Democrats expect easy passage of bills

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats, long hamstrung by the GOP's control of the legislative process, are prepared to offer a slew of bills ranging from housing aid to Cuba travel that have majority support but never passed because Republican leaders would not give them a vote on the House floor.

The majority party has great authority to control the agenda, and in recent years the Republicans have used that power frequently to prevent legislation from making it to the president's desk, even if the bills were approved overwhelmingly by legislative committees and had hundreds of cosponsors.

When Democrats take control of the House and Senate in January, lawmakers say they will be able to push through bills that have been bottled up for years.

For example, both the House and Senate have passed legislation to ease travel restrictions to Cuba, but GOP leaders deleted it from the final bill, arguing that it would provoke a presidential veto. Lawmakers expect that legislation to go to the president's desk in the next Congress.

A measure to tighten loopholes that allow US companies to avoid taxes by setting up paper headquarters in Bermuda or other offshore locales is also likely to pass, backers said. The GOP leadership had refused to allow the measure on the floor for a full vote.

An increase in the minimum wage, which has strong support in the House but was not allowed on the floor for an up-or-down vote, is set to be considered in early January and is expected to pass.

Legislation to create a housing trust fund to build, rehabilitate, and preserve 1.5 million units of low-income housing had 237 sponsors in the House -- more than enough to pass -- but never got a floor vote. With newfound power as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, said he will offer that legislation.

Another measure to provide $4.7 billion for transit and rail security passed the Senate this year and had majority House support, but was taken out of the final bill by GOP leaders. A separate amendment to require inspection of cargo on passenger planes for explosives -- a proposal the GOP would not allow to be considered -- is also likely to be revisited.

Democrats have complained for years that a core group of Republican leaders -- including Speaker Dennis Hastert, former majority leader Tom DeLay, and Rules Committee chairman David Dreier -- has abused its power by suppressing debate and refusing to allow votes on legislation that would probably pass in the House, but which was not desired by GOP leaders or the White House.

Some Republicans have countered that the Democrats were equally exclusionary when they controlled the chamber before 1994, but a Globe investigation of the Rules Committee in 2004 showed that the GOP had dramatically restricted open debate, refused to allow votes on Democratic amendments, and removed items from legislation approved by both chambers of Congress if the White House didn't approve of them.

"They all went to Hastert heaven," where popular bills died without a floor vote, said Barry Piatt, spokesman for Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.

"Those kinds of shenanigans are not going to be allowed to carry the day anymore. The will of the House and the Senate are going to be respected," said Representative James McGovern, Democrat of Worcester and a senior member of the House Rules Committee, which decides which bills and amendments will be allowed on the House floor for a vote.

Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who serves on the Rules Committee, acknowledged that in the GOP-controlled Congress some Democratic initiatives were not given a chance to be considered by the full House, even in cases when some Republicans favored the legislation as well.

"I understand their angst over it. I would hope the Democrats would offer more open bills, maybe more than we did," Gingrey said.

Republicans said they would campaign for public support to tone down Democratic legislation they had blocked procedurally in the past. While the incoming minority GOP will not be able to stop legislation unless Democrats are split, Republicans say they will try to temper the proposals by amending them in committee or on the floor.

"The only way we can win the debate on the floor is to first win the debate with the public, and that's where the concentration is going to be," said Kevin Madden, spokesman for House minority leader-elect John Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

Meanwhile, many Democrats are looking to the list of bills blocked by the House leadership despite having majority support as a starting point for next January's agenda.

The Cuba travel initiative would loosen restrictions that effectively ban Americans from traveling to Cuba by prohibiting them from spending money there.

Backers of the legislation say the current law is unfairly restrictive of citizens' right to travel and cruel to Cuban-Americans who want to visit ailing relatives on the island. The Bush administration and some conservatives believe that the travel restrictions are a necessary part of sanctions to damage Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

The new measure has broad, bipartisan support in both chambers and was approved in 2003 by both the House and the Senate as part of a bigger appropriations bill. But GOP leaders -- saying Bush might veto the legislation -- took out the Cuba provision, even though items approved by both chambers are not supposed to be taken out of a conference committee bill designed to meld House and Senate versions of a bill.

In the new Congress, McGovern said, the measure would pass easily and be sent to the president. While Bush opposes easing the travel restrictions, McGovern said he thought Bush would be reluctant to fell an entire appropriations package over the Cuba amendment. A bipartisan delegation of House members is scheduled to travel to Cuba in midDecember, signaling their new hope that the travel restrictions to Cuba will be eased.

The minimum wage increase was never given an up-or-down vote; Republicans attached it to a bill with an estate tax cut they knew Democrats opposed. But the new Democratic House leadership has made the issue part of its first-100-hours agenda.

Most of the legislation died because the Rules Committee stymied it. The panel, which the majority party dominates, is designed to control the 435-member House by deciding which legislation should be allowed on the floor and which amendments should receive consideration.

The process is meant to keep the House from becoming too unwieldy, but Democrats say it has been abused to keep their amendments off the floor.

For example, the House Judiciary Committee this year overwhelmingly approved an amendment requiring lobbyists to disclose whether they had been solicited for campaign contributions by candidates, and whether they had made contributions. But the Rules Committee stripped the amendment from the bill.

The incoming majority Democrats say they will not abuse the system to thwart GOP legislation.

"We're going to try to do this with the best of intentions, to treat them with the respect we never were," Representative Michael Capuano, Democrat of Somerville and head of the House Democrats' transition team.