he didn't prevail on the issue
that precipitated his flight from the GOP, full federal funding for special
education.
CORRECTION
The dairy compact was not, in fact, extended, although another dairy subsidy
was created. So Jeffords is 0 for 2.
|
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
