WASHINGTON — Arlen Specter is a senior U.S. senator who expects to be allowed his say on the Senate floor. So he bristled when Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, brusquely cut him off at the end of the Iraq debate.
“The leadership is setting a dictatorial tone,” Specter, R-Pa., said Thursday, still furious over his treatment the day before. “Senators didn’t get here to be pushed around.”
It may seem small-minded to bicker over a few words at the end of a 24-hour debate. But the clash between the two veteran senators is evidence of a larger breakdown in relations in the Senate, a deterioration in cooperation that is hobbling the Senate’s ability to get things done. The situation is not likely to improve with a presidential election on the horizon.
As the cots were rolled away and lawmakers left for a decent night’s rest after the around-the-clock debate that ended — like others this year — in stalemate, lawmakers of both parties said they had rarely seen the tone so poisonous and the willingness to work together on the floor at such a low ebb.
“The last vestiges of courtesy seem to be going out the window,” said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who has served as majority and minority leader during his almost 20 years in the Senate. “Every time I think the Senate — Republican or Democrat — has gone to a point where you can’t go any lower, we go lower.”
It is hardly startling that members of the two parties do not see eye to eye. And the spirit of bipartisanship in the Senate always rises and falls depending on the subject and the election calendar. But seven months into the new Democratic regime, the environment seems unusually hostile. Occasionally, senators do, too, as exhibited in a Sunday television exchange between Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that looked for a moment as if it might turn physical as the two men argued about the war in Iraq.
Hard feelings have consequences. Without agreements between the leaders of the opposing parties, the Senate has been plunged into a procedural knife fight, with Democrats forced to scramble to find 60 votes not just on contentious issues like an Iraq withdrawal plan, but on once-routine matters like motions to proceed to a spending bill. The feuding has spilled into subjects that would seem to hold the potential for common ground, like antiterror legislation and lobbying reform, and will doubtless tie up spending bills, health care measures and others to come.
Democrats contend that Republicans have embarked on a strategy of delay, using Senate rules to chew up scarce legislative time and deny Democrats any accomplishments. Republicans complain that Democrats are trying to jam through objectionable bills and are mainly interested in building a political case for 2008. The relationship between Reid and his Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has cooled after it was initially thought the two Senate tacticians would be able to do business.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who has been in the Senate for more than four decades, said he was not sure bipartisanship is at an all-time low, but acknowledged that things are tense.
“The fact the Senate is so evenly divided makes big causes out of smaller events,” Kennedy said. “My sense is the debate is sharper-edged in terms of the public discussion, and that has reflected to some extent on the institution.”
Besides the narrow 51-49 majority Democrats enjoy, lawmakers and others attribute what senators decry as a lack of comity to various reasons, including the emotions surrounding the Iraq war debate, a Republican payback for Democratic stalling in recent years and pure political maneuvering in a hot-house environment.
Reid on Thursday blamed Republican ideology, saying the Senate’s conservative contingent was unwilling to swallow legislation sought by most Americans.
“We don’t have many moderate Republicans in the Senate,” Reid said. “Republicans in the Senate do not represent mainstream Republicans around the country.”
Members of both the House and Senate have been contending for years that the sort of personal interaction that can lead lawmakers to overcome partisan differences has been on the decline, leaving Congress polarized.
But Kennedy, Specter and others say they find that committee leaders still tend to be able to work together and, indeed, Kennedy and Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., have cooperated on a major higher education measure the Senate was considering Thursday. And a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers put together the Senate’s immigration proposal, though it went down in flames to the broader political divide in Congress.
It is on such big topics that the Senate is stumbling as neither party seems willing to give much ground, locked in a permanent political campaign although Senate terms were made longer than those of the House so that Senators would have a better opportunity to rise a bit above politics.
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee who has been in the heat of the battle over the Iraq legislation, said he did not believe feelings were frayed beyond repair. After all, Levin said, democracy was built upon the notion of vigorous debate.
“The Senate is a unique place where wills are tested, and this was a very important issue that people have very strong feelings on,” Levin said, referring to the Iraq debate. “Instead of fighting over it physically, there are battles that are fought on the floor of the Senate. But these are important disagreements and they should be aired.
“Isn’t that what we are here for?”
