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By Manu Raju and Elana Schor
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Posted: 07/19/07 08:05 PM [ET] |
Senate Democrats pulled a major defense bill from the floor yesterday over bitter Republican protests, prompting a meltdown of relations and further clouding prospects for bipartisan accord on Iraq.
Signaling a growing rift between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the two could not agree which measure to consider next after Democrats’ abrupt decision to set aside the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill.
Republicans first blocked proceeding to a $38 billion homeland-security spending bill, forcing Reid to file the 44th cloture motion of this Congress to move on to the bill early next week. Democrats then were barely able to bring up a popular student loan bill, approving by a one-vote margin a motion to proceed to the measure. The Senate was only able to move to that bill because of budget rules prohibiting filibusters on the measure.
“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is extraordinarily discouraging,” Reid said on the floor.
“The Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I’ve been here a long time,” said Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.). “All modicum of courtesy has gone out the window.”
But Democrats said Republican threats to filibuster Iraq-related amendments indicate that McConnell is worried that more and more Republicans are moving toward the Democratic position.
“I understand McConnell’s position. He’s losing control of his caucus on this matter,” said Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) “He’s trying to protect the president.”
The procedural jostling came after a rare overnight session in which Democrats sought to dramatize overwhelming Republican opposition to an amendment, offered by Sens. Carl Levin (Mich.) and Jack Reed (R.I.), which would have required most troops to leave Iraq by next April. Republicans blocked a vote on that amendment, 52-47, falling short of the 60 votes needed to shut down debate and move towards final passage.
Four Republicans voted for the cloture motion to end the debate, including Susan Collins, the Maine Republican up for reelection who is facing intense backlash in her home state. The senior senator from Maine, Republican Olympia Snowe, who co-sponsored the amendment, also voted for cloture, as did anti-war Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith, a co-sponsor who faces a tough reelection battle in Oregon.
But Collins does not support the amendment itself, and said she only voted for cloture because of her opposition to a Republican filibuster blocking the measure from receiving an up-or-down vote.
Collins, who has sponsored an amendment with Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson to call for a change in course in Iraq with a “goal” of withdrawing troops by next March, joined her Republican colleagues in lambasting Reid for setting the measure aside.
“I think Senator Reid’s position is completely inconsistent,” Collins said. “On the one hand, he chastises Republicans for not allowing the vote, but he’s the one who’s pulling the bill from the floor and thus precluding further consideration of all of the Iraq amendments that we have pending.”
McConnell, who at the beginning of the year highlighted his tight relations with Reid, said he was informed of the decision to remove the bill from the floor only moments before the majority leader announced that plan.
Other moderate Republican senators joined in the fray, but on a more personal level. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said Reid was interrupting him on the floor, calling him “rude, to say the minimum.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said Reid was not working “hard enough” at achieving consensus, and he condemned the majority leader for not giving consideration to a bipartisan measure that he cosponsored with 13 other senators to implement the 2006 Iraq Study Group recommendations.
But Democrats were defiant, criticizing Republicans for siding with President Bush’s failing war policy rather than helping troops get out of harm’s way. They said they would bring the bill back to the floor but only after Republicans agree to a timeline for a troop withdrawal, throwing into question whether any bipartisan consensus could be reached by the Senate.
“Anything short of a timetable is interesting, but not effective,” said Durbin.
But the prospect of the defense bill’s collapse may increase Republican unity against a key amendment of the student-loan measure, which is currently on the floor.
Many in the student-loan industry were eyeing Nelson, whose state is home to lending giant Nelnet, for a possible vote against starting the reconciliation clock. While Nelson voted with his party, he and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) plan to offer an amendment to temper the bill’s effect on private banks that offer student loans.
The student-loan bill, which reconciliation rules shield from a filibuster, would increase the maximum Pell Grant while capping loan payments to 15 percent of a borrower’s income. To pay for those benefits, the bill would trim more than $17 billion in student-loan subsidies for banks — a frightening scenario for an industry that was hit even harder in the House version.
Nelson and Burr would go easier on for-profit lending companies by having the bill’s cuts apply equally to non-profit and for-profit lenders. Burr predicted a “very, very close vote” on the amendment, and Nelson said his vote on the reconciliation bill is “very much contingent” on his amendment passing.
But Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is likely to whip against the amendment, counting on a coalition of Democrats and centrist Republicans to bring it down.
“We’ve heard the arguments from the big lenders,” Kennedy said. “They claim that if Congress reduces their subsides … they’ll be forced to reduce the benefits they offer to borrowers on student loans. But the grant aid in this bill dwarfs any
benefit a lender could offer on a loan.”
The reconciliation bill has become a hotbed of anxiety for stock market watchers. Wall Street watched in horror last week as the private-equity firm planning to take over Sallie Mae — the country’s biggest student-loan company — said Congress may torpedo the buyout deal by approving steep subsidy cuts.
Roxana Tiron contributed to this story.
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