By Lisa Mascaro

Tue, Feb 5, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — A war of words broke out Monday between two masters of the Senate in one of those moments when the few feet of aisle separating the Democrats and the Republicans seem to be a good thing.

After days of high-stakes negotiations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid engineered a schedule to vote on two pieces of must-pass legislation this week in the Senate — the Democrats’ version of President Bush’s economic stimulus package to save the country from a deep recession and a contentious surveillance law to allow wiretapping to track potential terrorists.

Everything was set to go down today and Wednesday.

Then about 6 p.m. Monday, the Republican minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said no.

McConnell had his reasons — after waiting days to review the Democrats’ stimulus bill, he was only now given a copy. There was no way he could proceed without reading it. Under Senate rules, he gets 30 hours to review, and he was going to take them. In the meantime, he would not assent to votes on the wiretapping bill.

Reid was furious. He stepped up to his Senate lectern and let loose. He hurled rants that in the genteel chamber almost counted for obscenities. “I am dismayed!” he said. Incredulous! Precious time would be lost in the Senate with no action!

Reid flung his arm across the aisle, pointing at the Republican leader in a way that anyone just tuning in on TV might have thought was the scene in which the prosecutor identifies the criminal defendant for the jury.

McConnell had just expertly torpedoed Reid’s plan, but even in his victory, the usually cool Southerner seemed a little uncomfortable being singled out as the object of Reid’s wrath. The Republican leader’s voice rose as he defended himself.

(Remember, please, it was just last fall that these two met on McConnell’s home turf to talk with University of Louisville students about bipartisanship.)

For long, dramatic minutes it went on like this, back and forth, back and forth. At one point Reid called McConnell’s reasoning “shallow,” only to ask moments later that the word be stricken from the record. Senate rules prohibit such derision.

For a time proxies intervened, with the Republican whip stepping in to ask rhetorical questions that supported his leader’s position, while the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate did the same for Reid.

At one point Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, interjected that while the men had been talking she had read the two-page provision that McConnell insisted he needed time to review.

The problem, as Reid saw it, was the Republicans were holding up the schedule on purpose, pushing Democrats into a corner as the clock runs out on key bills. He sees it as more of the same GOP obstructionism that led Republicans to break the record last year for the number of filibusters in the Senate.

McConnell, steadied again, tried to step back a half-pace. “We’re going to read the proposal,” McConnell said. “I don’t think anyone in America will think that’s unreasonable.”