Harry is really giving them hell

Monday, Aug. 6, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.

WASHINGTON - When Majority Leader Harry Reid took charge of the U.S. Senate, he promised longer days and longer workweeks with Democrats in charge.

What senators weren't expecting was the extent to which the Nevada Democrat would go to keep his party's agenda on schedule, even at the risk of pushing civility in Congress to the breaking point.

Senators were stunned last week when a dozen members showed up late for a vote only to find their "yeas" and "nays" would not be counted.

Just a few weeks earlier, another senator was beside himself when Reid declined to yield precious floor time so he could complain about the all-night vote the Senate held on Iraq and Reid's subsequent decision to table an important defense bill.

"Dictatorial" is how Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., described the majority leader when Reid would not give him the floor.

"To be cut off in that context was rude, to say the minimum," Specter said. "There are rules and there are customs, there are accepted practices."

Relations are at an all-time low on the Hill , where Republicans and Democrats bat away at one another at every step in the legislative process.

An unfortunate slight becomes a reason to fight, as was the case Thursday night when 100 Republican members walked off the House floor in protest after Democrats improperly cut short a vote on a Republican anti-illegal immigration measure.

The House looked like the British House of Commons, observers said, verging on a hockey game brawl. Nevada Rep. Dean Heller was among those who walked out, but Rep. Jon Porter stayed behind, even though he believes his colleagues' protest was justified, his spokesman said.

The result is that it becomes very difficult to get anything done.

"I now fully understand the public's complete lack of confidence in Congress," Heller said.

But in the Senate, Reid presses on, unyielding in his quest to keep the trains running on time.

He has kept the Senate in for a Saturday session and threatened to stay in session past scheduled recesses. Reid knows Democrats have much to accomplish and little time to do it as the clock ticks down toward the end of their first year. Only a few dozen legislative days remain.

Even more, Reid has broken from the Senate's tradition of working to reach agreement on issues by calling up legislation even when he knows he won't have the 60 votes needed to allow the debate.

Reid says he has been forced to use this strategy because Republicans have sought to block floor action on virtually every piece of legislation he tried to offer.

But Republicans complain the reliance on this procedure is unprecedented and shows how unreasonable Democrats are in their efforts to work in a bipartisan fashion.

Specter and others expressed deep frustration when Reid pulled a defense bill from the floor after Republicans refused to agree to the 50-vote threshold for passing amendments he wanted. Republicans insisted on a 60-vote super majority, which is common on some bills.

As both sides took stock last week of the accomplishments - or lack thereof - during Congress' first seven months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-K y . , offered his opponents some advice.

"Don't do things like they're doing today," McConnell said. Democrats "have managed to achieve an astonishing thing, which is to have the lowest approval rating anyone can find in history, and they did it in a record short period of time."

But Democrats head home for the August recess on a high note. They have passed lobbying reform, an expansion of children's health care and security upgrades from the 9/11 commission report, which President Bush signed into law Friday .

Reid pledged to return in September with renewed efforts to change course in the Iraq war, as most Americans want.

"We've seen a lot of good results," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said. "When we started Sen. Reid said he was going to get the Senate back to work - that's what he's doing."

And that leaves no time for dawdling - or even simple mistakes that might be forgiven in another workplace.

Last week, when the Senate was voting on an amendment from Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign to block the expansion of a children's health care program, voting was extended from the typical 15 minutes to 25 minutes to allow the Homeland Security Committee time to return to the floor.

But through a mix-up, committee members thought the vote would be held open for them longer.

After the amendment was defeated, tardy senators one by one approached their microphones to explain their absence.

Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., complained that the time spent accounting for each lawmaker's absence "now exceeded by far any time that might have been saved by cutting off the vote in an atypically short way."

None of the votes would have changed the outcome, but even the de facto superintendent of chamber rules, 89-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., thought the absent senators should be given a little leeway.

Reid, though, wouldn't budge.

"I am sorry people missed votes, but remember, this is not anything that is new. It is something that has been going on for seven months, and we have a lot of work to do," he said on the floor.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, pressed the majority leader to show her colleagues a little softness.

"I understand totally that the leader has to have a firm principle," she said. But "this is something I have never seen since I have been here for 14 years."

Finally, Reid relented, asking that the votes of at least those committee members who were absent be counted.

But Senate rules would not allow it, the presiding officer explained.

With that, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Finance Committee, stepped up to offer a suggestion: "I suggest we get back to business."