Dems face fall tests

Congress returns Tuesday to a busy fall agenda framed by looming White House veto threats over must-pass bills that will test whether Democrats will bend to President Bush, who faces the increasingly daunting task of minimizing Republican defections as election season kicks into high gear.

A host of funding and reauthorization measures must be passed before they expire by September’s end, a challenge in a month with limited legislative days that will be dominated by debate over the Iraq war.

{mosads}Democrats are plotting their fall strategy for deciding when it makes sense politically to pick fights with the White House — or instead compromise to ensure speedy passage of legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are planning to hold their regular talks early in the week to lay out strategy, aides said.

While there is more than a year left before the 110th Congress adjourns, this fall could be the most opportune time for Democrats to score victories, since presidential politics are expected to paralyze much of the 2008 legislative agenda.

“The closer we get to the next election, there’s a benefit to distinguishing where the two parties and their leaders line up on key issues,” said Bill Samuel, legislative director for the AFL-CIO labor union. “I don’t think Democrats should shy away from a confrontation.”

Republicans hope Democrats won’t compromise with Bush, saying his vetoes would energize the right after last week’s revelation that Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig was arrested after allegedly making sexual advances to an undercover police officer in a Minneapolis airport restroom.

“Vetoes are exactly what the doctor ordered,” said a Republican strategist and former senior Senate leadership aide.

If Democrats compromise on contentious issues, they are likely to generate anger from their base, as they did before the August recess when they allowed a Bush-backed bill on warrantless surveillance to clear Congress.

For Republicans, moving to sustain any Bush vetoes can be politically risky, as the president continues to be deeply unpopular and the House and Senate GOP remain at serious risk of losing even more ground in the 2008 elections.

“Republicans will have to make some important decisions,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid. “Are they going to work together, or are they going to go to great lengths to stall, stop and delay?”

Not surprisingly, many political experts are predicting a contentious, partisan fall on Capitol Hill. But recently, there were a couple of indications that bipartisanship in 2007 is not dead.

President Bush offered a new plan to ease the housing crisis that was immediately embraced by Democrats. Meanwhile, Reid told The Washington Post that he is interested in compromising with Senate Republicans to end the war in Iraq.

The Senate this week will take up a military construction and veterans affairs spending bill, one of up to four appropriations bills Reid wants to take up in September. The other three are funding for the Defense Department, transportation programs and foreign operations.

None of the 12 annual spending bills has become law, even though the 2007 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Democratic leaders have not signaled whether the chamber still plans to clear each one individually or cobble all 12 spending bills into one massive omnibus appropriations bill.

Bush has said he will veto any appropriations bill that exceeds his proposed level of spending. Republicans say it won’t be easy to sustain vetoes if Democrats move the bills individually, arguing it would be much harder to paint each bill as wasteful than it would be if an omnibus bill emerges.

A fight over an omnibus bill could lead to the bloodiest partisan battle over spending since 1995, when a standoff between the Clinton administration and the GOP-controlled Congress led to a shutdown of the federal government.

In addition to the dozen appropriations bills, several major authorization bills must be completed before programs expire at month’s end. This includes a reauthorization of Food and Drug Administration programs to approve drugs and medical devices, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that covers about 7 million low-income children, a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill and a national overhaul of farm policies. Democrats also want to clear the primary law governing colleges and financial aid, which expires at the end of October, and another measure that would overhaul student loans.

The White House has raised serious concerns over each of these bills, and issued veto threats against the House farm measure, the House version of the student loan legislation and both chambers’ health insurance bills.

Democrats may choose to make a point by challenging Bush to veto the spending and authorization bills, as they appear likely to do with the children’s health bill, and pressure congressional Republicans to decide whether or not to side with a weakened president.

“I think the question on all of them … is how does this stuff go through the Senate and how do you get bills that President Bush will sign?” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist. “Do we want to give him something he wants to sign or not?”

Republican opponents of the Democratic measures see the limited time as advantageous, and plan attacks against both the underlying bills and possibly their short-term extensions.

Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, said Democrats have put themselves in a bind by using precious floor time this year in pushing through appropriations bills to force a withdrawal from Iraq when they knew Bush wouldn’t agree.

“Had we not spent months arguing about a surrender date, Congress might be in better shape with the end of the year approaching,” Kennedy said.

This week both chambers will be laying the groundwork for Congress’s acrimonious debate over the Iraq war after the anticipated Sept. 10 release of the progress report by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Leaders have not decided how to handle the Iraq debate, aides said, but it is possible the defense authorization bill will be brought back to the floor as the vehicle for the fight over whether to withdraw troops from the region.

The $147 billion fiscal 2008 supplemental bill is another vehicle for the debate, and House Democrats want to move on that plan before month’s end. Democrats are considering adding the supplemental spending bill to the 2008 defense appropriations bill in bicameral conference talks, aides said.

Ian Swanson, Roxana Tiron and Mike Soraghan contributed to this article.