January Session: The convening of the 108th Congress after the first of the year will be more than the routine formalities usually followed.
1) The unfinished business that cannot be avoided is to clean up the appropriations left undone in the 107th Congress. This is a difficult job in itself, made tougher by Republican leadership promises to "reconsider" the three controversial riders added by House Republicans to the Homeland Security bill: protection of vaccine producers, overseas tax inversions and funds for Texas A&M. Handling the vaccine protection for pharmaceutical manufacturers, fiercely opposed by the trial lawyers, will not be easy.
2) Once the omnibus appropriations bill is out of the way, Congress will take its usual session-opening break. Next may come two appeals court nominees blocked in committee by the Democrats: Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen and U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi. At least one Democratic senator is planning to filibuster one or both of these nominations.
3) Under serious consideration by advocates of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is an audacious effort to include the authorization in the budget resolution under budget "reconciliation"-which would require only a 51-vote simple majority for passage.
Republican Staffers: Decisions are being made on critically important staff positions affecting the budget and taxes.
1) The Senate Republican leadership is making a push for Bear-Stearns economist David Malpass, a leading proponent of dynamic scoring, to be the new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) staff director. That will not be easy, and it is not likely that Malpass would accept the CBO job without assurances of authority.
2) Staff director of the Joint Tax Committee is also vacant, leading to hope that the choice will be more congenial to supply-side economic theory than the departing Lindy Paul. However, this would take agreement between Senate Finance Chairman Charles Grassley (R.-Iowa) and House Ways and Means Chairman William Thomas (R.-Calif.), who often disagree.
3) William Hoagland, longtime chief aide to Sen. Pete Domenici (R.-N.M.) at the Budget Committee, has joined the staff of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.-Miss.). That is interpreted as an effort by Lott to enjoy an independent source of budget information in relation to Sen. Donald Nickles (R.-Okla.), who replaces Domenici as Budget chairman.
Chafee: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.), the most liberal elected Republican in Washington, will not bolt the party. Republicans were worried that Chafee was too naive to realize how heavily the Democrats were courting him. But now the fear of a Chafee flop-which would be abandoning the majority for the minority-has subsided.
Whip: Expect new Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) to be a very different sort of No. 2 man than his predecessor. The outgoing GOP whip, Sen. Nickles, focused more on organizing the conference and running the floor than on insuring party discipline. McConnell will be more like the outgoing House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.), known as the "hammer."
DeLay won nearly every vote in the House in the 108th Congress, while the Senate GOP had far less unity. Senators, by nature, are harder to control, but McConnell should do a better job of keeping them in line on the most important issues.
Iowa GOP: As in Kansas, conservatives in Iowa are poised to take over the Republican Party apparatus.
1) A potential plot is brewing among the party’s grassroots to overthrow current GOP Chairman Chuck Larson and install Bob Vanderplaats atop the party. Vanderplaats, one of two conservatives in a three-way governor primary, lost to the liberal contender, lawyer-lobbyist Doug Gross (R.). Gross, in the eyes of many Republicans, ran a poor losing campaign against Gov. Tom Vilsack (D.).
2) Larson is tied in with the party donors, who typically work to get moderates nominated. This manifested itself this year with Gross and Rep. Greg Ganske (R.), the failed Senate nominee. Some Iowa Republicans, pointing to Ganske’s half-hearted effort against Harkin, say conservative Bill Salier (R.)-the primary loser, but the pick of many national conservative groups-would have fared better.
3) Such conservatives point to the folks who have won statewide in Iowa in the last 20 years: Ronald Reagan, Sen. Grassley and conservative 4-term Governor Terry Branstad (R.). Conservatives also point out that right-wing congressional candidate Steve King (R.) did 15 points better in his district than did Gross and Ganske.
4) While not publicly advocating the coup, Rep.-elect King has always been critical of the state party for not paying attention to the grass roots. Now the grass roots might be making the establishment pay for that, right-wingers say.
