Confident Democrats
Lay Out Agenda
Party Plans Probes Of
Administration If It Wins the House
By Jonathan Weisman,
washingtonpost.com from the Web, May 17, 2006
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Rep. Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.), the minority leader, promised "to use the power
to investigate" the Bush administration if the Democrats win the
House.
(By Rich Pedroncelli -- Associated Press) |
Washington, May 7 -- Democratic
leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in
November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in
power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican
prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed
budget deficit controls.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week that
a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush
administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force
and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would
move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned
investigations, "You never know where it leads to."
In recent days, Democratic confidence has been buoyed by a series of polls
indicating that not only is Bush growing increasingly unpopular, so are
Republicans in Congress. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Friday
found that 33 percent of the public approves of Bush's job performance, the
lowest rating of his presidency. And only 25 percent approves of the job
Congress is doing, a figure comparable to congressional approval ratings before
the 1994 elections that swept Republicans to power.
The AP-Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Americans say they want Democrats
rather than Republicans to control Congress. Only 34 percent favor
Republican control.
"We have to be ready to win," Pelosi said, "and we have to tell [voters] what we
will do when we win."
Republicans say Democratic leaders run the risk of looking overconfident -- if
not foolish -- in predicting they will win the 15 net seats necessary to take
the House.
"If they fall short [of control], she's going to be severely damaged," Carl
Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said of
Pelosi.
But Democratic planning parallels similar efforts 12 years ago, when GOP leaders
were plotting a return to control after 42 years. By May 1994, Republicans
had the outlines of a legislative agenda that would become their "Contract With
America," said Richard K. Armey, who was the chairman of the House Republican
Conference at that time.
Republicans then needed to pick up 40 seats, something most analysts considered
virtually impossible six months before the election.
Democrats need to pick up 15, a task that many analysts still believe is a long
shot. Democratic leaders do not.
"We are more and more confident that we are going to have the responsibility of
leading the House, so we have to prepare," said House Minority Whip Steny H.
Hoyer (Md.).
Despite waves of redistricting that have solidified the positions of incumbents
from both parties, Pelosi said 50 Republican seats are in play, while fewer than
10 Democratic seats face strong challenges. That figure of GOP seats is
disputed by independent analysts, but even the most cautious estimates put more
than 15 Republican seats in jeopardy.
Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said
his most expansive estimate classifies 52 seats as "unsafe," 40 of them
Republican, 12 of them Democratic. But, he said, only a tidal wave would
dislodge the incumbent party from many of those seats, and more realistically,
30 Republican seats and five Democratic districts are vulnerable.
To seize control in 1994, Armey said, Republicans needed three key ingredients:
scandal, which was provided by House members' abuse of the House bank and postal
system; a policy fiasco, provided by the Clinton administration's failed
national health-care plan; and a coherent plan of action, which came with the
"Contract With America."
This year, the House is engulfed in bribery and influence-peddling scandals that
have forced the resignation of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.),
sent former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) to jail, and
yielded guilty pleas from two former DeLay aides and former lobbyist Jack
Abramoff.
But those scandals are also linked to a Democrat, Rep. William J. Jefferson
(La.), leading some Republicans to conclude they have been inoculated.
The war in Iraq has provided a policy debacle at least on par with the
health-care issue, Armey said. But Democrats cannot offer policy
alternatives because, he said, Americans remain leery of their prescriptions for
an activist government and higher taxes.
To counter that perception, House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for
their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would
quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It
would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug
benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from
negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.
It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel
convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,
Democratic leaders said.
And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases
have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal
deficit from growing.
Armey dismissed the substance of the Democratic proposals as demagoguery but
said that the politics "really, frankly, are not too bad."
Pelosi also vowed "to use the power to investigate" the administration on
multiple fronts, starting with the task force convened in secret by Vice
President Cheney to devise the administration's energy policy. The
administration has successfully fought lawsuits since 2001 that sought to reveal
the names of energy company executives tapped to advise the task force.
"Certainly the conduct of the war" in Iraq would be the subject of hearings, if
not a full-fledged House investigation, Pelosi said. Another subject for
investigation could be the use of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged
weapons of mass destruction to make the case for the 2003 invasion.
Hoyer added that he would like to see investigations into the extent of domestic
wiretapping by the National Security Agency, and the billions of dollars wasted
by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Campaign chiefs for Republican Senate and House candidates have already begun
using the threat of such investigations to raise money and rile core Republican
voters. A recent mailing by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), chairwoman of
the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned that Democrats "will call
for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment
of President Bush!"
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