DEMOCRATS’ TO-DO LIST IS MODEST AT OUTSET

When Democrats take power on Capitol Hill this week, House leaders will kick off their legislative campaign with a lightning-fast 100-hour agenda.

But there won’t be a revolution.

In marked contrast to the Republicans who swept into the majority in 1994, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her legislative allies are not planning to amend the Constitution or eradicate federal agencies.

Instead, their initial legislative foray will focus on modest, politically popular issues, including initiatives to expand stem cell research, lower prescription drug prices and tighten congressional ethics rules.

Pelosi’s program is expected to receive a warm reception on Capitol Hill, even from some Republicans. Less clear is whether Democrats can follow up with solutions to the deeper problems that are troubling a restive public.

Polls show that most Americans are looking to Congress, rather than the president, for leadership, particularly on resolving the war in Iraq.

Yet Pelosi and the Democrats plan no dramatic steps to influence the course of the war. Nor has the new majority detailed strategies to tackle other challenges that have confounded lawmakers for years, including rising healthcare costs and the financially imperiled Social Security system.

For now, the relatively safe 100-hour agenda may simply allow the Democrats to show they can accomplish something after a dozen years in the political wilderness.

“One of the things the public is definitely looking for is results,” said veteran strategist Peter Fenn, who helped several Democratic candidates unseat Republicans in part by campaigning against the “do-nothing” record of the previous GOP-led Congress.

“You just have to look at Arnold Schwarzenegger to get an idea of how important that is,” Fenn said, noting how California’s recently reelected Republican governor salvaged his political fortunes by reaching across the aisle to rack up a series of substantive policy accomplishments.

But finding a majority on Capitol Hill to agree on even small measures can be challenging.

Democrats will hold just a one-vote advantage in the Senate, where rules allow the minority party to stall, slow and amend legislation.

At the same time, ideological divisions between the parties are wider than they were a generation ago, when moderates in both caucuses wielded greater influence.

It also remains unclear how the president and the new Congress will work together. Though Bush and Democratic congressional leaders have pronounced themselves committed to compromise, they are coming off six years of fiercely partisan government.

And taking on a president, even a weakened one, is never easy for Congress. When Republicans challenged President Clinton over the budget after taking power in 1995, they were blamed after the federal government was forced to shut down during the faceoff.

“It’s not going to be a cakewalk,” said incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “Just because you say you want to be bipartisan doesn’t mean they’re going to fall all over themselves to work with you.”

But the rapid-fire agenda that Pelosi has crafted to kick off Democratic rule carefully hits issues with broad popular appeal that may be hard for many Republicans to oppose.

Pelosi’s proposed House ethics package -- which would ban many gifts from lobbyists and identify members who insert earmarks into bills for spending on their pet projects -- comes after scandals that voters blamed on Republicans. The GOP never passed comprehensive ethics legislation, to the chagrin of many of the party’s members.

House Democrats are also talking about reinstating rules that would require any new tax cuts or spending increases to be offset by other cuts, a measure designed to reduce future budget deficits. That is another issue of concern to Americans, polls show.

At the close of the last legislative session, some Republican lawmakers decried the spending excesses of their party, which has presided over record budget deficits despite its platform of fiscal restraint.

Democrats plan to liberalize federal funding for stem cell research, a popular initiative that was approved by bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress before the president vetoed it in July.

And they are pledging to repeal a law passed in 2003 that prohibited the federal government from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare recipients, a top concern of senior citizens.

That proposal, too, earlier won bipartisan support when the Senate voted in March to support the idea in concept.

Some of the 100-hour issues are so popular that opposition appears to have melted away.

Representatives of the business community for a decade had been engaged in a struggle with organized labor to blunt any raise in the minimum wage. Yet now they say they see little chance of stopping the Democratic push to increase it to $7.25 an hour, from $5.15.

It is uncertain whether Republican insistence on some tax relief for small businesses could hang up the measure. But few expect major battles.

“There’s not much desire to start a fight on it. It’s not winnable,” said one business lobbyist. “The White House doesn’t appear to have a lot of fight in them ... [and] I don’t think weakened Republican minorities are going to want to fight.”

Even some oil executives have said they don’t need all of the tax breaks the government has granted the industry in recent years. House Democrats have promised to repeal a number of them.

Twelve years ago, the House Republican caucus that Newt Gingrich led into the majority set a very different tone, filling its agenda with a number of highly contentious issues that touched off bruising battles with the minority party.

In its “Contract With America,” the GOP pledged to place term limits on lawmakers, slash taxes, cut welfare benefits and curtail the rights of death row inmates to appeal their sentences.

So controversial were some of the proposals that several never even made it out of the Senate, which was also controlled by Republicans at the time.

Gingrich also made no secret of his plans to roll over Clinton.

“Republicans did something that was very foolish by essentially claiming that the president was irrelevant,” said Rutgers University congressional scholar Ross K. Baker. Baker noted that Clinton deftly outmaneuvered them, and Republicans lost seats in the next election.

“However the Democratic leaders feel about President Bush,” Baker said, “no one in any position of authority has proclaimed that President Bush is irrelevant.”

Once Democrats move beyond the popular items in their first 100 hours, however, their challenges will mount.

Americans overwhelmingly want Congress and the White House to address the war in Iraq first. In a recent Gallup Poll, 69% said the war should be the top priority, compared with 16% who cited the economy, which was second.

