Congressional Quarterly, DC
Oct 19 2007

Tough Week for House Democrats Buoys GOP

By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff

Knocked around by setbacks on three big issues, House Democrats have
endured perhaps their toughest week since taking control of the
chamber.

The two parties are sparring about the meaning and significance of
the Democrats’ challenges as they maneuver for advantage in next
year’s elections.

The House is spinning out of the control of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
her leadership team, the Republicans assert. GOP leaders say they see
a pattern in Thursday’s unsuccessful attempt to override President
Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance bill, the last-minute
pulling a day earlier of legislation setting ground rules for the
executive branch’s domestic spying authority, and this week’s sudden
loss of momentum behind a resolution that would condemn the murder of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

Democrats scoff, calling this week’s events a typical bump in the
road, at worst. Asked Thursday if things were going wrong for her
after nine months as Speaker, Pelosi, D-Calif., said, `No. This is
the legislative process.”

Republicans, trying to build momentum for what is generally seen as
an uphill bid to retake the House in November 2008, said the
Democrats’ troubles are building.

`Every day gets harder for them than the day before,” said Minority
Whip Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, `because they are burning up
their capital and not getting results.”

Blunt said that instead of consistently reaching out to Republicans
and Bush to work on bipartisan legislation, Democratic House leaders
have pushed measures like the Armenia resolution (H Res 106), which
the Bush administration and the Turkish government have lobbied hard
against, and the surveillance overhaul (HR 3773) that divides even
the Democratic Caucus.

`The Democrats’ internal and external problem is the same. It’s
consistent over-reaching,” Blunt said. `It’s where you have your
members way beyond where they want to be.”

Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized what he
characterized as Pelosi’s style of strong, centralized leadership.
`Running the House is a difficult job. But trying to run it yourself
is an impossible job,” he said Thursday after the House failed,
273-156, to override Bush’s veto of the children’s health insurance
expansion (HR 976). (SCHIP, p. 1)

`If you look at our management approach, we involve the leadership,
we involve the chairmen and the members and collectively come to
decisions on how we move forward. That is not how she has chosen,
this year, to manage the House. And it’s not surprising to me that
she’s had a rough week,” Boehner said.

Democrats say that, contrary to Boehner’s analysis, Pelosi has been a
consensus-oriented Speaker. It is wrong, they say, to try to draw a
pattern from what Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly called a `confluence
of events.”

`It hasn’t been a great week, but we’ll move on to see if some of
these things can be put back together,” said Henry A. Waxman,
D-Calif., who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee.

Three’s No Charm
The three measures that ran aground this week had completely
different problems, the Democrats said.

The Armenia resolution, which Pelosi supports but which she says she
hasn’t pushed, was a bipartisan effort, with some five dozen GOP
cosponsors. The fact that it lost supporters after winning Foreign
Affairs Committee approval was not a Democratic leadership failure,
Daly said.

Although Pelosi promised a floor vote if the non-binding resolution
got through committee, she now says she will consult with the
measure’s sponsors to see if they want to proceed.

Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., promised to bring the
surveillance bill back to the floor next week. Pelosi said Thursday
that Democrats have the votes to pass it.

Hoyer said he pulled it Oct. 17 because of impending GOP plans to
offer a motion to recommit that would have effectively killed the
bill.

And Democrats said they viewed their widely expected defeat on the
health insurance veto override as a political victory that will pay
dividends if Bush and the House Republican leadership persist in
opposing bipartisan efforts to expand the program.

`We think we made progress today,” Pelosi said after the vote.
“Only 10 Republican members of Congress stand between 10 million
children getting health care.”

She said she intended to send Bush another bill within two weeks with
virtually no changes. That seems to sit fine with her party’s rank
and file.

`This vote today, more than any other vote, defines what Democrats
are about,’ said Jim McGovern, D-Mass. `I think we’re doing the right
stuff. This is what people care about.”

Alan K. Ota contributed to this story.

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