Parties Clinch Deal on Running a Divided Senate

Bowing to the reality of the Senate’s 50-50 partisan split, Republicans reluctantly agreed Friday to an unprecedented power-sharing arrangement that grants each party an equal number of seats on the chamber’s committees.

“This resolution may haunt me, but it’s fair. And it allows us to go on with the people’s business,” said Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader.

The Senate approved the agreement through a procedural voice vote, taken with few members on the floor. Party leaders, especially on the GOP side, were eager to avoid a potentially divisive roll-call vote on the basic matter of organizing their chamber while Republican George W. Bush is preparing to move into the White House in two weeks.

The GOP will reign as the Senate’s majority party once Bush takes office, and Republicans will serve as committee chairs. Still, the new agreement will allow Democrats to exert a strong influence on Bush’s agenda.

Republicans obtained one proviso aimed at keeping that agenda from being completely choked off: Party leaders will be allowed to move items stuck in a deadlocked committee if the full Senate agrees in a majority vote. Republicans also thwarted Democratic demands for guaranteed parity in representation on the powerful conference committees that reconcile House and Senate versions of legislation.

The pact is the latest improbable result of the November election in which Republicans retained control of the House and Senate and regained the White House--but by the barest of margins in all three cases.

“It was an unusual election year,” Lott said.

Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said the accord acknowledged that his party had made substantial gains in November’s vote--picking up four seats to erase what had been the GOP’s 54-46 majority. He described the resolution as “fair and reasonable.”

Although the two leaders said both parties had made concessions, it was clearly the Republicans who were grimacing and the Democrats who were smiling.

Many Republicans in recent days have been calling for at least a one-seat edge on committees to bolster the power of the panel chairs, all of whom will be Republicans. Democrats, flexing their new muscle, have been adamant in seeking committee parity.

Some senior Republicans who are committee leaders expressed dismay but vowed that they would do what they could to make the arrangement work.

“My concern is that we may very well in this process be guaranteeing gridlock,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who will soon resume the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the leading Republican on the Budget Committee, also said that he fears trouble. But his remarks on the floor were toned down from what he had said Thursday in a television interview: “If you are going to make me chairman, make me chairman of something. Don’t make me chairman of nothing.”

Democrats obtained another significant concession that will boost their rights. Senate leaders will not be allowed to file so-called cloture petitions to shut down debate on legislation and other matters until senators have been allowed to speak for 12 hours. Lott also agreed to take other steps to allow Democrats more freedom to offer amendments to pending legislation.

In recent years, Lott as majority leader frequently has filed for cloture and has taken other steps to stymie Democrats as soon as a bill is introduced. Democrats have bitterly denounced such tactics.

There was symbol as well as substance in Friday’s accord. For the first time in a quarter-century, both parties will be given a chance to sit in the chair of the Senate’s presiding officer. Generally, that officer--who sits in the absence of the vice president--is a parliamentary figure rather than a power broker.

In another matter, Republicans agreed to split committee office space and staff funding evenly between the parties, with the caveat that GOP chairs be given more money--as much as 10% above panel budgets--to help them administer the committees.

Other Democratic demands--for example, co-chairmanships on committees--were dropped.

For the last six years, Republicans have held an edge on Senate committees that reflected their status as the majority party. That status has been interrupted this month until Jan. 20, when Republican Dick Cheney will be sworn in as vice president. Under the Constitution, the vice president is the Senate’s presiding officer and is empowered to break ties.

Democrats are now the majority as Vice President Al Gore finishes his term. Republicans will resume control when Cheney wields what will be, in effect, their 51st vote.

The agreement culminated weeks of arduous negotiations between Lott and Daschle. A major reason for the difficulty was the lack of clear precedent. The 50-50 split marks the first occasion in the chamber’s history that the two parties have been evenly matched without the presence of third-party or independent senators.

There are 16 standing committees and at least four special or select committees in the Senate. Among the most powerful are the Appropriations, Judiciary and Finance committees, which handle spending requests, judicial nominees and tax legislation, respectively.

Most legislation on Capitol Hill moves through or dies in committee. Committees and subcommittees also are vital arms of congressional oversight of the executive branch. They screen judicial and administrative nominations. They call investigative hearings. They take testimony from Cabinet secretaries and other important figures.

Most important, they are often the birthplace of legislative coalitions.

While Friday’s agreement is bound to affect how Congress handles the Bush agenda, Lott said that the president-elect and vice president-elect had not played a role in the negotiations.

“It’s a decision that is the prerogative of the legislative branch,” said Scott McClellan, a Bush-Cheney spokesman. “We’re not going to weigh in.”

Republicans hotly debated the deal Thursday and Friday behind closed doors in a retreat at the Library of Congress. In the end, Lott said that he believed an “overwhelming majority” of the 50 GOP senators supported the plan.

Democrats said the accord represents one of the Senate’s finest hours. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) likened it to the bipartisan arrangements struck two years ago on how to proceed with the impeachment trial of President Clinton.

The fact that the Senate was able to avoid a prolonged debate on its organization was in itself an achievement. Some senators and analysts had feared a drawn-out battle over rules that would have sapped the Senate’s energy just as the 107th Congress is getting started.

“It’s an important step toward some degree of comity between the parties,” said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “It’s no guarantee of bipartisanship, but the absence of an agreement would have initiated some early bloodletting in the Senate. It’s more important for what it avoided than what it achieved.”