Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has taken an unusually low profile as Democrats have tried to push through their most substantive response yet to the housing crisis.

The chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee did not attend the unveiling of a bill last month when Democratic leaders went before television cameras to announce a plan to boost the slumping housing markets.

Now he is working quietly to develop an alternate housing-stimulus bill with the chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus (D-Mont.), according to two Democratic aides.

A Dodd aide denies that the senator is angered by the leadership’s decision to take the lead in the debate, and that he in fact played a pivotal role behind the scenes to shape the initial bill. According to the aide, Dodd’s absence last week resulted from multiple scheduling conflicts, including committee hearings about the economy. The aide also said that Dodd had been preparing to manage part of the floor debate until Republicans blocked the bill from getting a vote.

Kate Szostak, a spokeswoman for the committee, said the senator is continuing to work with his Republican counterpart on the panel, Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), and with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on “a package that can reduce foreclosures and restore confidence in the housing market.”

But some raw feelings may linger. According to two Democratic aides, Senate leaders overruled Dodd’s pleas to bring the bill through the committee process. The decision to take the bill straight to the floor irked Shelby, the panel’s ranking member, who has long worked closely with Dodd to forge compromises.

“It’s not surprising that the legislation stalled on the floor since committees weren’t given the opportunity to vet the proposals and offer input,” said Jonathan Graffeo, a spokesman for committee Republicans.

Democrats last week fell well short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill, failing by a 48-46 vote. Dodd was among those supporting cloture.

A housing bill likely will not return to the floor until after senators break for their two-week Easter recess later this month, and it’s unclear whether there will be any major changes to the measure, aides said Monday.

Immediately after the vote, Dodd said he was involved in discussions on the bill, but he took to the floor and made the case for moving bills through the committee process.

“You can make two choices,” Dodd said. “You can propose things and throw them out there in the hopes that something may happen, but usually they don’t because you haven’t bothered to consult.”

“Or you can do it the other way, which is slower, more deliberate, more frustrating in some ways, but ultimately you produce products people can support,” he added, pointing to 17 bills approved by his committee in the last year, seven of which became law with little or no GOP opposition.

Dodd’s push to move the bill through regular order was overruled by leadership and a majority of the caucus, which wanted to swiftly push forward a package to show how Democrats differ from Republicans in responding to the crisis.

“Sen. Dodd should be the leader on these issues, but he has to take up the mantle and he has to run with it,” said a senior Democratic aide close to the process. “Because there is a crisis now — not two months from now, not three months from now.”

The process also differs from the first economic stimulus package, when Reid allowed Baucus to mark up a plan to inject fresh cash into the economy, despite enormous pressure for the Senate to quickly approve a bill supported by the House and Bush administration. Baucus was front and center in that debate, appearing at press conferences and pleading on the floor for his colleagues to back his approach.

Aides said the decision this time to bypass the committee process was made even easier due to floor-time constraints.  And since other panels have jurisdiction over various provisions, such as the Judiciary Committee’s role over a controversial bankruptcy measure, it made more sense to piece together the bill outside of the normal committee process, they say. The bankruptcy measure, which would allow judges to alter the terms of mortgages for people facing foreclosure, was inspired by a bill authored by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Republicans said that had Dodd taken a larger role, he would have likely moved to reach consensus. In contrast, the defeat of the leadership-driven bill prompted Democrats to accuse Republicans of siding with Wall Street against people who are about to lose their homes.

Last year, Dodd came under criticism from both sides for spending most of his time on the presidential campaign trail instead of on Capitol Hill amid signs of a worsening economy. Dodd even angered Reid last December by holding up debate on the Senate bill to overhaul foreign intelligence surveillance, according to some aides.

After he lost in January’s Iowa caucuses, Dodd withdrew from the Democratic nominating contest and returned to the Hill with an ambitious agenda and a response to the housing crisis at the top of his list.

That makes the quiet role Dodd has taken even more unusual, according to people following the process.

“I think there are a lot of factors at play,” said an industry lobbyist, but “the bill just wasn’t really in his wheelhouse.”
Dodd unveiled a broad bankruptcy reform package last December, but most of those provisions did not make it into the Democratic housing bill. Dodd did win support for $4 billion in block grant funds for communities, which Reid included in the housing bill.

Democratic leaders also dropped plans to include a provision to modernize federal housing agencies because Dodd told Reid that he wanted to work on the plan with Shelby through the committee process.

Reid bristled last week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) questioned whether the majority leader consulted with Dodd during the development of the bill.

“We had full consultation,” Reid said.