Kerry joins party chiefs in Capitol

WASHINGTON -- No longer a presidential candidate but still a voice for the Democrats, Senator John F. Kerry met with the party's congressional leadership yesterday as he moved into the next phase of his political life.

"We need to be unified and we have a very clear agenda," Kerry said at the start of the meeting. "I'm going to be fighting for that agenda with all my energy and all the passion that I brought to the campaign."

One week after his defeat in the presidential race, Kerry met with House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and Senate minority whip Harry M. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, at the Capitol to discuss a range of issues from Social Security to stem-cell research. Reid is expected to succeed Senator Tom Daschle, who lost his South Dakota seat, as the Democratic leader in the Senate.

David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry, said the four-term Massachusetts senator "believes there is a mandate for unity in the country, and that there are 54 million Americans whose voices deserve to be heard as we move forward as a party."

President Bush received 59.5 million votes to Kerry's 55.9 million in claiming a second term.

Kerry also plans to attend next week's lame-duck session, his first return to the Senate since June when he interrupted his campaign to rush back to Washington to vote on veterans' legislation.

Kerry made only a few rare trips to Capitol Hill after launching his presidential bid and pursuing the Democratic nomination in an intense and crowded primary fight. In his last foray to the Senate floor, he canceled a full day of campaigning only to spend most of the day waiting -- ultimately for naught -- to cast a vote to increase funding for veterans' health care.

The vote never took place, and Kerry later criticized Republicans for playing partisan politics and denying him the ability to vote on the issue.

Next week the Senate is expected to wrangle over the final appropriations bills and possibly consider intelligence reform legislation. Just four of the 13 bills that fund the federal government have been signed into law. The remainder have been rolled into a series of continuing resolutions, and the latest one expires Nov. 20.

Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders, consigned by the election to a minority role for another two years, said yesterday they want to hold Republicans more accountable, starting with a vote on raising the $7.4 trillion debt ceiling.

Pelosi said her party wants to highlight how the legal limit on the national debt has risen $2.1 trillion under the Bush administration. "The president won't be able to blame anybody" for this and other problems, she said. "Because the Republicans have full control."

Representative John M. Spratt of South Carolina, top Democrat on the Budget Committee, said Democrats want an open debate on a freestanding bill to raise the statutory debt ceiling, now at $7.4 trillion, by an additional $650 billion. Democrats, he said, would support an amendment enforcing a policy requiring that all new spending or tax cut measures are paid for.

They're unlikely to get their wish, with the GOP leadership expected to avoid a direct vote by adding the debt limit increase to a massive spending bill for the 2005 budget year that Congress must deal with before ending the current session. Congress must act by Nov. 18 so the Treasury Department can continue borrowing.