Omnibus: Democrats Stung by Dissenters

[elleng]

'Some issues that inflamed Democrats in previous years have yet to even register, including the proposal in Obama's budget plan to "means-test" the Medicare drug benefit as a way to pay for health-care reform. Doling out entitlement benefits based on income has long been anathema to most Democrats.

"There are a lot of items in the budget that would normally get a lot more attention, if we were in a normal year," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who heads the House Democrats' fundraising arm. "They've been eclipsed by the tidal wave of the economy." But Van Hollen added: "They are waiting in the wings."

Democrats rejected four GOP amendments to the omnibus spending bill last night, and they will face more today. The additional amendments are the price that Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) was forced to pay Thursday night after he sought to bring an end to debate on the bill and came up one vote short. Several Republicans whose support Reid had anticipated did not deliver, but the most costly defection was that of Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a member of the Democratic leadership, in protest of a little-noticed Cuba provision that would ease U.S. rules on travel and imports to the communist-led island.

The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.

Reid had been focused on fending off a bloc of conservative Republicans who were seeking to eliminate more than 8,500 pet projects in the bill, many of them inserted by GOP lawmakers. Democratic leaders were hearing some internal grumblings, but those concerns focused largely on the bill's hefty overall price tag.

Menendez knew that his hard-line approach to Cuba was a minority view within his party, and that it was at odds with Obama's approach. But he did not expect to discover a significant policy change embedded in the text on an appropriations bill. His policy aides came across the language when the legislation was posted on a congressional Web site.

"The process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide," the enraged son of Cuban immigrants said last week on the Senate floor. Menendez even slapped a hold on a pair of Obama nominees to draw attention to the issue.' >>>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/09/AR2009030903019.html?hpid=topnews