The Senate Caves

As the hedge-fund fiasco demonstrates, Democrats have turned the Senate into the chamber where good legislation goes to die. Since regaining the majority in 2006, the Democrats have granted the Bush administration and big telephone companies immunity for illegal wiretapping, declared a branch of the Iranian military a terrorist organization and stuffed the recent Foreclosure Prevention Act with far more goodies for big lenders than for struggling homeowners. They also confirmed Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his refusal to disavow torture — a move engineered by Schumer. "You really want to like the Democrats," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Then they go and do shit like this."

Under Reid's leadership, the approval rating of Congress has plunged to a record low — 18 percent. The problem, according to the majority leader, is that Democrats hold only a one-vote majority — and Senate rules give the GOP minority the right to a "silent filibuster" unless he can come up with a supermajority. "I can't do anything unless I get 60 votes," Reid tells me. The only solution, he insists, is to elect more Democrats this fall.

But Reid's allies in the House aren't buying that line. Rangel, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, is livid that the Senate caves in every time Republicans state their intention to block a key piece of legislation — including lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

"We've lost the power to negotiate if Democrats use the 60 votes as a reason to tell us they can't take opposition to a bill," Rangel says. "It's important for us as a party to demand that Republicans use the filibuster. I want to see the heart of the Democratic Party in the Senate." The message from Senate Democrats, he says, should be simple: "Damn it to hell, we stand for something. The Republicans are not going to hold us back." Rangel even goes so far as to accuse Democrats in the Senate of having fallen prey to Stockholm syndrome — emerging from their years in the minority with sympathy for their Republican captors. "They have an extremely cooperative working relationship," Rangel says.

Take the recent foreclosure bill, which Senate Democrats larded with $25 billion in corporate welfare, compared with just $9 billion for homeowners struggling to keep their homes. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, sided with Sen. George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio, to insert a massive tax break for Detroit automakers and U.S. airlines. Worse, the Senate handed billions in tax breaks to speculative home builders who helped create the disastrous housing bubble in the first place. Sen. Chris Dodd, the bill's original sponsor, took to the floor to berate his colleagues for piling on the goodies. "This is a housing bill!" he said. "This isn't a Christmas tree!"

The most vital protection for homeowners, meanwhile, was stripped without a fight. Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, gave up when he was unable to find 60 votes for a provision that would have allowed troubled homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages, a benefit that the wealthy already enjoy for their vacation homes. Reid — who makes much in his bio of his past as a boxer — even praised Durbin for ducking the fight. "He did that in an effort to move this along," Reid declared. "I want the record to be read with the fact that this is a fine legislator, a good human being." When I ask Reid about the bill, he shrugs. "We had to take what we could get," he says.

The bitter truth in the Senate is that it's not Republicans who are betraying the Democratic agenda — it's Democrats themselves. "It's not the Congress that's ineffective," says Rangel. "It's not the promises that Nancy Pelosi made. We have passed the courageous bills — but for what? To be told what's 'acceptable' by the Senate." These days, he adds bitterly, "We don't need no House of Representatives. All we need to do is go over and ask the Senate, 'What have you Democrats and Republicans agreed to?'"