Senate ‘Ayes’ Come at Some Cost to Bush

Despite the grueling four-day hearing on his choice for attorney general and some sharp questions for his designated Interior secretary, George W. Bush seems on track to achieve a nearly perfect score in the first task of a new president: assembling a government.

Today, the Senate is expected to confirm, probably unanimously, Bush’s picks for secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury.

Within the next week, several more Cabinet officers and top officials are projected to gain confirmation with little or no dissent. Senate leaders say votes to confirm the secretaries of Commerce, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development--as well as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget--could come Tuesday.

Even Atty. Gen.-nominee John Ashcroft and Interior nominee Gale A. Norton--both of whom have come under heavy fire from an array of liberal interest groups--appear on track for confirmation with comfortable, although not necessarily overwhelming, majorities.

Bush’s only definitive personnel setback came when his first pick for Labor secretary, Linda Chavez, was forced to withdraw over a controversy about her connections to an illegal immigrant. Chavez dropped out so quickly that she never got a hearing on Capitol Hill.

But even if Bush wins every confirmation vote, the process has come with some political cost for the new Republican president. That’s because the evenly divided Senate, exercising its constitutional role in the making of the Cabinet, has given plenty of advice along with its expected consent.

For some Senate Democrats, the confirmation hearings offered a chance to lay down some markers for the public to use to judge the new administration:

Is it seeded with conservative extremists? Is it racially insensitive? Is it anti-environment?

Republicans, in a loud chorus, on all counts have responded “no.” They charge that Ashcroft and Norton, for instance, have been smeared.

Still, the confirmation hearings--even those that served essentially as love fests--highlighted several issues ripe for partisan conflict. James A. Thurber, an expert on presidential-congressional relations at Washington’s American University, predicted that “bipartisanship will go out the window as soon as the big issues hit that were in deadlock in the last Congress.”

There were questions for Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary-designate Donald H. Rumsfeld about Bush plans for a new national missile defense system; many Democrats are skeptical of the concept.

Commerce Secretary-designate Don Evans deflected Democratic demands for a commitment to allow the release of statistically adjusted data from the 2000 census; such data would include more minorities and others often missed by the traditional head count. The issue is critical to how states redraw legislative boundaries and how the federal government doles out aid.

Tommy G. Thompson, the nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, told a Senate panel that the Bush administration would review recently issued regulations by the Food and Drug Administration that allow the marketing of RU-486, the so-called abortion pill.

And as the fourth--and final--day of the Ashcroft hearing wound down Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the perennially controversial issue of guns took center stage. Gun control advocates charged that Ashcroft--a former senator from Missouri--was likely to toe the line of firearms manufacturers. Republicans insisted he would keep an open mind on new proposals and would uphold existing federal law on gun purchases and ownership.

By day’s end, committee leaders had scheduled a vote on the Ashcroft nomination for Wednesday, to be followed by a floor debate and vote by the full Senate.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who will resume the majority leadership today after Bush takes office, predicted Ashcroft would receive support from all 50 Senate Republicans and at least 10 to 20 Senate Democrats. But Lott also said he had been “shocked and disappointed” by the acrimonious tone of the Ashcroft hearing.

Democrats and witnesses have repeatedly pressed the nominee on his commitment to civil rights and questioned whether his record as a senator and former Missouri governor and attorney general shows a sensitivity to racial concerns. Republicans have repeatedly taken offense at such questions.

But Lott said that the hearing did not necessarily spell trouble for cross-party cooperation. “Actions and votes speak louder than words,” he told reporters.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the influential former majority leader, announced Friday that he would vote for Ashcroft--the second Democrat to do so.

But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he was torn over whether Ashcroft was sincere in his pledge to uphold federal statutes and court rulings he has in the past attacked--such as the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that protects a woman’s right to have an abortion.

“All of us have a lot of reflecting and soul-searching to do in the coming days as a vote on the Ashcroft nomination approaches,” Leahy said.

The week’s other high-profile hearing, on the Norton nomination, ended Friday with Republicans optimistic that the Interior secretary-designate had defused criticism of her environmental record. Norton, who if confirmed will be steward of vast tracts of federal land, pledged to be both conservative and a conservationist.

Critics warned that based on her past record and comments, she could take actions that undermine the Endangered Species Act and despoil the environment in the fragile Western wilderness.

“I’d like to play my role in seeing that those areas are preserved,” Norton said Friday as her hearing before the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee neared its close. “I want to see that we do the best that we can for the people of the West and the other people who are affected by the decisions made here in Washington.”

In a sign of Norton’s success in defusing some of her expected critics, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a party leader in the Senate, told her: “We don’t agree on all the issues, and I would not expect us to, but you have made a good presentation to this committee.”

The parade of hearings continues next week, with testimony from Norman Y. Mineta, the nominee for Transportation secretary; and Elaine Chao, whom Bush tapped for the Labor post after Chavez withdrew. Barring an unexpected development, some analysts believe Bush will come out of the confirmation process in a stronger political position than when the hearings began.

“Frankly, there were a lot of people in town who thought George Bush could not lick a postage stamp,” said Paul Light, an expert on transitions at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank here. “And he’s done very well in his first encounter with Congress. Bush here is showing a lot of strength.”

But Light also cautioned that the groups leading the opposition to Ashcroft and Norton will not disappear, even if they lose those battles.

Bush may face the same emboldened coalitions, or elements of them, as he proposes legislation and makes judicial nominations and sub-Cabinet appointments. Bush and congressional Republicans, Light said, “are going to see them again and again and again in coming years.”

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Times staff writers Eric Lichtblau, Richard T. Cooper and Alissa J. Rubin contributed to this story.