Biden in The House.

[elleng]

Source: WaPo

'When Joe and Jill Biden moved to Washington on Jan. 20 as he took up his duties as vice president, they brought their bed down from the family home in Wilmington, Del. But unlike their predecessors, the Gores and the Cheneys, who already lived in the Washington suburbs and had houses filled with furniture they were ready to transfer to the official residence on Massachusetts Avenue, the Bidens had empty rooms to fill. . .

As the senior White House official with an office in the Capitol, Biden has been in the middle of the effort to round up stimulus votes. That has been relatively familiar work on the Senate side of the Capitol, where Biden spent 36 years and knows the personalities and political tics of all but the newly elected freshmen -- and where, he said, "I think all of them trust me."

The House is something entirely different. Biden said he got to know a few of the senior members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees that he would meet in conference to iron out differences on bills between the chambers. But the House member he knows best is Mike Castle, the Delaware congressman at large and a Republican. Castle is one of the few surviving moderates on that side of the aisle, a throwback to the time when states from Maryland to Maine liked to send progressive Republicans to Congress. He is a respected legislator but of limited value as a guide to the current House Republican conference, which is dominated by conservatives.'







Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/11/AR2009021103203.html?hpid=opinionsbox1