In House, Democrats vow aggressive agenda
WASHINGTON -- Seizing control of the House for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats are poised to make a big impression in the opening days of the new Congress, with a front-loaded agenda that will have them pass a higher minimum wage, tax breaks for college tuition, and new lobbying restrictions within the first 100 legislative hours in January.
And then comes the hard part for a party that has perfected the art of opposition, but that hasn't done much leading recently.
With a slender margin of control, deep divisions within their own ranks, and a president who can and will thwart many of their boldest policy initiatives, Democrats will have to chart a careful course -- or their time in the majority could prove short-lived.
"Once they have power, the spotlight's on them, not on the GOP," said Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University. "They have to switch from opposition mode to governing mode, and they have to do it with a Republican president who's not going to want to work with them."
Across the country, voters voiced frustration with the Republican Party by vaulting upstart Democrats over long-serving Republicans.
The Democrats had won 24 GOP House seats by early this morning, nine more than the 15 they needed. If they held nearly all their own districts, as expected, they will rise to power and clear the way for Representative Nancy Pelosi to become the nation's first female speaker. By early today, no Democratic incumbent in the 435-member House had lost.
Representative Charles Bass of New Hampshire, a 12-year incumbent who had long been considered safe in his reelection bid, fell to a Democrat, Paul Hodes, who lost to Bass by 20 percentage points two years ago. Also falling was New Hampshire's other House member, Representative Jeb Bradley, who fell to a war opponent, Carol Shea-Porter, even though the Democratic establishment offered Shea-Porter almost no assistance.
A Connecticut Democrat, Chris Murphy, defeated a 12-term incumbent Representative Nancy L. Johnson, a ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.
Ron Klein, a Democrat, beat 13-term Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida, and Heath Shuler, a Democrat and a former NFL quarterback, beat eight-term Representative Charles H. Taylor in North Carolina.
Four Democratic challengers ousted veteran House Republicans in the GOP strongholds of Indiana and Kentucky, and two more incumbents fell in Pennsylvania. Democrats took open seats that had been held by Republicans in New York, Ohio, and Florida, including those held by disgraced former representatives Bob Ney of Ohio and Mark Foley of Florida.
The election will bring an unusually large and conservative freshman Democratic class to the 110th Congress. And the party's veterans, a more liberal group that spent the last 12 years in the political wilderness, will enter the new session invigorated.
The Democrats who will become committee chairmen say they will launch investigations.
Tax cuts for the rich will be put on hold. The constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will not come up for a vote.
Long-stalled bills will sail through, and Republicans who recently held firm control will be powerless to stop them.
Yet wresting control of Congress is different than enacting an effective agenda, and Democrats must be careful not to go too far too quickly, political analysts say. An angry and polarized public chose them largely because of who they weren't, and Democrats realize they'll have to scale back goals .
"We are not there to provide emotional comfort to our strongest supporters," said Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat who is in line to become chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "We're going to focus on things that are doable. The good news is that the things that might be politically most damaging are also the least likely to be achievable."
In conversations with rank-and-file Democrats, Pelosi has urged her fellow party members to refrain from taunts and saber-rattling in the wake of Election Day.
She has drafted a centrist menu that is heavy on what Democrats are calling "deliverables." Goals such as universal healthcare, impeachment of the president, and an immediate pullout from Iraq are nowhere in sight.
"There will be no spiking the football, no dancing in the end zone," said Representative John B. Larson, a Connecticut Democrat who serves as the caucus vice chairman. "The first call will be for unity, civility, integrity, and accountability. That's what the American people expect."
Democrats won the election without offering an ambitious platform. "Six for '06" -- the closest equivalent to the "Contract With America" that Republicans rode to power in 1994 -- is a series of mostly small-bore promises, with no legislation attached.
A few widely popular items -- boosting the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, for example -- are likely to win quick approval and be signed by President Bush. But after that, the way forward appears complicated, particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq -- perhaps the dominant issue of the midterm elections.
The party's liberal and moderate wings are at odds over how to proceed in Iraq.
Few in the party want to take the extreme step that would guarantee a swift end to US military involvement: cutting off funding for the war.
Democrats say they plan to push the president to begin a withdrawal from Iraq, but they concede that precise plans still need to be developed.
"There's consensus within the Democratic Party that we need to change the course," said Representative James P. McGovern, a Worcester Democrat and a fierce opponent of the war.
"Specifically, what that means, that's something that needs to be worked out. But there is a consensus to bring this war to an end."
Perhaps the biggest difference with Democratic control of the House will come in the area of investigations. Though the president can veto any bill Congress passes, he won't be able to brush aside subpoena-wielding committee chairmen poised to dig into six years of administration actions.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, who is favored to take over the House Judiciary Committee, has gone so far as to call for an inquiry into possible impeachment of the president. But Pelosi has made clear that this is off the table, so Conyers is more likely to stick to examinations of the Bush administration's expansions of executive power.
At the Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan is prepared to investigate the administration's energy and environmental policies, including the secretly conducted energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
And Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, currently the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, is likely to look into Iraq war contracting, prewar preparations, and issues involving supplies and armaments for soldiers.
Pelosi insists that Democrats will set a new, bipartisan tone once she's in power, by inviting fuller minority participation in crafting legislation than Republicans ever allowed them.
But few in either party expect any such moves to cut through the poisonous partisanship that has come to define Congress, particularly with a hotly anticipated presidential election two years away.
The crucial test for Democrats could be whether they can maintain the remarkable party unity they've displayed during the current congressional term. Pelosi's charge will be to corral the same singularity of purpose that halted Republican attempts to remake Social Security into a forward-looking agenda, said Thomas Downey, a former Democratic representative from New York who is now a Washington lobbyist.
"I think people realize that if you want to hang separately, they're going to hang separately," Downey said. 