Congress:
Passage of both class-action and bankruptcy reform bills in the short space of a month had some Republicans almost giddy. These victories came even as the Social Security debate dominated media coverage. In addition, the GOP suffered serious setbacks when the Senate took up its version of the fiscal 2006 budget resolution.
The House and Senate each passed budget outlines two weeks ago, with mixed results for President Bush's second-term agenda.
1) A major success for Bush was the retention of language that opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling. Provided that the House and Senate come to agreement on a concurrent budget resolution, this language will allow the opening of ANWR through the budget reconciliation process-that is, with a simple majority and without the possibility of a filibuster.
2) Senate Republicans managed to find enough pro-ANWR votes among their ranks that none of the Republicans who voted against ANWR drilling last time-particularly Sen. Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.), who faces re-election in 2008-had to go back on their election promises or records by supporting it. Prior to the 2004 election, the Senate had been the roadblock to this energy legislation.
3) On the other hand, Bush suffered a major setback as senators narrowly opted against Medicaid reform. In two successive votes of 49-51 and 52-48, the Senate voted to undo $15 billion in cuts to the program for indigent medical patients. Most bitterly disappointing to the GOP were votes on both amendments by the normally reliable Coleman.
4) The loss on Medicaid will delay, perhaps for a decade, any reforms to the program to allow more flexibility for state entitlement spending-a burning issue on the minds of many governors, who are watching their state budgets be consumed by health-care costs. The defeat was demoralizing enough that Senate Budget Chairman Judd Gregg (R.-N.H.) wondered aloud whether the budget passed by the Senate is worth anything. The final version will be hashed out in a House-Senate conference when Congress returns April 4.
5) Despite the fact that they control 55 seats in the Senate, Republicans showed with this episode that they still lack both the will and the ideological unity to rein in government entitlement programs. Meanwhile, no Democrat broke ranks in either budget vote. In both the House and Senate, all Democrats voted against their respective budget resolutions on final passage.
6) The House produced a budget more in tune with the President's wishes, along with a modest reform of the budget process to prevent overspending. The conservative Republican Study Committee teamed up with the moderate Tuesday Group to demand of their leaders a so-called budget point of order, which, during the appropriations process, provides for an extra floor vote whenever someone proposes a bill or amendment that would bust the budget. The Senate currently has such a mechanism, which requires a 60-vote majority in such a case.
7) The rebelling House Republicans, both conservative and centrist, were ultimately successful in seeking a simple-majority point of order, which is in some ways purely symbolic. House GOP leaders-particularly Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.)-adamantly resisted even this until it became clear that no budget would pass unless they agreed to it. The two groups ultimately cut a deal that allowed the budget to pass by just four votes. Under the deal, bills emerging from House-Senate conferences-the ones that usually go into law-are not subject to a potential point of order.
