Reid reiterates displeasure with Bush’s priorities

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 | 9:55 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Tuesday dug in his heels for a potentially explosive confrontation over President Bush's judicial nominees -- and issued a fresh attack on Bush's agenda.

Reid also acknowledged that "maybe it was a poor choice of words" when he called Bush a "loser" in a classroom conversation with Las Vegas high school students on Friday. Reid apologized to Bush through Bush aide Karl Rove.

But Reid struck a note of defiance as he reiterated his displeasure with Bush's priorities, criticizing his stances on issues including health insurance, prescription drugs, the No Child Left Behind Act, and a ballooning deficit. Bush is doing a "very, very, very bad job" as president for the country and as a world leader, Reid told reporters Tuesday.

"I'm going to continue to call things the way that I see them," Reid said.

Reid's most immediate fight with Bush and Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., will likely be next week, over judicial nominations.

Reid has said Democrats will not give up their ability to filibuster a handful of nominees they find unacceptable. Frist is poised to invoke a procedural rule dubbed the "nuclear option" that would allow the Senate's 55 Republicans to blow up a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster. That change would force "up or down votes" on the nominees that Republicans have requested, which is expected to result in approval of the nominees because the majority of the senators are Republicans.

Many Senate observers agree that the use of the nuclear option could slow the work of the Senate and lead to new heights of partisan acrimony. But neither side has much negotiating room.

Reid says Democrats will fight tooth and nail against the loss of Senate rules that protect the minority party. He says Frist wants to turn the Senate into a "rubber stamp" for Bush.

Frist counters that Republicans have a constitutional right to call for a vote on all White House nominees.

Reid on Tuesday offered two seemingly final compromise proposals. One option included a formal Senate review of rule change amendments favored by Frist, in concert with the Senate Rules Committee -- as opposed to Frist simply invoking the nuclear option.

The other proposal: Reid said Democrats would agree to vote on four of seven controversial nominees blocked by Democrats in the last Congress -- three Sixth Circuit nominees and one of the four remaining nominees of the Republicans' choosing.

Reid brushed aside conservative critics who said that offering to approve one of the four is a political game that suggests Democrats accept all the nominees as qualified. Liberal critics say Reid is giving in on nominees against whom Democrats took a principled stand.

"I have responded to these critics by saying that Senate leaders must sometimes compromise, even on matters of principle, for the good of the Senate and the country," Reid wrote in a letter to Frist on Tuesday.

Reid seemed to indicate he was done negotiating.

"If neither of these options is acceptable, let's vote," Reid told reporters.

Later Reid said, "I am willing to give away only so much. I've made what I think is a fair offer."

Frist on Tuesday repeated his stance that all nominees deserve a vote.