Compromise This!

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has some unsolicited advice for President Bush.

Daschle says Mr. Bush must compromise more next year if he wants to get an economic stimulus bill through Congress. The leader of the Democratic-dominated Senate also complains that during December negotiations "we didn't see a lot of give on the part of the administration" until it was too late.

In interviews Sunday, Daschle, D-S.D., went on to add that he feels he was mischaracterized by Republicans as the villain in the failure to pass an economic plan before Congress left town for the holidays.

In the past month, Daschle has been called an "obstructionist" by Vice President Dick Cheney and labeled a "bad faith" negotiator by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

"It really takes give on both sides," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We didn't see a lot of give on the part of the administration or engagement on the part of the administration until the very end."

Issuing his strongest defense yet of his management of the Senate, Daschle said: "I take issue with this obstructionist charge. The fact is we've had a very successful fall if you look at all the things we've accomplished."

But he said, "we shouldn't personalize it - I think that has been a factor in this debate over the last several weeks."

President Bush said Saturday he was disappointed in the Senate for not taking up a House-passed economic stimulus plan to help laid off workers and create jobs.

"I hope that we can resolve in the new year and put politics aside and get the job done for the American people," said Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address.

Daschle said "a bad economic stimulus bill is worse than no bill at all."

Sen. Don Nickles, however, said the Senate Democrats' plan "wasn't really a stimulus bill, it was a spending bill." He said President Bush has worked with Democrats and Republicans. "We can have differences of opinion, but we need to say, `You know, the economy's hurting,"' said Nickles, R-Okla.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican often tagged with the villain label, predicts that Mr. Bush will eventually "embrace Tom Daschle, say he's a good guy, he's a good American."

"I think that we're not in a period of demonization," explained Gingrich, speaking on ABC's "This Week."

On another issue that has put the White House at odds with the Senate, Nickles, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, said the president should exercise his power to seat two appointees during the congressional recess.

The Senate went on its holiday break without taking up Bush's choices of Otto Reich to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and Eugene Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to be the Labor Department's top lawyer.

Mr. Bush has said that he is considering making recess appointments to install the two before Congress returns on Jan. 23. If he does so, Reich and Scalia could serve - without Senate confiration - until January 2003, the end of the congressional session.

"I hate to say so, but yes," Nickles said when asked on "Meet The Press" whether Bush should bypass the Senate.

Daschle said there is strong opposition, particularly for Reich. He said Bush should instead withdraw the nomination.

A recess appointment "isn't the way it ought to be addressed," he said. "The constitutional responsibility of the president and Congress is to work together on these nominees."

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