By contrast, the items on the 100-hour agenda ranked far down on the list.

House and Senate Democrats have planned a series of oversight hearings in January to focus attention on the war. And several senior Democrats have pledged to fight any proposal to send more troops to Iraq.

But the new majority has indicated it will shy away from asserting its real power to shape the war: using budgetary authority to restrict spending.

“We will have oversight,” Pelosi said recently. “We will not cut off funding.”

Equally uncertain is the fate of healthcare reform, another legislative quandary that has increased in urgency as the number of uninsured Americans nears 47 million.

Last month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) unveiled an ambitious proposal for universal health insurance, but neither Pelosi nor Reid has promised to revisit the controversial issue. And without Bush’s support, the prospects for such a far-reaching plan are slim.

Democratic leaders have reached out to the White House to discuss Social Security, the long-term solvency of which is a major challenge confronting the government.

Incoming House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) recently had lunch with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who is taking the lead for the administration on economic issues.

In a recent interview, Rangel said both sides had reason to compromise. “We have two years to prove that the voters were right, and the president has two years to prove that he’s not a lame duck,” he said.

The Bush administration has signaled that it might abandon its insistence that any reform include the creation of private accounts, a proposal that doomed Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan. One of Pelosi’s 100-hour promises is a pledge to fight “any attempt to privatize Social Security.”

Last week, the president’s conciliatory tone provoked alarm on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a leading outlet for conservative opinion.

“Uh-oh,” concluded the newspaper’s editorial board.

But as Democrats and Republicans look toward the next elections, a real solution to such a politically sensitive issue appears remote to some analysts.

“If something actually came of it,” said Guy Molyneux of the Democratic polling firm Hart Research, “I’d be shocked.”

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noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writers Joel Havemann and Janet Hook contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

From 100 days to 100 hours?

When Republicans took over the House after the 1994 election, they pledged to bring the items on their 10-point “Contract With America” to the House floor in 100 days. Twelve years later, Democrats promise to do their GOP rivals one better. Soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) has pledged to complete her party’s opening legislative agenda in just 100 hours. For a typical business, 100 work hours would be 2 1/2 weeks. For the House, work hours are “legislative” hours -- that is, whenever the chamber is officially in session. But no one plans to count the hours, a Pelosi spokesman acknowledged. “We’re not worried,” said Drew Hammill, who predicted the House would finish its work well within the 100 hours.

Times reporting by Noam N. Levey

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Pelosi’s 100-hour agenda

Promise: Break the “link between lobbyists and legislation.”

What it means: Proposed House “rules package” includes a ban on gifts from lobbyists and full disclosure of all earmarks.

Background: Proposals addressing lobbyist gifts, earmarks and other reforms stalled in the last Congress.

Prospects: The rules wouldn’t affect the Senate. Earmarks remain popular with lawmakers in both parties, but Democrats are under pressure to show real progress on ethics.

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Promise: Commit to “no new deficit spending.”

What it means: “Pay-as-you-go” rules require new spending and tax breaks to be offset with cuts.

Background: Instituted in the 1990s to reduce the deficit, the rules were largely abandoned by the GOP.

Prospects: With some Republicans grousing about their party’s deficit spending, the rules have bipartisan support. But even the old rules were circumvented.

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Promise: Implement the 9/11 commission’s recommendations.

What it means: Includes a new intelligence oversight panel, a new requirement to screen all incoming cargo and other measures.

Background: Two and a half years after the report, many of its recommendations have not been followed.

Prospects: Democrats have backed away from promising to enact all the recommendations. Cargo screening is viewed warily by powerful retailers.

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Promise: Raise the minimum wage.

What it means: Increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour.

Background: Democrats blocked a wage hike in 2006 when Republicans tried to link it to tax cuts.

Prospects: Popular among Democrats and moderate Republicans, but the White House and some Republicans still want to tie wage increases to tax breaks.

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Promise: Lower Medicare prescription drug prices.

What it means: Repeal a ban on the government using its purchasing power to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Background: The Senate in March supported the concept of government-negotiated discounts but never repealed the ban.

Prospects: Popular with seniors, and has bipartisan support. But opposing drug companies are influential. And key Democrats opposed earlier attempts.

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Promise: Promote stem cell research.

What it means: Increase federal funding for such research.

Background: President Bush vetoed a similar measure in 2006.

Prospects: The measure is likely to pass, but the president could veto it again.

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Promise: Cut interest rates on student loans in half.

What it means: Cut the interest on subsidized loans used by more than 5 million students from 6.8% to 3.4%.

Background: An effort by Democrats to cut rates on similar loans was defeated by House Republicans, who complained of the cost.

Prospects: Though popular, the cuts could cost more than $18 billion over five years, which may galvanize opposition.

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Promise: Roll back “subsidies to Big Oil” companies.

What it means: Repeal some tax breaks and subsidies and create a fund to promote renewable energy.

Background: Often over Democratic opposition, the GOP Congress passed tax breaks, in part to spur domestic production.

Prospects: Bush and even industry leaders appear willing to give up some breaks. But they are unlikely to support all the rollbacks.

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Promise: Fight any attempt to privatize Social Security.

What it means: Resistance to any new push by Bush to create private accounts.

Background: Democrats blocked Bush’s plan in 2005.

Prospects: The White House has shown willingness to negotiate over private accounts. Long-term change remains knotty for both parties.

Source: Times research