Democrats make progress on their checklist from 2006

After a slow start, the Democratic-led Congress has started to gain traction on its domestic agenda.

The passage of the student loan bill on Friday is the fourth measure headed to  President Bush’s desk from the Democrats’ “Six in ’06” campaign pledge. If Bush signs the education bill as expected, three of the Democrats’ high-profile legislative promises will have become law less than nine months into their majority.

{mosads}“These are significant but modest bills,” Randall Strahan, a political scientist at Emory University, said, adding that the Democrats’ legislative accomplishments will help shield them from Republicans’ criticisms of a “do-nothing” Congress. Bolder bills could come in 2009, Strahan said, when Democrats hope to have control of Congress and the White House.

Throughout this year, Democrats have been stymied in their attempts to end the war in Iraq. And their frustration has been compounded with the unrealized expectation that September would bring them votes that could force the president’s hand.

The Democrats’ emphasis on Iraq earlier this year hampered Six in ’06. And Republicans knew it.

During a May 13 interview on CNN’s “Late Edition,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “Not a single one of their Six in ’06 agenda items has made it to the president’s desk. The American people are beginning to figure out that the Democrats are so preoccupied with this one issue that they are not accomplishing anything else.”

Raising the minimum wage, which was the first bill of the Six in ’06 pledge signed into law this year, was included in the Iraq supplemental measure. But Democrats were in no mood to crow at the time, having lost the showdown with Bush on timelines for troop withdrawals.

Since then, Democrats have made steady progress on the domestic front.

In early August, Bush signed the bill that implements the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, another item on Six in ’06.

 That bill, along with the student loan measure, faced tougher-than-anticipated paths to passage. Provisions of the 9/11 measure ran into opposition from wary industry groups that feared enhanced government inspections would hamper commerce. It was also slowed by jurisdictional battles among House and Senate chairmen.

The education legislation faced fierce resistance from the student lending industry and veto threats from the White House. Democrats, however, worked with the Bush administration to alter the bill, and — to the dismay of lenders — the president is expected to sign it this month.

Republicans have acknowledged that the Democrats’ Six in ’06 message plays well politically but argue that the American public expects much more from their Congress than passing a few heavily poll-tested bills.

In a late-March speech, McConnell said, “Their Six in ‘06 agenda — the things that poll-tested well — they’re sort of low-hanging fruit on their side that appealed to various constituencies. Some of that is salvageable. A lot of the rest of it we’re going to probably kill in the Senate.”

Yet only such one bill — allowing the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices — has not cleared the upper chamber.

When the first 100 days of the 110th Congress had passed and not one of the six had been signed by Bush, the GOP pounced.

Republican leaders held a press conference in April where they gave the Democratic-led Congress flunking grades for not passing any of their six legislative promises.

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Democrats were “0 for 7 in ’07,” noting that the ethics/lobbying reform bill remained stuck in Congress.

The lobbying measure took months longer to pass, embarrassing Democratic leaders who kept missing self-imposed legislative deadlines. Bill language on a fundraising tactic known as bundling and other issues came close to derailing the bill, but after protracted negotiations with their members, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) finalized a package that will become law shortly.

Most Republicans voted for the ethics measure, even though numerous provisions were weakened in conference.

Some GOP lawmakers complained that the earmark reform language was insufficient, but Democrats knew they had the upper hand politically after winning control of Congress following a series of high-profile Republican ethics scandals during the last Congress.

Before the August recess, congressional Republicans intensified their criticism of the Democratic “do-nothing” Congress, mocking it for passing a lot of bills naming post offices. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in July pointed out that only 39 bills at that time had become law, adding that 18 of them named a federal property or road. Boehner and other leading Republicans cited that inactivity as the reason why polls showed the lowest-ever approval ratings for Congress.

Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California-Berkeley, countered the notion that low congressional approval ratings equate to lost seats for the majority party.

“Overall ratings are not much of a predictor,” Cain said.

Cain believes the passage of the ethics legislation was vital to Democratic leaders: “They can now say they did something and contrast it with the Republicans’ failure to pass their ethics bill.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are no longer talking about Six in ’06. Instead, they have sought to highlight that Democrats have made little progress on the farm bill, fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax and, perhaps most importantly, appropriations.

In a Sept. 4 floor speech, McConnell said, “We haven’t sent a single one of the 12 appropriations bills to the president’s desk. This almost certainly means we’ll soon be looking at an appropriations train wreck in the next few weeks.”

Pelosi last week lauded what Democrats have done in the majority, adding that much more is to come, including bills on energy, reforming the new foreign surveillance law, and Iraq.

Many political experts believe Democrats will have to continue passing substantive bills in order to convince voters to keep them in control of Congress.

The GOP-led 109th Congress got off to a fast start in 2005, passing bankruptcy and class action reform before sputtering amid ethics controversies and Bush’s low approval ratings.