http://www.sptimes.com/2003/07/28/Worldandnation/House_Democrats_say_t.shtml<snip>
So there was little reason to expect that on July 18 a bipartisan bill to revise employer retirement plans would trigger a brawl so ferocious that relations between House Democrats and Republicans would reach a turning point.
But that appears to be the legacy of a recent fracas in the House Ways and Means Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas of California, delivered a tearful apology on the House floor last week after GOP leaders ordered him to make amends for calling the police on the panel's Democrats.
Democratic anger was fueled by years of complaints about high-handed treatment by Republican committee chairmen, who Democrats say generally refuse to listen to their ideas or opinions.
These complaints, of course, are exactly the ones Republicans made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just before ending the Democrats' 40-year reign in Congress. Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein said Republicans are in danger of falling into the same leadership trap as Democrats did when they ran the House.
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