The Senate Caves

If Reid nearly backed America into the disastrous wiretapping bill, Schumer is singularly responsible for the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general. A graduate of Harvard Law who has never held a job outside of elected office, Schumer was first elected to the Senate in 1998. Although he helped force Alberto Gonzales from office by hound-dogging the Bush administration on the U.S. attorney's scandal, he was quick to praise Mukasey as a "nominee who would put the rule of law first and show independence from the White House." (An odd claim considering that, as a judge, Mukasey sided with Bush on indefinitely detaining an American citizen as an "enemy combatant.") Schumer not only voted with the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to bring Mukasey's nomination to the floor of the Senate, he voted against his own party to install Mukasey as attorney general. "But for Senator Schumer," says Chris Anders, legislative counsel for the ACLU, "Mukasey's nomination would have died."

Since taking office, Mukasey has steadfastly refused to initiate criminal investigations of those who justified or carried out torture. But his record as attorney general goes beyond covering up such abuses. In March, Mukasey disbanded the public-corruption office in Los Angeles in the midst of its investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, the former Republican appropriations chairman accused of doling out illicit pork to his cronies. Mukasey also denounced a call by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce the inflated prison terms imposed on drug users, claiming it would flood America's streets with "the most serious and violent offenders in the federal system." Even more alarming, he has refused to say whether he has revoked a 2001 memo that suspended the Fourth Amendment, permitting the military to conduct unreasonable searches of American homes during wartime.

The Senate's mystifying refusal to stand and fight — even against the most unpopular lame-duck president of all time — has begun to spill over into the House. Nancy Pelosi may have become speaker of the House by promising an end to "blank checks" for Bush's war in Iraq, but she now says she has given up on her colleagues in the Senate. Although funding for the war is once again up for reauthorization, Pelosi is done asking her party to peg funding to a timeline for withdrawal.

"It's not going anyplace," she says sternly. "We know that. Every time we passed one of these bills with the conditions and the deadlines, the Senate did nothing. So I said to my members after the last time, 'I'm never going to ask you to vote for one of these bills again' — no matter how good it is."

Pelosi's surrender in the face of Reid's inaction means that President Bush will soon have another $170 billion to steer this war as he sees fit — perhaps even crashing it headlong into Iran — his course unchanged by a Democratic Congress that has meekly abdicated its constitutional responsibility to serve as a check on the executive branch. The simple truth is, the Senate's agenda is largely dictated by the Republican minority. Rather than force the GOP to go on record as opposing popular measures — such as revoking gratuitous tax breaks for Big Oil — the Democrats have backed down again and again without a fight.

Both Pelosi and Reid insist that the only hope for their rudderless majority is to bring more Democrats into the Senate. But the party isn't going to get a filibuster-proof majority in November, even if it is lucky enough to repeat its big gains from 2006. "Democrats are not going to get 60 votes," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "They're going to go up three, four, five, maybe six in the Senate — but they're not going to get 60 votes."

In reality, the Democrats have everything they need right now to assert their own agenda and put a stop to Bush's abuse of power — most important, the backing of a wide majority of Americans on issues ranging from the Iraq War to children's health care. But instead of scratching and fighting to make good on the promises that got them elected — or at the very least, turning up the heat of the obstructionism of the GOP minority — they continue to make excuses. Even Pelosi, who has pushed through a variety of bold measures, believes that change will have to wait for a new leader. At the end of my interview in the speaker's office, she tries to sell me on her vision for a "progressive consolidation" in Washington. It's a lovely future, full of funding for cancer research, alternative energy and investment in American infrastructure. But what she really needs, Pelosi says, is a friend in the White House. "Soon," she promises. "As we get a Democratic president, we have a very visionary, larger view of the world agenda."

But what if that day doesn't come? What if the Democrats fail to win the presidency in November? Will the majority in Congress continue to wimp out, giving the Republican minority free rein over America's future?

Sadly, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. With a slight wince, Pelosi offers up the scariest truth of all: an admission that her party has no Plan B.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Pelosi says, "if we don't win the White House."

[From Issue 1054 — June 12, 2008]