#1 – The House of Representatives passed a budget seven months ago. There has been no Senate action on that budget other than the defense bill.
#2 – The House of Representatives passed homeland security three months ago. The Senate, under the leadership of Tom Daschle, has taken no action, and, in fact, has killed it.
#3 – President Bush has gotten 44% of his judges to the floor for a vote. Clinton had 93%, Reagan had 99%, and Bush 41 had 90% of his judges brought to the floor for a vote.
#4 – The House of Representatives has been dealing for five months on welfare reform. In fact, they passed it five months ago. There has been no action in the Senate on continuing welfare reform from 1996, which is a demonstrable success.
#5 – The House of Representatives passed a prescription drug bill five months ago. There has been no action on prescription drugs from the Senate. It’s Tom Daschle who is holding this up.
All these things have been held up with the hope that the Democrats will keep the Senate, so they don’t have to do this stuff Bush’s way. It’s just that simple. All that was produced from the Tom Daschle-led Senate was a bloated farm bill with redundant disaster relief in it and campaign finance reform. That’s about it. This is why the House, in the last three months, did not bring forward any tax bill. They knew it would die in the Senate. They’re not going to waste their proposals now. Why have a proposal rejected or buried in a committee by the Senate? So they’ve been waiting to bring the tax bill out until after the election when hopefully Republicans have the Senate or at least it’s 50-50.
So in light of this, in light of these statistics, do I think we’re going to have trouble, economically and domestically, if the Democrats hold the Senate? There’s no question. That’s the plan. If the Democrats hold the Senate, the attitude there will be that the Bush presidency is over as far as Tom Daschle, Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy, and all these guys are concerned.
