House, Senate Dems Realize Power Limited

[Alamom]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070310/D8NPEL400.html

Mar 10, 12:26 PM (ET)

By DAVID ESPO


WASHINGTON (AP) - At first, legislation to raise the minimum wage loomed as a clean, quick triumph for Democrats eager to celebrate their new majority in Congress. Two months later, it stands as an early lesson in the limits of their power.

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"The minimum wage-tax relief package was a good early lesson for them as to how things will work," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said with a chuckle in a recent interview.
"What the Democratic House is having to learn is what the majority, particularly a narrow majority, means in the Senate. Not much is likely to go through the Senate exactly the way they would like it to," McConnell said.

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Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 House Republican leader, concurred. "They're going to find it extremely hard to not only pass things over here but certainly to put anything on the president's desk that changes the country the way they want to change it," he said.

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But Bush has threatened to veto House-passed bills expanding federally funded research of embryonic stem cells and allowing the government to negotiate directly with manufacturers for Medicare drug prices.Already, events in the Senate show the difficulty Democrats will have forcing Bush to change his Iraq war policy.The speaker sounded undeterred.


Pelosi; "The House has to lead," she told moderates at a private meeting, according to participants.

[Eric J in MN]

1. more from the article

"Pelosi and Reid discussed a new strategy.

The House would add the minimum wage measure to a must-pass bill providing money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Because if they didn't provide Bush with more war money, the troops would have to come home, and so they have to pass that.