New Congress In Town

By CBSNews.com's Ray Bassett

(CBS)  The 107th Congress made history in more ways than one as it opened for business on Wednesday.

With President Clinton and daughter Chelsea watching from the Senate gallery, Hillary Rodham Clinton was sworn in as New York's newest senator, the first first lady to hold elected public office.

And when President-elect Bush takes the oath of office on January 20, Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since Ike, but with no clear mandate, they'll have little room to maneuver.

In the House, Speaker Dennis Hastert and the Republicans hold 221 seats to 211 for the Democrats under Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. Two more seats belong to independents; a third is currently vacant due to the recent death of Rep. Julian Dixon of California, but the Democrats are likely to keep that seat.

Despite lingering bitterness over last year's tight presidential race and the likelihood of partisan fights over taxes and other issues, Hastert says it is time to move on.

"My friends, we need to get over it," Hastert said in an address to the House. "We need to work together to revitalize this democracy, we need to get to the people's business. I have a great faith that we can do so."

Gephardt, for his part, said Democrats would pledge "to meet you halfway and in return we hope that great things in these two years can be accomplished for the American people that we serve."

But a short time later, Democrats complained about proposed changes in the House rules that Republicans crafted, and said the GOP was proposing to deny them adequate representation on committees.

"This is the first test of bipartisanship ... and the Republican leadership has failed it," said Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. The rule changes cleared on a party-line vote of 215-206.

Over in the Senate, it's an even split between Republicans and Democrats - 50 seats apiece; the second outright tie in U.S. history since 1881. While Republicans will soon have Vice President Dick Cheney to break any deadlocked votes, they will still lack the numbers to overcome Democratic procedural moves that could bring the Senate to a halt.

"An even split does not necessitate political gridlock ... but does require bipartisanship," said Democratic leader Tom Daschle on Wednesday, as he and Senate Republican leader Trent Lott struggled to agree on a set of ground rules to guide the upper chamber.

For the next few weeks, Democrats will actually be in control of the Senate. Vice President Al Gore will remain president of the Senate until Cheney is sworn in as his successor on January 20. Given the split, Democrats are keen on a power-sharing arrangement on committees, but Republicans, looking beyond Inauguration Day, are not.

Shortly before the new Congress convened, Gore, in an address to the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "We all must respect and, wherever possible, help President-elect Bush."
The vice president told black lawmakers, "You are the conscience of the Congress, who of course have to do your best to reach across party lines, but you also have to know when to draw the line."

Even with a divided Capitol Hill, Bush as president plans to move full steam ahead on at least two items of his core agenda: a mammoth tax cut and education reform.

"There's going to be a lot of discussions, a lot of head-knocking, a lot of kind of gentle arm-twisting," the president-elect told reporters during his first post-victory trip to Washington last month. "I'm sure they'll be twisting my arm. I might try to twist a few myself to reach what's right for America."

But given the close, bitterly disputed presidential election, as well as the slim partisan margins in the new House and Senate, Bush will have to walk a political tightrope if he expects to succeed with Congress.

"He's gonna have to fashion proposals that bring together conservatives in his own party and Democratic moderates - and hope that's he gonna be able to keep that narrow, narrow majority together for a couple of key pieces of legislation," independent political analyst Stuart Rothenberg told CBSNews.com last month.

During the campaign, Bush bragged about how he was able to bring together Republicans and Democrats in the Texas legislature to get things done. Indeed, the second President Bush could conceivably follow Bill Clinton's political playbook and "triangulate" himself between his own party and the Democrats in Congress.

"But once you get down to the nitty-gritty," Rothenberg said, "the issues - whether it's prescription drugs, patients' bill of rights, Social Security, taxes - the question is whether he really reaches out to swing Democratic votes rather than whether he puts a Democrat into his Cabinet." The president-elect has kept true to his post-victory promise by tapping Clinton Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta as his nominee for Transportation Secretary.

Education reform is expected to be Bush's first legislative proposal on Capitol Hill. This plan could well include a hot-button item: school vouchers. Democrats strongly oppose vouchers, arguing that they would help few children while siphoning money away from the public schools.

But it's the president-elect's sweeping tax cut plan - an estimated $1.3 trillion over 10 years - that has drawn the most fire. Democrats have said they would prefer to use projected federal budget surpluses to pay off the nation's debt, and to target tax breaks to the middle class in order to help families pay for education and child care.

Pointing to the slowing economy, Bush has said he plans to press ahead with his tax cut plan, despite advice from some fellow Republicans that he should take a step-by-step approach. They say such an incremental package should start with immediate relief from the so-called "marriage penalty" and the estae tax.

Word that Democrats might go for bigger tax cuts than expected added to the good spirit on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but a veteran GOP lawmaker said the President-elect will have to give, too.

"In order to do that, he's going to have to reach out to Democrats on some of the issues that they like as well - and I would suspect that one issue that you could probably put together with that is prescription drug benefit coverage," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

Tax cuts and vouchers aside, Bush's own party could give him more partisan headaches than the Democratic opposition, due to the more conservative bent of GOP congressional leaders from Lott in the Senate to Hastert's colleagues Dick Armey and Tom DeLay (two Texans) in the House.

"It's hard to finesse ideology," said analyst Rothenberg. "On the other hand, if he's popular, if he can convince Republicans that there's only so much that they can get - and I think he's in a fair position to that - he might find that DeLay and Armey and the conservative activists give him more slack than one might ordinarily think."

"He's going to have to schmooze them. He's going to woo them. And he's going to have to work them just like he would have to work some swing Democrats" he will need, Rothenberg added.

Yet schmoozing by Bush may have its limits with his Democratic opposition on Capitol Hill. The first example could come with the confirmation of his Cabinet. Civil rights groups, led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, are taking aim at the president-elect's picks of defeated Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri for attorney general and New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman to run the EPA.

In addition, Senate Democrats could give Gale Norton, the interior secretary nominee, a rough confirmation ride. Norton's friendship with industry and her support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have enraged environmentalists.

Defending his choice of Ashcroft, Bush said Tuesday that Rev. Jackson "can try to block any nomination he wants," but added the Senate will make the final decision after it considers Ashcroft on the merits.

"If they are objective and they take a look at, in this case, Sen. Ashcroft's heart and his record, they'll confirm him," the president-elect said. Bush also vowed that Ashcroft, a staunch conservative who opposes abortion rights, will perform fairly and will not politicize the Justice Department.

But if the nation's 43rd president endures a bruising confirmation battle early in his administration, he might find it that much more difficult to fulfill his campaign pledge to "change the tone in Washington."