The Crypt: May 9, 2007

The Senate's Dark Mood

If the Senate had a mood ring to translate the high-level, tight-lipped, closed-door immigration talks for everybody else, it might very well be black -- the universal color of a stressed, nervous and tense individual.

Take a look at the symptoms.

Only five days remain until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to start the immigration debate. Tuesday passed with no bipartisan negotiations on a yet-to-be written bill. And Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), one of the leaders of the talks, suggested that Republicans could block debate if Democrats proceeded with a bill that lacked bipartisan backing.

Reid will announce Wednesday which of two much-maligned bills from last year -- a version approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee or the measure that passed the Senate but stalled in the House -- will be used as a placeholder on the calendar and a starting point for debate until the bipartisan talks produce a bill -- or conk out.

No matter what, Reid said, a debate will begin Monday because senators have known for two months that he intended to move on it.

"If anybody thinks two months is not enough time to get ready, they should get another occupation," Reid told reporters.

The Republican mood ring promptly started to turn gray.

Some GOP senators said they don't want Reid to use either of those bills as a starting point, because they have "baggage." See, last year's immigration debate on Capitol Hill had bad karma, and some senators apparently want to stay as far away from it as possible.

"It would be a demonstration of bad faith, because we have been working toward a consensus bill that did not have any of the baggage of the previous votes," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has been involved in the bipartisan talks. "It is a bad idea."

Specter suggested the move could backfire.

"Nobody knows for sure," Specter said on the Senate floor, but there could be "a disinclination to support a motion to proceed, raising the possibility that there may be a filibuster there. There is a concern in many quarters that we need more time, that we've been proceeding diligently."

Off the floor, in an interview, Specter mused a little more.

"It may be that we erred in not going through the committee process, where we start with a document," Specter said of the decision to hold closed-door talks and move the bill directly to the floor. "There are amendments. There are discussions. There are votes. Here we go through a lot of talk and the staff goes off to draft language and they come back with significantly different language, then we have to almost start all over again."

The bipartisan group of senators is supposed to meet Wednesday.

They couldn't meet Tuesday, in part because one of the key players, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), was in Ireland as part of a special delegation selected by President Bush to attend the opening of a new Catholic-Protestant government.

It's just a guess, but Kennedy's mood ring was probably green.

-- Carrie Budoff

A Change of Heart?

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) has always been a tough read.

The chairman of the Ways and Means health subcommittee quickly embraced AARP's plunge into the health insurance market, a move that makes the gargantuan association for older Americans the largest provider of private insurance under Medicare.

But the fiery liberal was much less kind in 2003 when the advocacy group changed course to support the Republicans' Medicare prescription-drug bill.

At the time, Stark accused AARP of backing the controversial legislation after extended opposition, because it stood to gain millions in revenue from new insurance business and a massive expansion of discount cards for its members to purchase prescription drugs.

"They are perfectly suited to reap the benefits of this specil-interest boondoggle," Stark wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter in November 2003.

So why the change of heart?

Who knows? His aides did not respond to requests for comment, and the congressman rebuffed The Crypt in a Capitol Hill hallway Tuesday.

AARP announced last month that it would offer a health maintenance organization to Medicare recipients, creating a potential for conflict among the organization's members and its clients.

Stark told The New York Times that AARP would be "a wonderful addition" to the field of private insurers under the government-subsidized health care program "if they provide quality care at a fair price."

Stark, meanwhile, was an ardent critic of the Republicans' prescription-drug bill, especially after Republicans held open the vote for more than three hours to pressure recalcitrant members on the floor.

AARP initially opposed the legislation before working closely with the administration and congressional leaders to craft a bill its members would back.

"AARP members know they are being sold out by an organization that is happily using member dues and Medigap premiums to promote a Medicare bill that does more harm than good," Stark wrote at the time.

-- Patrick O'Connor