In Mighty Senate, Clinton’s Ducks Not in a Row : Congress: Some power players are breaking party ranks on crucial votes, and the President may face more snags as his newness wears off.

With friends like these, President Clinton’s allies are beginning to wonder, who needs Republicans?

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), fresh from his interim victory to put off a decision on whether gays should be permitted to serve openly in the military, has been leading the opposition to Clinton’s proposed cuts in defense spending.

Sens. David L. Boren (D-Okla.) and John B. Breaux (D-La.), Clinton’s fellow Southern moderates, are trying to delay parts of the President’s economic stimulus package. Yet another Democrat, Sen. Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin, wants to go even further and scale back the $16.3 billion in new spending contained in the stimulus plan.

“I am startled, I am amazed and chagrined,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said Friday, as the stimulus package moved into its second day of grueling floor debate. “Why can’t we as Democrats support the leader. . . ? Are we going to put chains on him?”

But as the Senate’s former majority leader and undisputed grand master of its arcane procedures, Byrd knows that it is often this way in the institution that likes to call itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” The rules, traditions, politics and personalities of the Senate give all of its members substantial power to block action on any legislation that does not suit them.

All day Friday, for example, the Senate was locked in a standoff over the stimulus measure, with Byrd holding Boren and Breaux at bay through a complex parliamentary maneuver that effectively prevented any senator from offering amendments. But the same tactic meant that final passage was nowhere in sight and the Appropriations Committee chairman--comparing himself to the “boy who held his finger in the dike”--knew he could not hold out forever.

“It’s time to get on with it,” a frustrated Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pleaded, with no result, in the virtually empty Senate chamber. “It’s time for those of us who want to vote for the program to get on with it.”

By day’s end, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) had resorted to the time-honored technique of elementary school teachers everywhere--threatening to cancel the senators’ next vacation, scheduled to start Friday.

“We will not leave for Easter recess until we complete the business that the American people expect us to complete during this legislative period,” Mitchell warned.

What is remarkable is the fact that senators from Clinton’s own party are the ones making life most difficult for the first Democratic President in more than a decade. Throughout the week, the President was on the phone with individual Democrats, trying to charm, cajole and flatter them into supporting him.

Despite a few early tussles with the Senate, Clinton is doing quite well by historical standards. The Senate approved his five-year economic blueprint Wednesday, the earliest passage of a spending plan ever, with only two Democrats breaking ranks to oppose the President. Often, budget deliberations have dragged well into the summer and beyond.

Yet second-guessing the President, whatever his party, is something of a tradition in the Senate.

“Over the past 12 years, each of us have become independent contractors,” sighed Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.), one of Clinton’s closest allies on Capitol Hill. “It is taking us a while to mentally change who we think we are and to learn to be part of a team.”

And it is no secret that many believe they could do the job as well as or better than Clinton: Of the current crop of senators, no fewer than nine have made a bid for the White House, and another dozen or so are on the short list of often-mentioned contenders.

By comparison, Clinton is discovering, getting a major program passed in the House is a piece of cake. Conservative Democrats complained about some aspects of the President’s stimulus plan, but when it came down to voting, the House Democratic leadership was able to squelch them and pass the package after only two hours of debate.

“The Senate has been a swamp in which many a presidential proposal has sunk without a trace, after breezing through the House,” said Rutgers University political scientist Ross K. Baker, who has studied the differences between the two institutions at opposite ends of the Capitol.

No one expects Clinton’s stimulus package, or any of his other major programs, to meet so dire a fate, but it is already clear that the President will continue to face slower going in the Senate than in the House.

“A Senate Democrat is simply not as sure a Democratic vote as a House Democrat,” Baker said.

Perhaps the biggest asset that Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and other House leaders have on their side is the institution’s rigid rules, which give them virtually total control over what amendments may be offered and how long a measure may be debated. The Senate has virtually no limits on either.

“I’m sure George Mitchell goes to bed wishing he had the power to control the legislative process that Tom Foley has,” Baker said.

“Not only do I go to bed wishing that,” Mitchell said in an interview, “but I wish it first thing each morning. . . . The opportunity to persuade is the only power I have.”

For instance, if one aspect of the President’s economic plan gives members political heartburn, House leaders can make it go down more easily by packaging it deep within a much broader bill and prohibiting consideration of specific amendments.

“Here, you have to vote on every tough issue individually,” said Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who is making the transition from the House. “That makes any victory that the President has here all the more precious.”

Additionally, the House leadership not only has a bigger margin of Democratic support on its side, it can pass anything with a simple majority of the House. In the Senate, it takes a three-fifths majority of 60 votes to break a filibuster, the increasingly common tactic that allows a senator to stall legislation indefinitely. Since Democrats hold only 57 seats, it takes at least three Republican defectors to end a filibuster.

And in crucial Senate committees, such as the tax-writing finance panel with an 11-9 Democratic majority, the majority party’s margin is so slim that a single Democratic defection can mean a tie vote.

The political dynamics are different too. Representatives serve two-year terms, which means the entire House will be on the ballot next year. As a result, the House’s near-term political fortunes are tied more closely to the President’s than the Senate’s, where fewer than half of the incumbent Democrats are approaching the end of their six-year terms.

In both the Senate and the House, Baker and others warn, the situation will only get worse for Clinton as the novelty of working with a Democratic President wears off.

That is why Mitchell wants to include Clinton’s forthcoming health care initiative, which could be his most difficult undertaking, in the same legislation that contains the specific tax increases and spending cuts required under the President’s economic plan. Under Senate rules, that legislation is one of the few that is protected from limitless debate and amendment.

“George Mitchell is making a very astute reading of history,” Baker said. “The longer things go on, the harder it gets.”