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Roundup: US Democratic Party Formally Takes Reins of Senate
With the modest crack of a gavel, U.S. Democrats took control of the Senate for the first time in six years Wednesday in an unprecedented midyear transfer of power.
The New Democratic-led Senate convened on Wednesday under Democratic control as new Majority Leader Tom Daschle called for bipartisanship. However, he cautioned that he would also use his party's new muscle to stop President George W. Bush on areas where they disagree.
A day after an unprecedented mid-year shift in Senate power put much of Bush's conservative agenda in jeopardy, less than half of the 100 lawmakers showed up to see Daschle formally recognized as the new majority leader.
Republicans and Democrats applauded, however, when Daschle and then Republican Senator Trent Lott, the new minority leader, challenged them to come together for the nation's good.
"We need to prove to the American people that we can overcome the lines that too often divide us," Daschle said in his first Senate speech as majority leader. "We need to prove that we can do the work the American people have sent us to do."
"Republicans and Democrats come to this floor with different philosophies, different agendas," Daschle said. "In this divided government ...we are required to find common ground and seek meaningful bipartisanship."
Democrats took over a Senate they last led in 1994, other than 17 days last January when little work was done. With Republicans still controlling the House and White House, the transition gives Democrats their only opportunity for setting Congress' agenda and has made the 53-year-old Daschle the government's most powerful Democrat.
The Democratic takeover was realized as Senator James Jeffords officially left the Republican Party and became an independent at the close of Senate business Tuesday.
Jeffords announced his decision to bolt the Republican Party on May 24 in Burlington, Vermont, citing what he described as irreconcilable difference with an increasing conservative Republican Party.
The departure of the 67-year-old moderate lawmaker marked the first time in history there was a shift in power in the Senate not caused by an election. It gave Democrats a one-seat margin -- 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent.
Democrats now control the flow of legislation and chair all the Senate's committees, where legislation is shaped and the fate of many presidential nominees is determined.
Bush, having won approval last month of a 1.3-trillion-U.S.- dollar tax cut, a centerpiece of his young presidency, had wanted the Republican-led Senate to move to his missile defense and energy plans and possible business tax breaks.
But the new Democratic-led Senate will instead push ahead with a patients rights bill, an increase in the federal minimum wage and a prescription drug benefit under Medicare.
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